William Howard Moss, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, May 8, 2010

Transcript (33 pages) of interview by Becky B. Lloyd with William Howard Moss on May 8, 2010

Moss (b. 1935) was born in Rock Springs, Wyoming. He contracted polio at age four and was hospitalized in the Wyoming General Hospital in Rocks Springs. He discusses getting sick and his memories of time in the hospital. He was transferred to Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. Both legs were paralyzed and he used leg braces and crutches for a time, which he describes. He talks about difficulties with schooling, work and accommodation. He describes the challenges of post-polio symptoms. Mr. Moss had a successful career in the drilling business. Interview is part of the Polio Oral History Project. Interviewer: Becky B. Lloyd

WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS Salt Lake City, Utah An Interview By Becky B. Lloyd May 8, 2010 Polio Oral History Project Tape No. u-3028 American West Center Marriott Library Special Collections Department University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah THIS IS AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS ON MAY 8, 2010. THE INTERVIEWER IS BECKY B. LLOYD. THIS IS THE POLIO ORAL HISTORY PROJECT. TAPE No. u-3010. BBL: This is an interview with William (Bill) Moss at his home in Salt Lake City, Utah. Today’s date is May 8, 2010. This is part of the Polio Oral History Project that is supported by the Utah Medical Association. My name is Becky Lloyd. Let’s start, Bill, with when and where you were born. WM: I was born July 10, 1935. BBL: Where were you born? WM: Rock Springs, Wyoming. BBL: What was your family doing in Rock Springs at the time? WM: My dad was a barber and my mother was a nurse. She nursed at the Wyoming General Hospital. They met in Jackson Hole. BBL: Were they both originally from Rock Springs or from Jackson? WM: No, my mother was from South Dakota. She was born right by Mount Rushmore. That’s kind of historic. BBL: Yes, for sure. So they just happened to be in Jackson? WM: Yes, my mother took a job in the Jackson Hospital and my dad took a job working for the Forest Service in Yellowstone Park. He got hurt real bad, went to the hospital... BBL: And the rest is history, they say. WM: The rest is history (laughs). BBL: How many children did your parents have? WILLIAM HOWARD WM: MOSS 8 MAY 2010 Just one. As far as I know. One of my aunts said that she [my mother] had a daughter that was stillborn, but she never did talk about it. I never did know what happened. BBL: Isn’t that interesting. Did your aunt say that was before you were born? WM: Yes, it was before. My folks were in their thirties when they met each other, so they were a little older. She thinks because she was a nurse, she brought polio to me from the hospital. BBL: So you told me, I think earlier, that you were four years old when you contracted polio. WM: Yes. BBL: So tell me about that. Do you remember? WM: Yes. BBL: Do you remember getting sick? WM: Yes. BBL: Tell me about that. WM: [pauses] I don’t know why I get choked up. I remember having a real bad headache. My dad came home from work and my aunt was taking care of me. They went and told my mom. She came home and right away she knew it was polio. Then I don’t remember much until I was in the hospital. I remember them saying something about there were eleven kids got polio in the Wyoming General Hospital. Then later I found out I was the only one that lived. BBL: Out of that eleven? WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS WM: 8 MAY 2010 Yes [pauses]. I don’t usually get choked up like that. They brought me from Rock Springs down to Holy Cross Hospital here and they treated me here. BBL: So you went to the hospital when you first got sick. Your mom decided it was probably polio and you got in there. How long were you in the Wyoming General Hospital, then? WM: I was there better than two or three months because I had those headaches when it was winter. I remember I had my birthday in the hospital that year. So it was July something, July 10™, BBL: But you had been in the hospital while it was still cold and snowy? WM: Yes. BBL: July came, it was your birthday, and you were still in the hospital? WM: Yes. Then I was in Holy Cross Hospital down here for several months and they put me in a cage (laughs). They didn’t know what to do with polio and they built this thing, I remember it being out of chicken wire, and they filled it with cotton and laid me in that. BBL: Do you remember was it completely around you? WM: No, just the bottom part. BBL: So just up the sides. You had sides, but not a top? WM: Yes. It was all chicken wire. They had cotton in there and laid me in that cotton. I don’t know what they were thinking (laughs). But polio back then was like AIDS is now, or was here. They didn’t know how you got it, they didn’t know how to prevent it, they didn’t know how to treat it, so they did the best they could, I guess. WILLIAM HOWARD BBL: MOSS 8 MAY 2010 And maybe you don’t remember this outright, but perhaps you’ve been told, were you pretty immobile? Were you pretty much paralyzed? Or what was affected? WM: I was pretty mobile, except for my legs; they were both paralyzed. BBL: But you had movement in your arms? WM: I had my arms and everything seemed to be working fine, except I just couldn’t move my legs. BBL: What about your throat or breathing? Did you have difficulty breathing? WM: [I've never had any trouble with that. But one of the kids that I was in the hospital with was in an iron lung. I remember that. His name was Richard Dozier. I’ve often wondered what happened to him. But I’ve never had any trouble breathing, except as I got older when I was a teenager I did a lot of boxing and broke my nose several times, had operations on my nose and that’s always been haunting me. Never have an operation on your nose. Hurt. BBL: (laughs) That’s a sore place to get operated on, for sure. WM: Yes (laughs). BBL: Do you have much memory of your time spent in the Wyoming hospital? WM: Not too much. I remember being in a wheelchair and I remember me and another kid racing up and down the halls and going out on the back porch that overlooks the cemetery (laughs). BBL: Oh, gosh (laughs). WM: From the hospital you can see the cemetery. The only other thing I really remember is we had the old wooden wheelchairs. I went down to the end of the hall one day, went to turn around and went backwards down the stairs. WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 BBL: On purpose? WM: No, accidently. I don’t remember anything except when I woke up I was back in my bed. So apparently it knocked me out. So they put a gate over that stairway (laughs) because they couldn’t keep us kids from playing down there. BBL: You didn’t have any broken bones from that? WM: Apparently not. The only other thing I remember is the cemetery and a woman that was in there I used to go see and she’d give me candy. BBL: In the hospital? WM: In the hospital. She was the, I don’t know what she was in there for, but she always had chocolates. I remember my folks bought Gulliver’s Travels and a recorder for me in the hospital and Lincoln logs, so I could build things out of the Lincoln logs. So that must have been when I was about five. After that I remember wearing braces. You know they made them out of steel and they were heavy and awkward, and I had crutches. One night my dad saw me take all that brace and everything off and then walk in the bathroom. He said, “Why’s he wearing those braces?” They said they didn’t know. My one foot was always smaller; my left one was always smaller than my right one. So they’d buy me two pair of shoes, one to fit the little leg and one to fit the big one. Well, as I got older I thought that was ridiculous, so I just bought the one size. Thank God my good foot was normal size or smaller than it should have been so I could just fill in the shoe with socks. So I'd put in a couple of extra socks and put the shoe on and I did that for years. I was at a swimming pool one time and WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 I was taking my socks off and this other little kid looked over and said, “Is your foot cold?” BBL: Because you had on all those socks (laughs). WM: [ had all those socks. “Is your foot cold?” Then, of course, World War II broke out and my folks immediately...I was supposed to go to school, first grade, 1941, and I went to school for maybe a couple of weeks before my folks decided to move to Portland, Oregon. When they moved up there that made me miss first grade that year. They couldn’t find any place to put me and the schools wouldn’t take me because I had polio. I remember that. BBL: Why was that? WM: They were afraid that somebody else was going to catch it. BBL: Oh, even though you didn’t have the disease anymore? WM: Well, we don’t know, they didn’t then. BBL: I thought maybe it was going to be because you had difficulty walking or something so they didn’t feel like they could accommodate you with the stairs, but was that it? WM: All that. BBL: Oh, all of those reasons. WM: Then they finally put me in a Catholic board school and I hated that. The nuns always put me off in a corner to keep me away from the other kids. Finally the war was over and we came back to Rock Springs, then my dad moved back down to Salt Lake. WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 It was that way all the way through grade school. They seemed to separate me from the other kids. I remember I went to school in Sugar House. We used to live right where the Redman Building is. We lived right alongside it. I used to walk down to the grade school. By this time they had let me be in the regular class, but they wouldn’t let me go out and play. And I don’t know what that was about either. BBL: So what would you do? Just stay in the classroom? WM: Just stay in the classroom and mess around and try not to get into any trouble (laughs). I remember the teacher was real protective of me. I think of that now—I didn’t at the time. And then my mother was that way, too. When I came home one day and I'd been boxing (laughs) and I was all...I looked like Rocky, oh, she had a fit. BBL: Oh, that was a surprise to her? She didn’t know you were boxing? WM: Yes. So for quite a few years I didn’t. Then the next time that polio really came up was when I was in high school and I wanted to play football. Can you shut that off a minute? BBL: Yes. [turns off recorder] WM: Okay. BBL: Ready? WM: I was in high school, wanted to play football and I played for half a year my sophomore year until they found out I had polio. The school insurance wouldn’t cover me, so they said you can’t play football. I thought, I don’t want to play basketball, it’s WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 Just as bad. Why don’t I just have solid subjects, get all my credits this year and get out of here, because I can go to work. And do you remember Hygeia Ice Company? BBL: Ido. WM: I worked there all the time I was in school and hauled ice and everything. My leg never bothered me a bit then. But I went back to wearing a brace, like these plastic ones. I don’t know, now the next thing that happened is that my back has gone out. And I've gotten fairly weak and I don’t know what happened. When my back went bad, I went to the doctor and I mentioned post-polio syndrome. “No,” he said, ““You probably have arthritis.” Now I'm thinking the reason he didn’t want to tell me I had post-polio syndrome was because that’s a pre-existing condition and insurance wouldn’t pay for it. That’s what I'm thinking, because the insurance wouldn’t pay for this. BBL: For your brace? WM: Yes. So we shut up about post-polio syndrome. BBL: That’s interesting. Let’s talk about post-polio some more, but let me go back to when you had the disease and were sick. You were in Rocks Springs for a few months and then your parents decided that you should go to a hospital in Salt Lake. WM: Yes. BBL: Do you know why they decided that? WM: For better treatment. BBL: They thought the treatment was better than in Rock Springs? WM: Yes. And one of the doctors that was in Wyoming General Hospital also worked down in Holy Cross. I guess as a spare doctor he came down here or something. They went back and forth. His name was McCran, or something, Dr. McCran, as near as I can WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8 MAY 2010 remember. He was the one that, when I was laying in bed my leg wouldn’t move. And he’d put a coin down by my toe [pauses]. If I could touch it, he’d give it to me. So I've got a powerful toe on that foot (laughs), because I could finally move my toe up enough to touch that coin. BBL: So where would he put the coin? Would he just hold it? WM: Yes, just hold it in front a little ways away from it and I had to raise it enough to touch that coin. BBL: So you were lifting your toe up toward you? WM: Yes. I just happened to think of something else, too. When they were transferring me from one bed to another, I fell down. When I went to get up, I couldn’t straighten my leg out [pauses]. That doctor came in a while after and the nurses told him about it and he checked it all over and everything and he said, “I can’t figure out why he can’t move that leg, why he can’t straighten it up.” So he forced it. Oh, it hurt. He forced it open and worked it until it would work. I think back now as that is the only reason I could use it, because it’s like a hinge. If I lay down on my stomach, I can’t lift that leg. I can lift my right, one but I can’t lift my left one. It has a hinge. But the only problem now that I'm having is it hinges a little bit backwards; instead of just coming straight like that, it bends backwards. That bothers me every once in a while. I’ll go to make a step and it will kick backwards. But we all figured, my folks figured, that saved me from being a cripple like that. But I remember it really hurt (laughs). He just kept forcing it until it came down. Then after that I could move it up and down. I had to do it with my arm. 10 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS BBL: 8§ MAY 2010 That’s interesting. That’s an interesting kind of therapy he was giving you, the coin therapy. WM: Yes (laughs). I think he did a lot for me. At the time I don’t think my dad thought much of him, but my dad was funny anyway. My mom, she was okay with it as long as I was doing something good. BBL: As long as you were making progress. So when you were in the hospital, you said both of your legs were paralyzed; you couldn’t move either of them? WM: Well, my right one I started using right away and it seemed to develop back into a pretty good leg, because I was using it more than the polio leg. Through the years it became stronger and stronger. I used it more and more when I was working and everything, so it seems to be all right now. I got gout in it not too long ago that I’ve never had before. I told the doctor and he said, “Well, I’ll get you a prescription. Come on up and I'll check it.” He checked it. “Yes, that’s gout,” he said. “I’ll get you a prescription.” It went away. But when it was bad, my right leg was bad, my left leg won’t carry me. It made it miserable. BBL: So while you were in the hospital there I guess your mother probably was there a lot. She worked there, but... WM: Yes, she worked there. BBL: Was she working in that ward, the polio ward? WM: Idon’t think so, but she was there all the time. I remember she worked there, she had her uniform and everything on, you know the cap with the little black things around it. She graduated from Keystone up in South Dakota. BBL: That was a college up there? 11 WILLIAM HOWARD WM: MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 Yes, it was a nursing college in Keystone. That’s where she was born, right there, too. We still have relatives up there. BBL: That’s nice that if you had polio she... WM: ...was able to do that. BBL: Yes, that she was able to spend that time with you, because a lot of times they quarantined people and wouldn’t let you see your parents. But that wasn’t the case with you? WM: That wasn’t the case after we got down here. BBL: Did you have any kind of hot pack treatment? Any kind of heat therapy? WM: Inever had heat therapy. I had this one doctor that was a therapist kept trying to put cold packs on me and I hated that because it was cold. BBL: Was that at Holy Cross? WM: Yes, Holy Cross. Then my whole life, I’ve been, what would I say, like afraid of the cold. I couldn’t be cold. If I got cold I couldn’t get warm. So I told them, when I was just a kid I told my mom, I said, “I can’t stand that.” She made him quit putting cold packs on. BBL: How would they do that? Was it like an ice pack? WM: It was like an ice pack. I remember it went clear from my knees clear up to my neck, it was like a blanket. BBL: And there was ice in the blanket? WM: Yes. BBL: And they put it on almost your whole body? WM: Yes, my whole back, all my whole spine and everything. 12 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8 MAY 2010 BBL: He thought this was helpful? WM: Yes, because, well, later my mother told me that I always had a kind of a fever. He might have thought that was taking care of that, but it made me worse. They had funny things that they did for polio back then. BBL: Do you remember other treatments that you were given for polio? WM: Yes, they made me get up and try to walk all the time. That was therapy. Other things, they worked my leg a lot, worked my other leg. Kept me physically fit. BBL: So they would have a physical therapist come in and move your legs? WM: Yes. I remember that. It was always a man that came in to do that. BBL: Was that painful? WM: [don’t remember it being painful. Tiring. I'd get tired real easy then, but I don’t remember it being very painful at the time after he did that with my leg. It seemed like it helped. BBL: How long were you in Holy Cross Hospital? WM: Idon’t really remember. I was there quite a while. BBL: And did you go right from Wyoming General to Holy Cross? WM: Yes. BBL: And you were there, you're thinking maybe months? WM: At least that, maybe two or three months. I was in there a long time. And then my dad, it had to be quite a while because it was all during the war almost. We moved from here to Portland, Oregon, in 1942, I think. BBL: Do you remember any other experiences in Holy Cross? WM: No, not much. I just remembered it seems to me now that I was there a long time. 13 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 BBL: And your mother wasn’t working there, right? WM: Yes, she was working there. She moved to Salt Lake. BBL: When you moved to the hospital she moved down here, too? WM: Yes. BBL: So you saw your mother quite a bit, then, still? WM: Yes, she was with me all the time. BBL: Did your dad stay in Rocks Springs? WM: He stayed in Rock Springs and then, like I said, we all moved to Portland. BBL: I’'m just curious why they decided to move to Portland. WM: For the war effort. It was during the war. They went up there and my mother and dad both were welders, learned how to weld. BBL: Both of your parents did? WM: TI’ve got a picture of, they launched the USS Rock Springs in Portland, Oregon, and I’ve got a picture of me standing [pauses]...hang on...standing by the side of Eleanor Roosevelt when she launched the boat. My boy’s got the photo. I've been trying to find out what happened to that boat. I was standing alongside of her when she launched the boat. BBL: Your parents, the war came along, your dad was too old to be drafted, but they both decided they wanted to get involved? WM: Wanted to get involved. BBL: So they went up and worked in the shipyards, learned how to weld. WV Yies: BBL: I wonder why your mother didn’t decide to work in a hospital. 14 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS WM: 8§ MAY 2010 Well, she did the welding first and then they needed nurses, so she went to work as a nurse in a hospital then. BBL: In Portland? WM: In Portland. And they didn’t leave there until 1945, later *45, *46. BBL: And came back to Rock Springs, then? WM: Well, they came back to Salt Lake and stayed here in Salt Lake. BBL: So when you left Holy Cross Hospital, then, what sort of residual effects from polio did you have? Did you have a limp? WM: When I left Holy Cross they kept me back in braces. BBL: So that’s when you had the crutches and the braces. Yes, and the braces. BBL: On both legs or just your left? WM: Yes, on both legs. And my right leg was fine, as far as I was concerned, but I had this one and it went up to my hips and buckled around my hips. BBL: So on both legs it went up to your hips? WM: Yes. BBL: And then crutches in addition? Yes, crutches along with it. It just wore you out packing them around. BBL: Yes, heavy and cumbersome. WM: So my dad one day when we were in Portland, he noticed that I could use my right leg fine. So he took that brace off of there, but he left the one on my left leg. Then he decided that it wasn’t any good (laughs). So he took it off and I stumbled around then. He cut it so it was below the knee and would hinge right there. I wore that for several 15 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 years. We had to keep changing the shoe in it because the shoe was built into the brace. That was when I told him, I said, “Why don’t we just get me a bigger pair of shoes and I’ll just wear more socks and walk around fine.” That’s what we did, and I did that for quite a few years. My dad was always kind of, “You can do it,” you know, “get up and get out there” (laughs). BBL: So he was kind of pushing you then? WM: Yes. He doesn’t believe in allergies or...he wasn’t sure, when I had polio, he was the first one to really see me, besides my aunt. I had that bad headache and he just thought I had a bad headache, so he just gave me aspirin. It didn’t help, I remember that. He was kind of funny about my polio, too. He kept thinking I should get better and I wasn’t getting any better. I was getting bigger and the rest of my body was getting stronger, but the polio leg was still staying small. It’s small now. And here a couple of years ago, before we moved here, I dropped a piece of plywood on my toe and it’s deformed now. I’ve got a big funny-looking toenail, but it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t bother me in any way, it just looks funny (laughs). So my wife and them told me I ought to go to a foot doctor and get that thing cut off. I said, “Listen, as long as it isn’t bothering me, I’'m not going to touch it.” BBL: That’s right: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. WM: Yes, right. I was swinging on a swing across a creek one day and the swing broke. I fell in the creek and broke my right foot. And just to show you about my dad being funny about stuff like that, I limped home and that was down from the Redman Building. You know where that hollow is? BBL: Right. 16 WILLIAM HOWARD WM: MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 That’s where we were swinging on that swing. He saw my foot and he said, “Well, it’s just out of the joint,” so he straightened it. I screamed bloody murder. Years later when I was at South High School and I was playing football, I sprained that leg because it took all the weight. Anything I did, it was my power leg. And when they xrayed it to see if it was broken, they said, “When did you break this part of your foot, the instep?” I said, “I don’t know. My dad fixed that.” He said, “He didn’t set it right, it’s off kilter.” I said, “It doesn’t bother me, just leave it alone.” That that was one of the reasons they found out I had polio. BBL: Because you went in to have your foot [examined]? WM: Yes. Then they said, “Oh, you can’t play football, you had polio.” BBL: Speaking about your dad and his view of the polio thing, did you get the sense that he thought that if you maybe tried harder you could fix that leg? WM: He felt like I was holding back and kind of being a mama’s boy. But that was far from the truth. I was doing everything I could do. I went to work for the Hygeia Ice Company. I boxed in amateur boxing tournaments, which he never came to see. And that’s a long story. I better not tell you that. BBL: Did you feel like you had to really work hard and do these incredible things to try to show your dad? WM: Yes. BBL: Did you feel at any point that, yeah, maybe I am dogging it? Or did you know inside that you weren’t? WM: No, I knew inside that I was pushing myself. BBL: But just trying to show your dad. 147 WILLIAM HOWARD WM: MOSS 8 MAY 2010 Well, until I was having bad troubles with my back because of my leg being shorter, it kicked my back out. Two of the vertebras at the bottom of my back that hook to my pelvis are smashed. The third one is coming down and going off to the side. The doctor said that if that slips, it will cut my spine and I'll be paralyzed from the waist down. So he said “you’ve got to lose your weight.” I was up to 260, 270 pounds, butI was mostly not fat, just bulk, just muscle. BBL: Yes, you’re a big man. WM: So I went on a diet. I weighed 190 when I was in high school. That was too much weight on my bad leg. So I went on a diet, just vegetables and fruit and eggs and bananas and I lost, within a year I lost seventy pounds. So that helps. I weighed 260, now I weigh 190. BBL: Is that a good weight for you now, 190? WM: Yes. That’s a good weight. I feel good with it, except my back is really bad. BBL: So your back still bothers you in spite of the weight loss? WM: Oh, yes. But it doesn’t bother me as bad. Then I had a chiropractor that worked on it and he was always careful of the polio. He would x-ray it and he would say, “Bill, you’ve got a vertebra because of your polio leg being shorter that’s off kilter, pushing against your pelvis.” He said, “I can’t get it over.” So he worked on it for quite a while, my leg, and on my back and he said, “I just can’t get it over. But,” he said, “I can kind of take the pain out by moving it around a little bit.” Then he said, “They’ll be a day when you can’t move.” I said, “What do I do then?” “Well,” he said, “just keep coming to me and I'll try and help you.” He did. But he’s dead now. He passed away. I’'m afraid to go to any other chiropractor to work on my 18 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 back. But I did go to the doctor, our regular physician and he’s the one that got x-rays and saw how my back is all...and the cushion between my vertebras, on one of them is completely gone and it’s grinding against it. Now I’m having trouble with my neck and he said, the doctor said, “I’m pretty sure that’s arthritis.” But it’s not fun getting seventyfive (laughs). BBL: That’s too bad. WM: But those are all from polio. BBL: Did you eventually get to a point, like in high school, were you still wearing a brace on your left leg? WM: No, I was just wearing lots of socks to hold my ankle tight. BBL: So that’s what you were saying at that point where they were adjusting you, you said you could just use socks and didn’t need the brace. WM: Yes. BBL: So did you walk with a limp? WM: Yes. BBL: But it wasn’t too noticeable? WM: It wasn’t too [much]. I hid it. That’s how I happened to come up with these braces was to hide the polio so I could go to work. I went to Trade Tech [now Salt Lake Community College], learned to be a design engineer and hired out at Remington Rand as a designer for some of their staff. I didn’t like that. I’ve never been a smoker. I thought that was the dumbest thing in the world and they always put you in with smokers, your drawing benches and stuff, so I quit. 19 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 Then when I was working for that welding company, the boss in there found out that I had polio. He said, “Bill, I don’t want you climbing around in the steel, up in the steelwork.” So he made me foreman of the field crew and said, “You keep your feet on the ground.” So I worked like that for about three years. Then I pretty much, I used my brace. This brace, now you’ll have to excuse me, this brace is twenty, twenty-five years old. I was wearing it one day and it broke, the band on it. I was out on the drilling rig, working on a drilling rig, and... [outside noise] BBL: Is somebody there? Do you need to go? WM: There’s somebody out there. Our next door neighbor. Where was 1? BBL: You were out drilling one day and the strap broke. WM: [ was out drilling and that strap broke. I had to do something about it, so I put duct tape around it and that works better than this Velcro. BBL: Is that right? WM: Yes. BBL: That’s funny. WM: I hold it together with duct tape and I can change it all the time. I can take it off, put it back together again. BBL: When did you go back to using a brace again? You didn’t have it in high school; when did you go back to using a brace? WM: I went back to using it when I started working on these drilling rigs. BBL: So it was pretty heavy duty work and you needed some extra support? 20 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS WM: 8§ MAY 2010 Yes. Heavy and I needed something to support my leg. It was getting weaker, the ankle part was getting weaker, so even when I took my brace off I couldn’t walk. I’ve got crutches back there that when I walk, you know walking crutches, I use them if I don’t have my brace. Then my daughter knitted me some real neat slippers. One’s smaller than the other so I can use that. They didn’t know...see, this is my second wife. We’ve been married for thirtyfive years. She had three girls and a boy, and I had three boys and a girl and we got married. That was no fun. That was awful. Anyway, the kids all left, thank goodness, but they keep coming back (laughs). But after she found out I had polio—that’s the oldest daughter; she just left yesterday—she made me slippers to fit the different feet and she was out here knitting and made me slippers. BBL: That’s great. WM: But I hold this one together [referring to leg brace], like I say, you’ll have to excuse me. It’s probably a little bit dirty. I hold it together with duct tape. BBL: Yes, look at that. WM: And the bottom part is just like that one. I can put it inside my shoe. That makes a difference too. It isn’t out here bulky, getting in the way. BBL: Right. And it’s not noticeable. WM: Butif I don’t wear it I can’t walk. Now I'm getting to the point where I can’t hardly walk with it because of my back. My back is really giving me a bad time. BBL: You told me this before we turned on the tape, but I want you to tell me again. At some point you tried to get a pilot’s license. WM: Yes. 21 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 BBL: Tell me about that. WM: Well, I bought an airplane and learned to fly and got my student license and everything was going fine. I got acquainted with a guy that sold airplanes; well, he was the one that sold me my airplane. He said, “How would you like to fly the planes I go buy and fly them back to Salt Lake or fly them out of town?”” Nobody ever asked me for a pilot’s license, and that’s commercial flying, but it was back in the ‘60s. But I was doing just fine, flying these airplanes, small, personal airplanes, like your piper cubs and Cessna. The biggest plane I flew was a twin engine like Amelia Earhart flew. I flew out of Salt Lake to Boise in that. They could tell it was me flying because the plane always limped to one side (laughs). My dad said, “You can tell you’re flying it because it’s limping. You’ve got to make it quit limping.” He had gotten his pilot’s license, or his student license. BBL: Your dad did? WM: Yes. And we both could fly. And I was having a little trouble with my left leg on the plane that we bought. It was a little Taylorcraft. So in the planes that we were buying we found an Aircoupe. [chimes in background] There’s that thing again. BBL: Yes. So it’s another hour; it’s four o’clock. WM: [I've never heard that thing. BBL: It goes every hour. WM: Yes. Anyway, we found an Aircoupe. They don’t have rudders so it was easier for me to fly. But I could still fly all those other planes and had a lot of fun doing it. Nobody ever asked me for a license or anything; back then they didn’t really care, I don’t think. I flew planes up to Boise and we’d go pick one up. I got all kinds of stories I could tell you 22 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 about that. Being in the drilling business I was flying an airplane to where we were drilling, like Delta, flying back home and stuff. I needed another drilling rig, so I sold the plane to buy the rig. That’s how I quit. I kind of quit flying. But I had fun doing it. I had fun for about five years. BBL: But you were telling me at one point you did try to get your commercial license. WM: Yes. BBL: What happened? WM: [ took all my time, I had my log book and I took down all the time and the fellow that was the salesman that had asked me to fly with him, he didn’t pay me, but he gave me hours. I was building up time, that’s what you have to do. So I gathered up all these hours and the planes I'd flown and stuff like that and took them into the FAA. They were filling out papers and they said, “What’s this polio?” You know, I wasn’t trying to hide it from them. “What’s this polio you’ve written down here?” I said, “Well, I had polio in my left leg.” He said, “I’ll have to check to see if we can give you a commercial license and a test.” I said, “Well, I’ve had all the hours I need and I’ve even had blind flying, ten hours of blind flying.” So they had a meeting and they told me to come back in about a week and they’d let me know. When I went back they said, “We can’t issue a commercial license.” I think today you still probably wouldn’t be able to get a commercial license, because most airplanes have rudders and most airplanes don’t need them. Like the Beechcraft Bonanza, I've flown a lot of hours in one of them and you can just fly them with a wheel. BBL: But you were saying that you thought that because of your left leg they felt you couldn’t fly an airplane. 23 WILLIAM HOWARD WM: MOSS 8 MAY 2010 Yes, they figured [I couldn’t fly] a commercial airplane. They let me go ahead and fly on a student permit. I kept applying and messing around and I was flying all kinds of airplanes. I even flew helicopters. I'd go to an airport, showed them my driver’s license, never showed them my iai]ot’s license, rent an airplane, go fly, yes. When we’d g0 up to get an airplane to sell to a customer, I’d get in that—you’re supposed to be checked out in every plane you fly—and I just get in and fly, bring it to Salt Lake. I flew everything but Pipers. I never had the opportunity to fly Pipers. I was one of the first second seat pilots in a Lear jet. We flew it from here up around Yellowstone park and over to Boise, picked up the guy that bought it—he was a billionaire up there—and brought him back to Salt Lake. Then he wanted me to fly back up there with him as second pilot. I didn’t, so he had some other guy doing it, I guess. But that was the first jet airplane that we heard about. BBL: Fun. So you're saying that when you sold your airplane to buy the other rig, then that pretty much ended your flying? WM: Pretty much. I still go out to the airport once in a while and find somebody that wants to go for a ride. There’s always a pilot out there looking for somebody to buy gas. I had to laugh. My wife and this buddy of mine that we were in business together, kind of, we’ve known each other ever since I went to college at Trade Tech. [sound of lawn mower in background] BBL: I'm going to shut the door, is that okay? WM: Yes. I swear she mows the lawn every day (laughs). She must get exercise that way. 24 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 Where was I? Oh, we went over to the airport with our wives one day. We walked around. He wanted to see an Ultralight. So I said, “Let’s go around and see if we can get aride on one.” I can fly one of those, too, same as any other airplane. So we went around and these guys were working on some planes there, some Ultralights. This other guy had a Cessna 180. I was looking at that and he said, “Have you ever flown one of these?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Do you want to go for a ride?” I said, ‘Yes.” So Eddy and I jumped in that plane—we ran over him trying to get into the airplane (laughs). We went in and I was flying second seat. The guy taxied around and got clearance from the tower—this is at number two airport. I took it along, flew it to Provo, landed down there. He went and did business while we messed around down there, and then he got in another airplane and I flew it back up here. I hadn’t flown one for about a year. But it’s just like riding a bicycle: if you fly one you’ve flown them all. BBL: It came right back to you, you didn’t lose it. WM: Yes. BBL: That’s interesting. The other thing I wanted you to tell me, the other story we talked about before was when you applied for a job at Kennecott. WM: Yes. When I applied for a job at Kennecott, they were advertising welders. They needed hardface welders that could do hardface for some mucket things they had. They were big funnels and ore went down in these funnels.They were wearing out real fast and they wanted tungsten carbine inside of them. I just went up there and went in the office. They said, “Well, go ahead up and take the welding test, see if you can pass it. Nobody’s passed it so far.” So I went up and saw the foreman over the welders and he set me up in a booth there to do hardfacing. I did a whole bunch of welding, did tungsten carbine and 25 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 everything and I was having a ball, because I had worked on a rig and that’s how we __ [unclear]___the bids, and I'd worked with my dad. But I wanted to work a steady job instead of running all over with these drilling rigs. He said, “Well, let me see your physical papers and I can get you signed up and you can come to work Monday.” This is like a Thursday. And he said, “Let me see your physical papers.” I said, “I don’t have any physical papers.” He said, “They always send people up here that have been through a physical first. Then if they pass the welding test, I put you to work.” I said, “Well, they didn’t do that with me. They just sent me up here.” “Oh,” he said, “You’ve got to have that physical.” So I went back down and I told them in the office there in Kennecott that I needed the physical. They couldn’t figure out why they sent me up there without a physical. I guess so many had failed they’d given a physical to and they failed the welding test, but they passed the physical, but they didn’t know how to weld hard-faced rod. So they said, “Well, get down there and get your physical.” So I went to a doctor down in Murray and he was giving me a physical. He said, “What’s the matter with your left leg?” I said, “Well, I had polio.” He said, “You did?” And he looked at it and I bet you he took twenty x-rays of my leg and my hips and my back. He just kept taking x-ray after x-ray (laughs). I thought, boy, this is some physical. Then we went in a room and he said, “Mr. Moss, I can’t let you go up there. I can’t give you these. You can’t pass. You just don’t pass. If they sent you out in the mine, I can’t do it with that bad leg. It’s a physical handicap.” So I figured, well, that’s the end of that. You know, they never did find anybody to do that hardfacing and do you remember I told you I went to work for Alpine Metal? 26 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 BBL: Right. WM: Guess who did that job? BBL: Did you end up doing that? WM: They farmed it out and I bid on it and got it and did it at Alpine Metal. BBL: (laughs) Well, I hope you charged them double. WM: Yes, it cost them (laughs). BBL: That’s an interesting story. WM: It was really funny. But several years later I drilled a well for a guy that looked familiar. He was the foreman over the welders up in Kennecott. BBL: The one who had given you the test? WM: Do you remember hearing about Joe Mascaro? BBL: The name’s familiar. WM: Yeah. BBL: That’s who it was? WM: Yes (laughs) BBL: I'll be darned. Small world, right? WM: Yes. BBL: That’s interesting. So you told me that eventually, then, you just decided to start your own company. WM: Yes. I was going to school at Trade Tech learning to, I wanted to take business, but for some reason they didn’t give me that and I took drafting design. I took that and I met this Eddy Jones, a friend of mine, in that class. We were the first ones to graduate from Trade Tech, at the new school over here. So then when we graduated, we each went 2 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 our own way. He went to work for Titan Steel; I went to work for Alpine Metal in drafting and design. I could read all the blueprints and I could weld and all. I was doing a lot of the bidding and that’s when I bid on that job for Kennecott. Greg May was the boss at Alpine Metal and he thought that was the neatest thing he’d ever seen (laughs). He said, “I don’t care if you don’t make any money at it.” He said, “It’s just good to know the story.” When Eddy came to me—we were out in the parking lot—we’d both graduated and he’d been working at Titan Steel and I'd been working at Alpine—we’d been bidding against each other. We bid on the Kennecott job and we both bid way high. It cost them. Ive always wanted to be in the well drilling business. My dad started when he got out of Portland. He went to work as a well driller, welding in the wells. There were always people around, when I was working for other companies, that wanted a small well for a home. I kept telling my dad that we should do that, get a little rig and drill those wells. “No, you can’t do that.” He was always putting me down. So I thought, well, I’ll just go without you. So Ed and I bought a drilling rig and went broke. We had it for two years, in ’68 and ’69. Ed was doing the business and I was doing all the drilling and he wasn’t a good business man. So we sold that rig and I bought a different rig in 1970. We got our permits and everything and we drilled over 600 wells, domestic wells for homes since we did that, plus bigger wells for irrigation. I worked on those rigs for years. I figured if they won’t hire me, because I've got polio, at these places—I tried to get on at Utah Power and they wouldn’t hire me. Once they found out that I had polio, and Utah Power and Light didn’t even check to see how bad I was. At the phone company, they wanted me to climb a pole and I climbed a pole, you know with those 28 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 spurs, but they still wouldn’t hire me. That was back in the ‘60s. My one boy, my next to the oldest one, works for the phone company and he said, “Dad, how come you didn’t go to work for one of these companies so you’d have a retirement?”” And he’s about ready to retire now. I said, “Marty, they wouldn’t hire me. T had polio.” And he said, “They have to hire you if you can do the job.” Back then they didn’t. You could do the job all you wanted to. If you have a physical problem, they wouldn’t hire you. But Alpine Metal would hire. If you could weld and do a good job, they’d hire you because I was in there. There was another kid in there that had had polio and he had it in his arm. There was another guy in there that lost his arm somehow and he had an artificial arm. Alpine hired him right off the bat. But the othef companies wouldn’t hire you. Like Utah Power and Light, I went to them, and I went to the gas company. They needed welders and, “No, you had polio, we can’t put you out in the field.” That was always their excuse. I guess that’s why I kept everything hidden. BBL: Ican see why. WM: Then after I got my own company and got it going—I wish my dad could see it now. We’ve got five rigs, two pump rigs, three pump rigs, actually, and nobody to run them (laughs). Right now the work is real slow and so my boy is making a living in snowmobiles, my oldest one. The shop and everything is out in Tooele. It’s been a good business for forty years. This is our fortieth year. BBL: So when you started up again, did you go in with Ed? Or was it just you? WM: No, just me. Ed, he wanted to go back truck driving. I told him, you ought to go back to ___ [unclear]. “No, I didn’t like that.” So he went truck driving. I was running the rig and I hired somebody else to run one. I kept working around until I had three 29 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 cable tubes that rigged for three boys, and two of them quit (laughs). So I was running them all just off and on. Then my oldest boy got back out of the army. He and I never got along. I went down to Dallas to see our daughter that was living down there when my oldest boy was in Fort Hood. Our daughter asked if I wanted to go down and see Bill, Jr., down at Fort Hood and I said, “Yes.” I went down and he looked at me kind of funny, because we’d really had a battle. He was a little bugger. He got in the army by going to jail (laughs). I told him, he had a bunch of traffic tickets and stuff like that and didn’t show up for court, so they put him in jail. Nothing real big and serious, just he just was stubborn. So then my other buddy gave him a place to stay and talked him into going into the army. When I went down Killeen to see him at Fort Hood, we got to talking and he said, “Dad, if you can guarantee me so much money,” he said, “I’ll come back up and see if I can help you run the company.” So he did and we fought like crazy (laughs). But he did and he watches after me pretty much. BBL: So all right, then you had four children? WM: Yes. And she had four. BBL: Right. WM: My first wife died and her husband died, but she got divorced from him before he passed away. We met each other before he passed away. My first wife, I'd left her for five or six years. She and her two sisters and them got to be alcoholic, so I divorced her and she moved to California. Then my daughter moved to California to be with her mother and then her mother died. She died of cirrhosis of the liver. Her whole family did. Her dad died of alcohol consumption and her mother died of cirrhosis of the liver, both of 30 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 her sisters died of cirrhosis of the liver and cancer from drinking and smoking. I’ ve never been a smoker; I ve always hated it. I went to an allergist and he gave me some tests and stuff and found out I was allergic to tobacco. He put a little patch on my arm, in about fifteen or twenty minutes, I broke out in hives all over. “Oh, man, you’ve got to take that off” (laughs). Being that way, it’s been kind of a handicap also because I don’t go around anybody, I don’t let anybody smoke in the house. All these of my wife’s daughters smoke; none of my boys smoke. My youngest one got to chewing tobacco and snuff while he was in the Air Force. He said, “That’s all you had to do, Dad,” They all look after me pretty much. We sold the place out in Riverton; we lived there for thirty-five years and moved into here where we didn’t have to do anything. BBL: That’s pretty good. This is a nice area here. WM: Yes. BBL: You must have grandchildren. WM: Oh, yes. A whole bunch of them. BBL: Do you have any great-grandchildren? WM: Yes. BBL: You’ve got a bunch of those too. WM: Let’s see, my oldest boy’s got two, a boy and a girl and they both live in Texas. They both have kids. I told Bill, my oldest boy is William H. Moss, Jr., I told him, “Bill, don’t name any of your kids after us.” What’d he do? William H. Moss, the third. BBL: The third you’ve got now. WM: And he’s got some kids (laughs). I don’t know. I'm afraid to ask him what their names are. 31 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 BBL: (laughs) That’s funny. WM: Then my daughter—her picture isn’t up there—anyway, she moved to be with her mother. She’s always kind of felt guilty about leaving me. I told her that was the way it was shpposed to be: “Look at the family you’ve got. You’ve got a beautiful family.” She has little ones, two sets of twins, and a good husband. They’ve been married for, I guess, twenty-five, thirty years. All the rest of them have been married three or four times (laughs). Now they seem to have settled down. That one over there in the corner, that’s Morey, he’s my second, and his wife, that’s his second wife and they’re doing good. And that’s them there in the other picture. BBL: Well, that’s a big family you’ve got. WM: Yes. Well, you get eight kids and then they all have eight kids. BBL: Yes, it grows real fast, doesn’t it? WM: Yes (laughs). BBL: Well, this has been interesting. It’s been interesting to hear about your polio experience. I'm sorry you’re having some post-polio problems now. WM: I think so. I think that’s what I’'m having. I can’t get the doctor to confirm that. Like I said, I think he’s afraid if we do do it ... he’d rather call it arthritis, because the insurance companies will pay for that. But polio is a pre-existing condition. BBL: Maybe that’s right; I don’t know. WM: Well, they wouldn’t pay for that. BBL: Your braces. WM: I had to dig up some money for that. What really bothers me is I can’t work on the rigs anymore. If I didn’t have this bad back, which I think is caused from polio, I feel 32 WILLIAM HOWARD MOSS 8§ MAY 2010 great. I could go ahead and work and do anything, if we had the work. It looks like it’s going to pick up. In the past we’ve had a lot of work. We’ve got a real good reputation, even though Bill in the wintertime looks like Jack Elam. You know who Jack Elam is, don’t you? BBL: Yes. WM: That’s what Bill looks like in the winter. Big bushy beard, partly gray, he’s a real mountain man. He’s a real tough monkey and I get a kick out of him. Is that off now? BBL: I can turn it off. Do you want me to do that now? WM: Yes. BBL: Okay. Well, thanks a lot for the interview. Let me shut this off. END OF INTERVIEW 33