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Clarence Wall’s Autobiography
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Autobiography of Clarence Wall I have been asked to write my life history. That is going to be a big job for me, because in the first place I am the world’s worst writer and speller. Thinking back as many years that I can remember, I was born on a small farm in a little farm community called Ioka, Utah. The town got its name from the Ute Indians that lived there. I can remember when I was small an Ioka Indian family lived 2 miles west of our school house where I went to school when I was in grade school. I used to watch the squaw Indian tan dear hides and do bead work. The squaw was friendly but the Buck Indian did not like white people. They had a house that the government made for them, but they lived in a tent in the summer and in the house in the winter. I remember they had some real pretty horses. I went to school my first 8 years at Ioka with the exceptions of a few months I was in the first grade when my family moved to Sunnyside, Carbon County where my Father worked in the coal mines during winter months. Then they moved back to Ioka in the Spring. Also a time or two the family moved to Myton, Utah when us kids were small. During winter months, my Dad would go away to work in the mines or work with sheep. Times were tough as I remember them. My father owned a 80 acre farm which was too small to support a family of 6 kids. The farm was light ground and did not produce as farms do now days with commercial fertilizers. This is why my Dad had to go away to work a lot of times. I also remember when all the supplies were hauled into the Uintah Basin. They were hauled from Price and Salt Lake City with horses and wagons. In those days they called it the freight road. The teams and wagons were used to haul Gilsonite from the Uintah Basin to Price. They would haul produce back to the Uintah Basin. My Dad used to have some real good horses when I was young. Us kids had some good riding horses, and we used them all the time. I remember real well when I was young. We had to ride our horses to school two miles each way. When I got in high school, I rode the school bus to Roosevelt. I only went to high school 1 ½ years; times were tough and money was hard to get. In those days the whole family worked to try to get by. I can remember in the summer months my Dad would contract putting up hay for other farmers, which used to help support our family. I can not remember when my mother was not sick. She had heart trouble and had to take medicine all the time. It took about all my Dad could earn to keep medicine and pay Dr. bills. My mother was in the LDS hospital 1 year and 1 day in about 1930 or 1931. She was bedfast more than she was out of bed. She died from heart problems at age of 46, at Midway Utah on August 2, 1938. Times were tough, but I think I was better off having lived in tough times. I learned to save and not to waste anything. I also learned to work for what ever I could get. I remember hoeing sugar beets for 5 cents a row and rows were ¼ mile long. Also in those days we had to pick all the cockle burs out of sheep wool before they were sheared. We could get 10 cents for picking the burs out of each sheep. If you worked hard you might earn 1 dollar in a day. I did not get much education over the years, but I have done a lot of things that has helped me learn several trades. I thing I have had a prosperous and useful life. After leaving school I run away from home and went to work for a farm at Indianola, Utah, for one summer. The next summer I went to Montana and worked in hay fields at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They thought I was too young to drive the wild horses that they used to put up hay with, so the put me in the kitchen helping the cook. We cooked for 40 men. It was a good job. The next summer I joined the CCC camp and went to Vernal, Utah for the summer where I worked on a road gang making forest services roads. It was north of Vernal on Brush Creek Mountain. While there, I had my first chance to fight a forest fire. At the end of the summer, we were transferred to Maricopa, California for a winter camp. In the spring our camp was transferred to Richfield, Utah for a short time. We were then sent to another camp at Escalante, Utah. There I worked as a first aid man and a cook. I was discharged from CCC camp in October, 1934. After a short visit home, I came to Price, Utah to visit my grandparents (Krebs). It was at this time I got interested in the coal mines. At that time mines were paying $5.28 per day and I could not believe it because I had been in CCC camp making $1 per day. It took me about a week to get a job, but I finally made it. This was about the same time that my Mother and Dad moved from Ioka to Midway, Utah. My Dad had his back broken while working for the State Road and he was not able to farm anymore. He was disabled for several years. I don’t remember him working until World War 2. After my mothers death, he came to Carbon County and worked as a lamp man at Spring Canyon mine. During this time my Father married Mern Sundraker at Midway. And they moved to Spring Canyon for a few years. Then they move back to Midway when his wife died. Some time later he married Emmy Harris, an old family friend that was a widow. She used to be our neighbor on a farm at Ioka. She lived a few years and died. They lived at Kamas, Utah when she died. A short time later my Dad came back to the mines. He worked at Hiawatha and Spring Canyon. In the fall of 1949, my Dad became sick with cancer and died Jan. 10, 1950. Going back to my own life story, in 1934 I worked in the coal mines all winter and the next spring I was laid off. I went to Idaho where my 2 oldest brothers were working for Boyle Sheep Camp. I got me a job moving camp for a sheep herder, cooking the meals and tending the horses. Me and the herder drove a band of sheep (1200) from Jerome, Idaho to Monida, Montana. There the sheep were put on summer range in Centennial Valley. It took us 90 days to cross the Minadoka desert to Montana. We would let the sheep feed for a day or so then move on to the new feed. Water was scarce; some times I had to had to haul water for 15 or 20 miles for camp and horses. We had 50 gallon barrels to haul water in. At the end of the summer, I left the sheep herding job and came back to the coal mines. It was in the fall of that year that I met Vida and
after a few short months of going together, I finally convinced her that she
should marry me. We were married on December 21, 1935 at Cleveland, Utah. We
made our home in an apartment house in Price, Utah the first winter. In the
spring of the year, about March, I was laid off from the mines. And we had to
move to Spring Canyon to tend Uncle Lyle (Slug) and Aunt Ellen kids that were in
school. And Lyle and Ellen had gone to California to shear sheep. Me being out
of work, I left Vida in Spring Canyon to tend Bob and Bud Krebs and I went to
California and tromped wool for the shearing crew. I tromped wool for 16 sheep shearers. During this time I learned to shear sheep. After returning home
about the middle of April, Vida and I went to Salt Lake City and I got a job on
the rail road between Salt Lake City and Park City putting new ties in the rail
road. It paid 37 cents per hour. After 2 months of that we went to Wendell
Idaho and I milked cows on the 1000 Spring Ranch and worked on the farm. The
pay was $40 per month for 10 hours per day and 7 days per week. I got a day off
on Sunday (some times). When the fall came around we were both ready to come
back to Carbon and Emery Counties. I went to work in the coal mines again at
Spring Canyon. In December of 1936, our first child was born. Lois was born at
Grandma and Grandpa’s farm in Cleveland, Utah, December 9, 1936. In the spring
of 1937 I started to tromp wool for a sheep shearing crew; after about 1 month I
had learned to shear sheep good enough that I was given a job shearing the
sheep. This started me on a new profession. During hard times, the coal mines
worked in the winter and laid off a lot of coal miners in the Spring. This
worked out good with the sheep shearing, because the sheep had to be sheared in
the spring and early summer months. For the next 10 years I worked in the coal
mines in winter months from September to April and sheared sheep from April to
about the first of July. We started to shear sheep in Utah then moved to Idaho
and then to Montana where we would finish about the 4th of July. We
used to spend 1 week on the Madison River in Montana fishing. Then we would go
back home. After my first 3 kids were about 1 to 5 years old, I took my family
with me shearing. The first year or 2 we lived in a tent and traveled from job
to job. About the third year we got a small trailer house, which was a lot
better. I sheared sheep for 10 years. One year I went to California and
sheared about the first of March and we finished in Montana in July. Shearing
is hard work. Its hard on the arms and back. After 10 years shearing, I got my
back injured in the coal mine and my back hurt me so much I had to give up
shearing a lot of sheep. I never traveled in the summer after I was hurt in the
mines but I used to shear a lot of farm herds around Carbon and Emery Counties.
It was at this time when I could not follow the shearing sheep shearing trade
that I decided I had to make a career of coal mining. So in the fall of 1946 I
left Spring Canyon and got me a job at Hiawatha. Sheep shearing did not pay a
lot of money when I first started, but through the years it got better. I
started to shear for 12 ½ cents a sheep. A good sheep shearer could shear 200
sheep a day, but it would take a man a few years to learn how to shear that
many. I never sheared 200 sheep in 1 day, but I sheared 198 in 1 day at White
Sulphur Springs Montana. I had a book that I kept a record of all the sheep I
sheared from the time I started until I quit the shearing road. I have lost it
now, but there was a lot of days that I sheared 180 or 190 sheep in 8 hours. I
have sheared almost 100,000 sheep from the time I started until I quit. I have
sheared a lot more since. In the Spring of 1974 I sheared 105 sheep in 6 hours
at Cleveland helping my grandson Wade Jensen shear his sheep. Wade has learned
to shear sheep. My brother Lloyd Wall was one of the best sheep shearers in the
country. Very few men could beat him. He has sheared 230 sheep in 8 hours.
Between Lloyd and myself we taught Wade to shear. I still help once in a while
with shearing the lambs that Lois Kid’s show in the stock shows. At 60 years
old I am about to give up shearing. I have had a lot of experience in coal mining. I have had a few close calls with accidents, but so far I have not been hurt too bad. I have had a broken toe and had to have some stitches in my lip where a small piece of coal hit me. I have all the certificates any man can get for different jobs in the mines. I am certified as a fire boss, mine foreman, electrician, instructor in first aid and mine rescue. I have a certificate in first aid for saving a man’s life. He had a cut artery in his leg and I stopped the bleeding. I also hold a Utah and Federal certificate as Emergency Medical Technician. Recalling some of my experiences in the mine rescue and fighting mine fires, I have been in three separate mine disaster rescues. I was at the Lark mine fire for 32 days. We fought the fire and recovered 5 bodies of miners who lost their lives. It took us 21 days to get the last body our and another 11 days to put the fire out. A few years later I helped recover the bodies of 2 coal miners that were killed by smoke in a mine fire at the Ressie Mine on the Muddy Creek North of Emery, Utah. A few years later I helped recover the bodies of 8 coal miners that were killed in a mine explosion at the Diamenti Mine, west of Helper, Utah. These are very unpleasant and hard jobs to do; but someone has to do it. Also it is very dangerous work. This is when you are glad that you have been trained to do your job. I also put out 2 mine fires at Hiawatha mine by myself. One was a shuttle car on fire and I used a self rescue and fire extinguisher to put the fire out when no one else would go into the fire. Another time was a mine cable had shorted and set 2 wood doors on fire. I was awakened by fire boss in the night, he couldn’t call me because the fire had burned and shorted out all the telephone lines. The fire was about 500 ft. into the mine and I used oxygen breathing apparatus and fire extinguishers and succeeded in putting it out. I am not too proud of the accident record since I have been mine foreman. We don’t have too many bad accidents but we do have some. I always fear men getting hurt or killed. This is probably the worst part of my job. We have had two fatal accidents since I have been General Mine Foreman (15 years). Also one man lost a hand, 1 man lost a foot, and one man lost his leg below the knee. Where there are coal miners there will always be men hurt and killed. We do all we know how to eliminate accidents but they still happen. When I first started to work in the coal mines I started out to load coal with a scoop shovel, we loaded all the coal into mine cars with shovels. I worked the first year at this job for 48 cents a ton. The next year I started to nip for a motorman. Nipper hooks cars up and does work like a brakeman on the railroad. The next year I learned to run the motor. After a year or so I worked as a driller(drilling the coal to be blasted). A short time later I learned to run the cutting machine, this is when I first started to make good money. This work was contracted (based on the amount of work you did). I’d cut and drill the coal and then the coal was blasted with dynamite to break it out from the face so it could be loaded into machine cars. A few years later I got my fire boss papers and the next year, l945, I got my mine foreman papers. I also worked a short time as a mechanic. In l946 I quit Spring Canyon mine and got a job in Hiawatha (October l946). I was a foreman since January 1, l947. In l961 I was promoted to General Mine Foreman. Now March l976 I am still General Foreman and am starting to look forward to retirement. At the present time I am thinking of retirement in January of l978. I might change my mind and stay until January l981 by that time I will be 65 years old, if I live that long. That age will be a required retirement. I have not put this together very good. I have not mentioned my family as I should. My father was Wilford Woodruf Wall. My mother was Fanny Elizabeth Krebs. I have 4 brothers and 1 sister. They are still living and all retired but me. My brothers are Orval Wall, Lloyd Wall, Lowell Wall, Evan Wall and my sister is Neva Wall Fillmore. Evan wall and Orval Wall live in Mcammon, Idaho. Lloyd Wall in Kenilswortrh, Utah. Neva lives in Midway, Utah a widow now. Lowell Wall lives in Salinas, California. Thinking back as many years as I can remember, the first car I can remember was a Model T. Ford . They were a big improvement on the horse and buggy. I never saw a train until I was 6 years old. That was when we moved to Sunnyside, Utah when I was 6 years old in l922. There is still no railroad into the Uintah Basin or Duchesne or Uintah Counties. When we lived on the farm we had to wash clothes. The first I can remember we washed all the clothes on a wash board, then after few years my folks bought a washer that had to be turned by hand. On wash days us kids had to turn the washer with a handle like a crank. Then a few years later they bought a gasoline driven washer and that meant all clothes had to be washed outside (due to gas fumes,) or have a long exhaust pipe. This was a big improvement over hand-turned washers. I probably have not mentioned my children so far. Our first child was Lois, next was James Clair, then Lynn, David and Wilma. All are living and doing good. We have 21 grandchildren now – as of March 10, l976. You would not know it by looking at me now, but when I was growing up I was a pretty good athlete. I never stayed in high school long enough to graduate but when I was in school I played basketball and baseball. I was also on the on the track team and boxing team. I could hold my own with about anyone my weight and size. I had a lot of boxing matches in school and the CCC Camp. You might wonder what CCC means. It is the Civilian Conservation Corp. During the depression this was a camp for boys. It was to give us jobs and was administered by the Government. We had Army officers and Forest Service supervisors and it paid $30 and clothes and eats. We lived in tents and sometimes houses. The CCC Camps got the kids off the streets and we made a lot of roads in forests. I played baseball, boxed, and was on the track team in the CCC camp. I weighed 159 pounds when I got married. Now I am 210 pounds and stand 5’8” tall. When I got married I had thick curly hair, now I am gray and bald. I still like sports and watch lots of games on TV and we still go to ball games when we can. About 12 or 13 years ago we learned to square dance and we still dance once a week. We have been to lots of places square dancing. We have danced in Calgary, Canada 2 times, California, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. At the present time we are planning on going to Anaheim, California to the National Square Dance Jamboree in June of this year. I still like to take my boat and fish from lakes. We have a favorite spot on Blackfoot lake north of Soda Springs, Idaho. The summer of l975 my brothers and I all met on the Blackfoot and fished for about a week. I have always hunted deer and pheasants. My boys and Vida and myself have hunted together since the boys were big enough to go. We still hunt on the Duncan Mountain and the Gentry Mountain. Now my grandsons are hunting with us as soon as they are big enough to go out. I would like to think I taught my boys to hunt; but they are too good of hunters and too good of shots for me to have taught them. I am proud of my family. I have a good wife and good kids. This is all for now.
Clarence Wall- 1976
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VIDA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
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