Loren DeLance Squire Family History Chapters 10 & 11

I decided to post these two chapters together because of the length and content.  It was fun to read about my grandparents' courtship, their changed marriage plans due to the flu epidemic, and their marriage being performed by Grandma's Uncle, Bishop Morris Wilson (my great-grandfather & great-uncle).  I never new my sweet grandma famous for her "stirrin' arm" could also handle a 22 rifle!

CHAPTER TEN 

AMELIA AND I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED. •.WITH RESULTS

As we entered Hurricane from the north I well remember the three foot sign painted yellow on which the speed limit was posted in black letters reading: Speed limit 15 miles per hour. Hurricane was about the end of the line at that time. About the only way to get out was the way you got in. There was a rough wagon road east to Short Creek Arizona and on around to Kanab. There was a poor and seldom traveled road or trail west of Hurricane that sometimes was used to go to St. George when the river was low and a road from LaVerkin to Springdale where that ended.

As I have stated Amelia was working for an aunt, Mrs. George Campbell when I met her. She had to do all the chores washing and house work and was paid two dollars and fifty cents for a seven day week’s work. For the two weeks she worked there she came after milk each evening to her grandmother’s where I was staying and I was delighted to carry these two quarts of milk home for her. She did not show too much interest in me which gave me a determination to sell her on what a wonderful guy I was as I attempted to woo her affections.

At this time there was a sheep shearing corral at Goulds wash, some six miles out the Short Creek road where many thousand sheep were sheared each spring. This corral runs for six weeks or so each spring and the wool was hauled to the rail road at Lund by teams. There was two cook or boarding houses there and Amelia got a job as a waitress in one that was run by one of her aunts. I hired Leon Peterson the brick-building boss to take me out on a couple Sunday afternoons to see her in his model-T Ford. One Sunday afternoon I rented or borrowed a roan mustang horse from Howard Wilson to ride out to Goulds to see Amelia. I helped her do the dishes after supper and we went over to the wash and sat on a large rock and looked at the moon where I continued to pour out sweet nothings into her ear. She had to be in at nine o’clock so after bidding her good night I mounted this horse which was a wild mustang Howard had caught out on the open plains and partly broken. He took the bit in his teeth and took off like a modern rocket. I could not jerk the bit free from his teeth and soon found out that all I could do was hang on and hope. That was the wildest ride I ever had in my life and I still wonder how that horse kept his feet as it came down around those sharp curves or switch backs off Hurricane Hill at a dead run. It leaned so close to the ground as it ran those curves that I could have grabbed a handful of gravel if I could of had a hand not too busy to grab it. That horse never stopped running the entire six miles and I did not at any time dare to jump. As we came into town the horse made a direct line for its home corral jumped a four foot gate into the corral where it stopped ringing wet with lather. I was not long in getting off that horse and unsaddling it. I might add that I never asked to ride that bronk again.

After the shearing season was over Amelia came back to her home in LaVerkin where I called upon her a few times before I left Dixie.

Early in June my mother wrote me that a former Manti man by the name of Warren Snow had purchased a ranch in Bountiful in the mouth of Mill Creek canyon. She was going up there to cook for the men hired on the ranch and Mr. Snow would like me to come up and work for him. I decided to quit my brick making and go to Bountiful where mother was to work. I took a mail truck from Hurricane to Cedar and from there to Lund where I caught a train to Salt Lake. There were no busses running in those days. I arrived in Salt Lake the next morning and went to Mr. Snow’s and he took me to the ranch.

CHAPTER ELEVEN KINNEY CREEK RANCH

This ranch was 640 acres in a very run down condition. Three other men were hired there beside myself that summer. My wage was forty dollars a month and board. After a couple months they got three milk cows and I was assigned to milk them before and after working hours and given a raise to forty-five dollars a month. We built a new barn, machine shed, grainery and corral that summer. I did most of the farming. Cut and put up about twenty tons of alfalfa hay grown dry land. There was a three acre orchard of peaches that had a good crop on that summer and I got my first experience in picking and packing peaches. When fall came, the other men were laid off and Mr. Snow gave me the job of so called foreman and raised my wage to fifty dollars a month and twenty-five dollars a month stock in the ranch.

All this summer I had been writing letters often to the girl in Dixie and I got ten days off in October and took the train to Lund and the mail from there to Hurricane where I stayed with the Wilsons. Each night I would walk over to LaVerkin to see Amelia. Then we would go for a walk around town and I had to have her home and in at nine o'clock each night. Then I would walk back to Hurricane. They were making molasses during that time. I ate my first pomegranate and grapes were sticky sweet.

I returned to the ranch and took up the farming again. That fall I planted several acres of wheat and rye dry land. It came up good and was covered by four feet of snow that winter. Mr. Snow's brother-in-law Melvin Stringham came onto the farm. He was married and had three children. but feared the draft into the army, so came on the farm as a farmer as many farmers were deferred. They got about one hundred and fifty sheep and we fed them through that winter. Snow got so heavy that we had to shovel it off the roofs of the buildings as the rafters were cracking. The only way we could get off the farm was to walk, I churned and mounded about fifteen pounds of butter a week and carried it to the car line where Mr. Snow met me and took it into Salt Lake. I got a reputation of a good butter maker. The first batch I had I called Central at the phone office and asked for information and when given it I asked, "How much salt do you put in butter?" Information sure got a charge out of the question, but as the girl had been reared in a farm, she was able to give me directions.

All this winter I had written often to the girl in Dixie and when spring came I got another vacation for a week or so and took off for Dixie. I stayed in Hurricane again and walked back and forth to LaVerkin. There was no bridge across the ledges then, so had to walk down the canyon across the old bridge and up the other side.

One evening as we were taking a walk about town we sat down on the top of the cement water settling cistern a block east of her home on the bank of the canal to rest. While there I got up enough courage to ask "wilt thou?'' and after a couple days she consented and we made plans to be married in the fall.

Amelia Sanders & Loren D. Squire

After returning to the ranch, I went with Mr. Snow and his family in the dairy area of Cache county where he purchased the best cows he could find from the top dairies. He paid from three hundred and fifty to four hundred fifty dollars a piece for five of them. I came back on the train with the cows and was met at the stock yards south of Bountiful by another man and a couple horses to drive them to the ranch. This gave the ranch a start of a small dairy.

The wheat and rye I had planted the fall before did real well. Grew nearly shoulder high and I cut it with a binder and when it was thrashed it turned out forty-five bushel per acre.

The summer of 1918 was uneventful in my life there on the farm. World War I was going on and I was nearing the army age of twenty-one. They then dropped the age to twenty and I did some thinking of joining. My mother pleaded with me not to volunteer; but wait for the draft. I don't remember of having any fear of going into the army. I told Mr. Snow that I was going to get married that fall and he said he would like me to stay on the ranch and they would build a home for us. So a new home was built near the new corral and other buildings.

Amelia had set Oct. 22nd as our wedding date so plans were made accordingly. As I was only twenty years old I had to have my mother go to the courthouse in Manti and swear out an affidavit giving her consent to my marriage. A few days before the wedding I arrived in Dixie. On the night of the twenty-first there was a bustle about the Sanders home preparing temple clothes for the occasion. When all was in readiness about eleven o'clock that night word came that due to the first and much feared epidemic of flu hitting the country the temple in St. George was closed and would not be reopened until the epidemic was over or under control.

This dash of cold water cast a gloom over us all. The next morning at the suggestion of Amelia's parents I called the president of the temple and he suggested we go ahead with our marriage and have the Bishop perform the ceremony and later when the temples opened go and have a temple marriage. I well remember the walk and conversation between Amelia's father and I as we went out to the molasses mill where Bishop Wilson was boiling molasses and asked him if he would marry us that evening. After getting his consent we had to go to St. George and get our marriage license. I hired Harry Price who had a model T to take us. The road was full of ruts dry and dusty and it took most of the day to go and come back. Amelia's mother went with us and when we got to St. George we were stopped in front of the courthouse by the Sheriff. They were not permitting anyone to stop and stay in St. George. After finding out we were from LaVerkin which was yet free from the flu epidemic, they permitted us to go into the courthouse and purchase our license and then headed us back out of town.

That evening about nine p.m. Bishop Wilson came with his wife who was to act as a witness and Amelia's Aunt Clara Wilson Jones a close neighbor came as the other witness. We stood on the south side of the room against the wall where Bishop Wilson performed the ceremony. Our bridal suite was the grainery.

The next morning the health officer came and because we had been out of town put us under quarantine in the grainery for a few days. We could go outside; but was not to get in close contact with anyone. We were all advised by the doctors to wear gauze masks over our mouth and nose such as the doctors wear in the operating room. I saw men way out in the field by themselves wearing these masks, The fear was great as many were dying over the nation from this epidemic.

After a few days we left for Bountiful as I had to get back to work. We packed and got a ride to Lund with George Hinton who was driving his own freight truck. It was a chain drive of about a ton Capacity. It had flapping curtains above the doors. The floor had wide cracks and the cab was very breezy and cold. There was snow on the ground on the black ridge and all the way to Lund. There was only room for two to sit side by side in the seat so I sat upon Amelia's lap' most of the way as she said it kept her warm. I doubt if the truck could go twenty-five miles at a maximum speed. We left LaVerkin just after daylight and stopped at Hamiltons Fort and built a fire in the sagebrush and had noon lunch. Then we took off for Lund where we arrived just as the sun was going down. It was cold in the station, but we did not have to wait too long before the train came. We were glad to get into the warm cars of the train. I don't remember if we wore masks on the trip, but I do remember some on the train wearing them. We arrived in Salt Lake the next morning where Mr. Snow met us and took us to his home for breakfast and then on out to the ranch. I liked to be out on a ranch, but when I think how I took Amelia over three hundred miles from home and put her out on a lonely ranch two miles from any neighbors and her not knowing a soul I wonder how she stood it. Before we were married, Amelia's sister Lucile told of her singing as she went about her work the song, "I'll go where you want me to go, Dear Lord, I'll do what you want me to do", but Lucile who was just a little girl said she heard her and Amelia inserted the name of Loren for Lord, in the song, and sang it, "I'll go where you want me to go dear Loren:" Whether she did or did not she surely has lived up to these words, "I'll go where you want me to go, Dear Loren, I'll do what you want me to do." We took the wagon and went shopping down to Bountiful and purchased us a bed, springs, mattress and a sewing machine and went back to the ranch where we set up an old range that was there and used some old chairs and a table and set up housekeeping in the new house. They had built a fire place in the bedroom; but there was no bath,just a path outside. The only time there was running water in the house was when we used the thunder mug that was kept under the bed at night. 

Grouse

One of the first days there as I came up to the house I saw a ruffed grouse leave the wood pile and walk over to the netting fence where it was trying to crawl through. I called to Amelia and had her come out and told her about them and that they were very good eating. I rushed the bird and as it tried to get through the fence I caught it and as I was showing it to Amelia it flopped out of my hands. A few days later when I came into the house for dinner she sat a plate of grouse on the table. She said she had gone to the wood pile for some chips and saw a flock of grouse there, so she went back in the house and got a twenty-two rifle I had there and came out and started to shoot. She had them flopping all over the place, one flew into a tree and was caught in the limbs and would not fall, so she shot it about three times. Anyway she gathered up a half dozen grouse after she ran out of ammunition and prepared them for our dinner. She was a very good shot with a rifle and could beat most boys shooting at targets. This was just another reason I tried not at any time to anger her. 

Early one morning late in February before daylight we both got on a black horse and started for Bountiful to catch a car into Salt Lake where we had planned to go through the Salt Lake Temple. It was dark as pitch and snowing one of the worst blizzards of the winter. We had gone less than a quarter of a mile when we were lost and could not find the road or see where we were going, so I gave the horse his head and he soon brought us back to the shelter of the stable. The snow had blown up Amelia's dress and she was wet to the waist. We gave it up.

Later that day my brother, Adrien, who was working there at the time took us down to Bountiful in the bob sled and we went into Salt Lake and stayed at a hotel to be there the next morning to go through the Temple. This was February 28, 1919.

When spring came, Amelia was pretty homesick, so I sent her home for a couple weeks visit. Needless to say, I was very happy to have her back on the ranch. That fall my mother came to visit us and early Saturday morning of October the twenty-fifth we were up. Not daylight yet and it was snowing. There was six inches of snow on the ground and we needed a doctor. The storm had broken the phone line so I saddled up a black horse and headed for Bountiful. It was just breaking daylight when I arrived at the home of the Doctor and I can still see him as be came shivering to the door in his undies and said he would be right up. He was very proud of his old dodge car that made it up that canyon road to the ranch in that snow. At 10:50 that morning I became a father for the first time as DeLance let us know he had arrived weighing in at eight and a half pounds. 

Amelia's sister Maggie and her aunt Edna came and visited us a few days and there was a lot of fun. My mother was just as big a cut up as any young girl so we had a joyful time. 

Along the middle of November Mr. Snow came out and told me he had sold the ranch. That the new owner would take over in a month or so. That would leave us without a job or home. Earlier that fall Amelia's father had written us that William Hopkins wanted to sell out in LaVerkin for $2,500.00. There was an old home on a lot and a five-acre field. We sent all our savings, that was two hundred dollars down and had him make a down payment on the place. He arranged a loan of the other $2,300.00 from David Hirschi at ten percent interest. We had planned on staying on the ranch a few years and pay our wages on the place.