Sunday, October 6, 2013

Life History of DuWayne G. Squire - The Growing Years

I am excited to get back to blogging.  My life has been a little hectic as I have gone back to teaching full time, moving from half-day kindergarten to full time third grade.  I am so happy with the job change, but it has been a bit overwhelming.  Thanks to my sister, Verlynn Sheffield, I am ready to blog again.  She typed my dad's life history and now I am benefiting from her hard work of typing and I can just cut and paste his history to my blog.  I am excited to share my dad's history, which he wrote several years ago.  It can stand up to any great autobiography! His life has been full of adventure, hard work, heartbreak and love.


LIFE HISTORY OF
DUWAYNE G. SQUIRE
Completed October 11, 1987
Written by DuWayne Squire
Typed by Verlynn Sheffield

I was born on the 14th day of January in the year 19-- in our home in LaVerkin, Washington County, Utah. My parents are Loren DeLance Squire and Amelia Sanders Squire. I was their fourth son born. After my birth, my parents had three more sons and three daughters; one of the daughters died at birth. By descending order, here are the names of my family members: DeLance, Phil, Don, DuWayne, Jerald, Baby Girl Squire (died at birth), Adrien, Scott, LoRene, and Sandra.

 The births and marriages of my family are as follows:

My Father:      Loren DeLance Squire, 2 January 1898          My parents were married
My Mother:     Amelia Sanders, 3 October 1899                    on 22 October 1918

DeLance W. Squire married Dorothy Hirschi
Phil Ervil married Ruth Hafen,
Don Sanders married Dixie DeMille
DuWayne Gilber married Helen Gubler
Jerald P. married Lorna Hinton
Baby Girl, 23 Dec. 1930, died at birth
Adrien J. married Louise Wilcox
Scott O married Arva Dean Ellett
LoRene married James Edwin Turner Jr.
Sandra married Alan Lloyd Howard

My parents had a baby girl who died at birth between Jerald and Adrien. Also, the middle initials of some of my brothers are just initials. My parents said they gave Scott the middle initial “O” because they were “putting out an S.O.S. to send us some girls.” After seven boys, they finally got their girls!

I wasn’t very old when I realized how blessed I was to have been born to such goodly parents with such great brothers and sisters. I felt a deep sense of pride each time I was asked my name or whose son was I because I soon learned that my parents seemed to be known by everyone. I could tell they were deeply loved and respected.

At a very early age, I developed the desire to do those things which I knew my parents would approve of and, conversely, avoid doing those things that would make my parents ashamed. This pride in my family and respect for my parents made it so much easier to resist many of the temptations which engulf each of us in our youth. I sincerely hope I am not giving the impression that I was anywhere near perfect in my youth because, as my friends and associates witnessed, I did many things which required repentance and brought remorse to my soul. In fact, my life has been one continual period of repentance. I find that, as my knowledge of Jesus Christ increases, I am continually recognizing more weaknesses in my armor that must be atoned for.


It seems that I have already digressed greatly from reflections of my early youth, and so I will go back to the beginning and let you be the judge of the type of young child I was.

At the time I was born, we lived in an unpainted, old home constructed of wood. This old house was moved from Silver Reef and reassembled by a Savage family and Dad bought the home and lot from Mr. Savage who then moved to Toquerville. The house was set upon posts and rocks which left room to crawl under all parts of the house and provided many good hiding places where a boy could get filthy dirty. As you might imagine, there was dry dust an inch deep along with anything else that the wind could blow under there.

This brings to mind the Saturday night ritual of bathing. The water was heated in pots and pans on the wood range in the kitchen, and a number two or three wash tub was placed by the range where we bathed. Since the entrance to our home came into the kitchen, we were often embarrassed as visitors came calling while we were bathing. We only had the stove to partially block us from full view of anyone in the kitchen. The soap was homemade from pork fat and lie, and, if you were the third or fourth to bathe, you found the water to be full of grey soap and dirt curd.

In spite of these conditions, we always had plenty to eat. I always had the feeling that we were far richer and better off than our poor neighbors. It wasn’t until I became older that I realized we didn’t have any more than most of our neighbors had. I suppose it was the attitude of thankfulness for our rich blessings constantly portrayed by our parents that gave us a feeling of being richly blessed and secure.

At this time in my life, my wardrobe consisted of a pair of overalls for daily wear and a better pair of overalls with a shirt for Sunday wear. During the summer months, we never wore shoes or shirts except on Sundays. As I recall, underwear was a scarcity that we seldom wore.

We had an outhouse which set back quite a distance behind the house. Beside the two round holes lay a couple of Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogs which were used for paper. I hated it when we got down to the slick sheets. I remember it was a regular ritual to always look down into the holes to make sure there weren’t any black widow spiders close to the top. You could usually spot them in their webs deeper in the hole. I can remember a year or two when we had snow in LaVerkin and when they shoveled the trail to the outhouse I couldn’t see over the sides of the trail as the snow was stacked as high as I was.

I always had good friends. My cousin, Mont Sanders, along with John Segler and Mark and Arlin Jennings were my best friends. We did have our differences at times, and I well remember how it feels to be ostracized by your friends. That didn’t happen very often, and I usually had a deep sense or feeling of belonging and acceptance.

In the early spring and summer, the wasps and hornets were ever present as they nested in our sheds and outhouses. They were often seen on our porches sunning themselves, but I can testify that sometimes they were not seen and on several occasions I have sat on them and was stung as they protested. On one occasion, I took a stick and poked at a wasp nest high up in the corner of my Grandparents’ chicken coop. I can still remember seeing a mad wasp following straight along the stick at high speed just before he stung me between the eyes. I must say that I hated those stingings about as much as anything that happened in my youth.


However, that does bring to mind the many nights I lay awake crying with an earache or a toothache. We never went to doctors or dentists, and we never had toothbrushes, so all of my baby teeth eventually rotted out. Many were the nights that I cried all night in a cold, breezy bedroom. I say breezy because, as I stated earlier, our home was on posts which held it 18 to 36 inches above the ground. The floors in the bedroom were one by six or one by eight inch pinewood with cracks and knotholes allowing the cold wind to come up through the floors. We found the knotholes convenient to relieve ones’ self when it was too cold to go out on the side porch at night. When our toothaches wouldn’t subside for a day or two, we were taken to Grandpa Sanders or to one of our uncles who had a rusty pair of pliers or tooth extractor forceps. They would pull the tooth with much teasing and fanfare. I well remember how much it hurt, but, in an hour or so, the toothache would be gone and we were grateful for the relief.

My activities before I became of school age consisted of playing with marbles or with rubber band guns which we made. One game of marbles was called “purgatory.” For this game, you would dig a little hole on each corner of a four-foot square and then dig a little hole in the center called purgatory. We also made a circle and tried to shoot the marbles out of it. Any marbles you knocked out were yours, and so we always had a cloth bag full of marbles, steelies, and agates which we carried in our pockets. We also played many games with rubber band guns such as cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians.

I well remember Primary and the “Trail Blazers” because I enjoyed it so much. My Primary teachers left lasting and deep impressions on my mind. Sisters Ella Jones, Alice Gubler, and Pansy Hardy are three teachers that have left eternal impressions on my character.
Primary-Trail Blazers
I mentioned earlier how I felt we were quite well-off financially as a family and found great security in that feeling. As I recall, the only ones that ever made me feel that we were poor or inferior were some of my uncles. They often made remarks that were intended to downgrade me and make me feel inferior in status to their children. They were doing very well in the turkey business and often commented on how much wealthier they were than my parents.

I remember how hot the sand, the cement, and especially, the asphalt were on my bare feet in the spring. Later, my feet were so calloused that I could stand all day in the sand or I could run down through a field of alfalfa, cane, and corn stubble without hurting at all. I do remember the puncture burrs, grass burrs, and cockle burrs as they would get between my toes or in the instep where there weren’t any callouses.

When I was four or five years old, we moved to St. George, Utah, because Dad worked at the state weighing or checking station in Santa Clara. We lived on the northwest end of St. George in a cluster of homes known as Sand Town. Our home was on the east side of Interstate 91 and was the last home before leaving St. George heading toward Santa Clara.


We lived in what was known as Sand Town in St. George. At the time, this was way out of town in St. George but it is now known as busy Bluff Street up by where you turn to go to Santa Clara). One incident that happened while we lived in Sand Town had a lasting impression on me. My older brother, Don, and his friend, one of the Prince boys that lived next door to us, had taken a brass fire extinguisher and removed the spray nozzle, which allowed about a quarter of an inch diameter jet of water to shoot out 20 to 40 feet when you pushed the plunger. Don placed me at the side of U.S. Highway 91 and told me to squirt at the next car that came by. He and his friend hid back behind the house. The next car happened to be a local St. George resident who was moseying along at about 15 miles per hour. He had all of the windows down on his car as it was very hot. I can still see the spray of water hitting the windshield and then through the window hitting the driver. The car screeched to a halt, and the driver jumped out, leaving his car parked on the highway. He came running after me. I dropped the fire extinguisher and ran as fast as I could around the house and down into a field of high weeds and sage brush. This man was swearing, cussing, and yelling at me to come out or he would break my neck. He stomped all through the weeds, but, as I would hear him coming towards me, I would crawl off through the weeds like a little rabbit. He kept searching for what seemed an eternity before finally leaving. I was so scared that I stayed hidden until after it became dark. When I finally came out, Don informed me that the man was so angry that he was going to send the sheriff to get me and put me in jail. When I finally came into the house, Mother asked where I had been and if I wanted some supper. I told her I wasn’t hungry, which I wasn’t as I was so scared. I just sat trembling in a corner until bedtime. After that incident, I was petrified every time I heard a siren or saw a sheriff. This fear stayed with me for several years. Of course, Don didn’t help any as he kept reminding me that someday the sheriff would catch me.

When I was six years old, which was about six months after moving to Sand Town, we moved into St. George to be nearer the schools. We lived about two blocks west of the St. George Tabernacle in which President Lorenzo Snow received the revelation on the necessity of the members paying their tithes and offerings if they wanted the blessings of the lord. Just across the street lived the Anderson family, sort of a tobacco-road family who had a son that wasn’t normal and a daughter named Jesse. Since she was the only child around that was my age, I played dolls with her. I was accused of being a sissy for playing with dolls, so we made a doll house in the thick bushes to the east of our house. We used old pieces of cloth, blankets, and pasteboard to hang around the playhouse so no one could see us. I also remember sneaking around in the house finding secluded corners to play with my doll. Jesse taught me to assist her in taking eggs from their chicken coop which we then took to McArthur’s market where we would trade them for candy. Mr. McArthur would often ask if we had taken the eggs without telling Jesse’s parents. Of course, the answer was always, “No!” Once in a while, Mr. McArthur wouldn’t immediately give us candy but would say he must check with Mrs. Anderson to see if she had given her permission. Needless to say, we caught heck and didn’t get any candy on those occasions.

I attended the first grade in St. George and was so shy that I was completely antisocial. I sat in the back of the room and never participated unless forced to do so. The only incident that really stands out in my memory happened because of my uncontrollable temper. Dennis Atkins heckled me to the point that I flew into a rage, and we had a big fight in the back part of our classroom. The teacher had a hard time in separating us as I was like a mad dog and would keep attacking. This incident made me crawl even deeper into my antisocial shell.

I will always remember the time that Paul Webb and one or two of his friends who were three or four years older than me kept egging Bernard Gifford, nicknamed “Pug” to continue to beat me to a pulp during recess at the LaVerkin School. I must have been in the second grade at the time. Pug was in my class but was a year older than me and I must admit he was much more muscular than me. I don’t know what really started the altercation, but we got into a fist fight and it soon became very evident that I was not match as I was soon overcome by his barrage of knuckle sandwiches in my face. Every time either one of us tried to stop fighting, those couple of guys who were three or four years older than we were would encourage Pug to keep pounding me or they would even shove him into me or me into him.


When I was finally able to disengage from the fight, I came bawling home badly bruised and with bad cuts on my nose, lips, and eyes and with blood streaming down on my shirt and pants. I can still see the look of horror and pain in Mother’s eyes when she saw me. She asked me who did it and I told her I had been in a fight with Pug Gifford. Just as soon as she washed me up and dressed the cuts, Mother rushed for the door to go get Pug. I was able to stop her long enough to tell her it wasn’t Pug’s fault because he had stopped fighting several times and that it was Paul and these older boys’ fault because they kept encouraging Pug and pushing and shoving him into me. She asked me their names and when I told her she tore out of the house and practically ran down the street to the school yard.

Needless to say, I was scared to death that when mother got through with them I would be teased and plagued by these two boys from that day on. But it didn’t happen! I heard about it for weeks after how Mother really dressed these two guys down. She tore into those guys and gave them fair warning that if it ever happened again they would pay the piper. She must have really put the fear into them because when I returned to school they never gave me a moment of trouble from that day on. Pug later became one of my good friends and still is to this day. It was such support and love as this from Mother that gave me a feeling of self-worth and security.

After attending the first grade, my folks farmed me out to live with my Grandparents William and Sarah Amelia Wilson Sanders in LaVerkin where I attended the second grade with a Mrs. Bradshaw as our teacher. Grandpa had diabetes and rheumatism so bad that he was confined to a wheelchair, and so I was consigned to live with them and help do chores and run errands. Grandmother taught me how to milk the cows, and, when I became proficient at it, I was assigned to milk the three cows they owned from that time on. After milking the cows, I poured the milk into a hand cranked milk and cream separator.
William & Sarah Sanders with DuWayne Squire
Grandmother taught me how to weed and irrigate the garden and orchard. Because of her teachings, I always took great pride in seeing that I cut every root from the ground as I weeded instead of just cutting off the tops of the weeds like most of my friends did. I also took care of the chickens and gathered their eggs. Each spring, we would get a flock of new chicks, and we kept them in pasteboard boxes in the house until they were big enough to put in the coops. We raised the chickens until they were big enough to eat, and then we killed the roosters, along with the hens that didn’t lay sufficient eggs to earn their keep. Every other year as the new hens began to lay eggs we would kill the older hens, dip them in hot water, pluck their feathers, and have tough chicken and stew.


While living with Grandpa and Grandma, I turned eight years old and someone from the ward told Grandma to have me go down to LaVerkin Sulpher Springs Pool and someone would be there to baptize me. The day appointed was February 24, 1936. I walked down alone since my family was still living in St. George. When I got there they issued me a swimming suit and told me to go get into the pool with a couple of other children from the ward. Since this was my first time to be allowed to go to the pool, I was having a great time swimming and playing with my friends. When everyone had arrived, including the two men who were to baptize and confirm us, we were told to come to the shallow end of the pool and a young man from the ward named Donworth V. Gubler came into the water and baptized each of us. We were asked to come out of the pool one at a time and Wickley Gubler (assisted by Donworth Gubler) confirmed us members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and told us to receive the Holy Ghost. We were then allowed to swim for another fifteen minutes or more. The part I remember most was being able to play and swim in the pool.

During the six years I lived at my grandparents’ home, I was often called on to babysit for Uncle Ervil’s family. They rented some run-down homes which were usually way out in the sticks where they would run their turkeys. I will remember tending in Brigham Hardy’s old home. In those days they didn’t have any radios or television sets, and so I just sat in a chair listening to the wind whistle its mournful tunes or listening to the rats running up and down in the walls or above the ceiling. At times, I would listen for hours as the rats were chewing and crunching on things in the ceiling area. Another scary old home was way out in the fields sitting on a knoll. Leonard Hardy later bought that home and fixed it up for his family to live in. Later, Uncle Ervil built a small, little home up above the ditch some distance away from any other homes. I still have the image firmly in mind of watching the chaparral bushes through the undraped windows. The wind would blow the bushes, and I would envision all sorts of wild animals or ugly, mean things moving in the chaparral bushes coming ever closer to the house. This would go on for hours since Uncle Ervil and Aunt Belva went out dancing nearly every week and they often stayed until one or two in the morning. I sat in panic for several hours many nights while tending their children.
DuWayne-10 years old
I went on to school at the old schoolhouse in LaVerkin through the third grade. The first grade through the eighth grade were all in the single classroom with a big, potbellied, wood stove in its center. One teacher taught us all. I can’t be sure, but I believe that Sister Bradshaw was the only teacher I had in LaVerkin. After finishing grade three, the school board decided to close LaVerkin’s school and bus us to Hurricane. The town’s people protested to no avail. A few years later, after Dad moved the family from St. George back to LaVerkin, Dad got the contract to tear down the old school for the stone, lumber, and nails he could salvage. Dad’s fruit cellar, granary, and two garages were built from the materials he salvaged. We all helped in this project, and it seemed that Dad could build anything he set his mind to.

My middle name came from Dad’s half-brother, Gilbert. I remember we had a backwoods type of family who lived in town who were very unkempt. One time, I was sent by one of my uncles to get some popcorn from their home. As I entered the home and walked through the filthy rooms, I was about overcome by the smell of ammonia that came from their urinating on the floors inside their home. I remember well how I was about knocked over by the awful smell. One of their boys was named Gilbert and his mother used to go outside and call, “GILBERTA!! GILBERTA!”  I remember Lyman Gubler and others teasing me and calling me, “Gilberta!” in the same way. Later, Helen came up with the nickname, “Baggy Pants Gilbert”, but I couldn’t help it if my skinny little fanny didn’t fill out my pants!

I attended the fourth through the twelfth grade at Hurricane Elementary and Hurricane High School. While living with my grandparents, I can remember many experiences such as being quarantined for two to three weeks at a time for such dreaded diseases as scarlet fever, whooping cough, and measles. I remember the first time I was quarantined I was so happy and excited because I wouldn’t have to attend school and church. I soon wearied of it since I wasn’t able to play with any of my friends and couldn’t leave our property. As you can imagine, the second quarantine wasn’t so exciting, and I tried to convince them that I would be all right if they would let me attend school.

My first love was for Joyce Garff. This happened in the fifth grade, and she never knew of my love for her or how she excited me whenever she came near me.


My second love was for Venice Whitney in the sixth grade. The love affair ended abruptly following an altercation in school. We had spent the recess playing mumble peg on the lawn with my pocket knife and had made a date to meet at a movie, but, when we came back into the room after recess, a pair of twins named Thain and Twain Scow began teasing me about Venice. Again my foul temper erupted, and I attacked the two of them in the aisle. Lafell Iverson, our teacher, had a tough time in separating us. I was overly embarrassed as Lafell was a very good friend of my parents. Because of my embarrassment over that incident, I avoided Venice for weeks after that.

I was kept after school a few times, missing the bus ride to LaVerkin, because of behavioral problems or, most often, for not knowing my spelling words or my times tables. When this happened, I had to walk the three plus miles to LaVerkin, and I could expect to get heck from my grandparents when I arrived home.

I would guess that I was twelve or thirteen years old when I and two friends, Mont Sanders and John Segler, decided to explore a cave or cavern which was formed in the limestone formation of the mountain located on the south side of the Virgin River at the location where the LaVerkin Sulphur Hot Springs boils out of the mountain and drains into the Virgin River.

The series of caverns resulted from the sulphur water flow which dissolved the limestone leaving caverns going in all directions with only the undissolved huge lava rock forming obstacles in each of the caverns. There were deep drop-off crevices 100 to probably 200 feet deep and open areas going up some 50 to 100 feet.

What piqued our interest in this cave was the story I had often heard about Uncle Owen Sanders who discovered this cave when he found a small opening which he crawled into and after about ten feet it opened up so that he could stand and walk on in. He went back home and got some string and a candle and went exploring inside this cavern. He tied the string on a rock at the opening of the cave and unwound the string as he explored into the cave. He found many areas where most of the floor of the cave dropped off into deep pits or caverns. To get around these holes required some agility. Uncle Owen went until his string ended, and at that point he made the bad choice of going deeper into the cave. His candle was about to its end when he tried to find his way back to the end of the string. But try as he might, he could not find his way and the candle was soon out and he was in pitch blackness from there on. He crawled around and around and after a few hours was about to give up since he kept coming to the deep drop-off holes. By this time his knees were all skinned up and so sore he could hardly navigate any further. He said he was panicked and losing hope and was about to give up. Whether through prayer or dumb luck, he began moving again and spotted a pin hole of light. He said that he carefully crawled, feeling his way, until the hole of light kept getting bigger and bigger. He had found the entrance of the cave again. He said he never ventured into that cave again!


When we got to the Sulphur Hot Springs, we climbed up a steep hillside on the south of the Springs and found a small hole. We couldn’t believe this was the cave entrance, but as we explored around it was the only hole in the rocky ledge we could find. So we got on our stomachs and crawled into this small opening. Sure enough, in about ten feet it opened up so you could stand. We lit our candles and as we got into the darker part of the cave we heard a rustle and a lot of squeaking noises and as we looked up we saw that the ceiling and the upper walls were completely covered with bats. We passed them and went on into the cave until we came to a big hole which didn’t leave much room to crawl around. We dropped some rocks into the hole and it seemed to take seconds before they hit the bottom. So we turned around and came back where the bats were hanging. One of us got the bright idea that if we took some bats back up town, we could really scare the girls. We began grabbing the bats by the handful and stuffed them into our front pockets. When we couldn’t stuff anymore in, we began to crawl out of the hole. It was difficult to use our hands to crawl and still hold the bats from getting out of our pockets. We did lose a few as we crawled through the hole and climbed down the ledge to the pool area.

We were really pleased and excited with our conquest and the thoughts of scaring the girls. It took us twenty to thirty minutes to walk back up into town while holding our pockets closed and listening to the bats squeaking as they tried to squirm free. By the time we reached John Segler’s home, which was next to Grandma Sanders’ home where I was living, we each began to itch all over. On closer examination, it looked like the skin on our arms was moving. We then discovered our arms and stomachs and chests were crawling with millions of spider mites or lice which the bats had stored under their wings for food. We immediately started pulling the bats out of our pockets and throwing them into the air, watching them flutter away.

We were about two blocks away from our swimming hole in the mouth of the tunnel where the irrigation water came through the mountain from the Virgin River and so we ran as fast as we could while tearing off shirts and disrobing. When we reached the tunnel, we jumped into the water and washed and washed ourselves and our clothes. Eventually, we seemed to have rid our bodies, hair, and clothes of the spider mites and lice.

The joke was on us, not the girls!


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