CHAPTER EIGHT
I GO TO DIXIE
They had hired my uncle Oliver Squire to go too, as he was an expert in molding adobies and brick. We left Manti one morning about eight o'clock and picked my uncle up in Monroe and headed on for Dixie. We went up Clear Creek canyon which was just a dirt road at that time. The road had not dried out near the top of the summit and was quite muddy and steep. The old model-T just could not make it. So we pushed and pulled and finally turned it about and with us pushing, we backed it to the top. This struggle had boiled most of the water, if not all, out of the car and the engine was too hot to run. After talking it over we decided that between the five of us we could produce enough liquid to run down to where we could find water. From the first one who attempted to fill the radiator came forth a scream of anguish. As the liquid hit the hot engine it belched forth a cloud of hot steam that scalded his fixture to the extent that it was necessary to pack it in soft cotton and tissue for several days. However we found a small seep of water in the bottom of the canyon and carried enough water to get us on our way again. We arrived in Beaver at twelve o'clock midnight and got rooms at the hotel there. That was sixteen hours from Manti and is now a three hour drive without speeding. The nights were cool in Beaver yet, so we drained the water from the car. Early the next morning we got a tea kettle full of hot water from the cook and poured some into the radiator, some on the manifold and carburetor and started cranking. After taking turns until we were all warmed up the engine sputtered and started to purr. We left Beaver at about eight a.m. Somewhere along Buck Horn Flat we had a flat tire. In those days you took the tire off the wheel, take the tube out and patch it, then replace it and begin pumping. All got warmed up again before we got on our way. We stopped in Cedar for a late dinner and then on for Dixie. Coming down the Black Ridge it got dark on us. I remember coming to Toquerville, then down and Ford LaVerkin Creek, climb the hill onto La Verkin Bench, down around the dug-away across the Virgin River Bridge, and on to Hurricane. We arrived about nine that night.
We went to the Isom Hotel run by Thomas Isom. It was a large home that has now been torn down and replaced by a service station. Of course it was after supper time but they were kind to us and fixed us a meal. They had opened a bottle of seedless grapes, the first I had ever seen and I asked them to please pass the gooseberries. The next morning after breakfast we asked one of the girls what the bill was and she said it would be five dollars. I was the only one who had any money left and as I went to pay her she said, "Wait, I will run up and ask Mamma." When she came back she said, "It's four-fifty." Leon, one of the Peterson boys said, "Run up again!" The two older Peterson boys had been down the fall before and had made some brick there and had made arrangements for four of us to board and room at the home of Morris Wilson (my 2ggf) Sen., and his wife. Their son, William Wilson, his wife and children also lived there. The elder Wilsons were to take brick to build their home on the board bill. Parley Peterson stayed out to Workmans, the parents of Mrs. Claud Hurschi. The brick yard was on a lot at third north and first west. Some large holes were dug and used up in brick. These holes were refilled mostly from running canal water in and out letting the sand and mud settle in the holes. Homes are built there now.
We started to make brick. It was a very wet spring with rain mostly every week and the storms broke the canal up in the canyon which caused delays. I worked on the canal to get the water back so we could soak up the mud to make adobes. I turned my ditch work credit on my board bill. There was no water system in Hurricane at that time. Your drinking water was dipped up out of the ditch in the early morning into a drinking barrel placed in the shade Burlap was tacked around the outside and a dipper hung on the edge of the barrel. What water you did not drink from the dipper was poured around on the burlap to help keep the water cool. With so much rain and floods the water was pretty muddy at times and took some time to settle and then was always a milky white never clear. I don' t see how they ever got white washes out of that kind of laundry water.
Just before we came to Hurricane the electricity was installed in the homes there. The people delighted to show us how by turning a switch on the cord hanging from the ceiling they could get light. There was no need for outlets or plugins as there were not any electric appliances like we have now. The contractor to build the school came and started the building of the school. I worked for him when the water was out of the ditch and we could not make brick. I dug the first shovel of dirt to start the foundation. Now that school house in which all my children attended school has served its purpose and has been torn down to have a modern one replace it. I received a couple hundred bricks out of it and they are now in the fireplace on our lawn outside. I wanted some of them to remind me of my first work in Hurricane.
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| Fireplace outside the Squire La Verkin Home built with the bricks my Grandpa Squire made. DuWayne Squire - November 2012 |
We had been working for a couple weeks when one night after we had washed and cleaned up I went into the front room to set down to read. The first thing I noticed was a new picture on the book case of a lovely young girl. I sized it up and took it into the kitchen and asked Grandma Wilson who it was. She told me that her name was Amelia Sanders and that she was one of her granddaughters. I said "Now that’s something! I am going to marry that girl.” Grandma Wilson told that story as long as she lived. As I remember it she told me that she was going to come there that evening for milk as she was working for another daughter of hers who had a young baby. I waited around and finally a young girl came and went into the kitchen. She was in there with her Aunt Edna a daughter of the elder Wilsons who was about the same age. The kitchen was dark as they did not have the light on in there so on a pretense of showing some pictures I got the girls to come into the dining room where there was light. Of course I paid no attention to the pictures only the girl and decided it would never do for me to let a young girl like that carry two big quarts of milk a couple of blocks after working all day...so I asked permission to carry the milk home for her and protect her on her way from the darkness. That is how things started. Each night I would await her coming for the milk so I could carry it back for her never thinking it could be done without her coming for it.
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