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Show THE ZEPHYR AUGUST 1994 PAGE 14 Oh! yes he bought me pretty dresses and appliances. any more anniversary presents. He took me to dinners, but the one we got in 1945 was always the most precious. 1945. Brent Platos Verona Wee's) first My first grand child was bom early May, fast I am proud of them all. They help me so baby. The kids are growing up very My Personal History Life & Times in Southeast Utah By Verona Stocks . Pete bought a lot of land. The question i asked was; what to do with iL He cleared more land and planted more peach trees. We had one work horse. We needed another work horse or something so Pete bought a farm tractor. With it was a disk, a plow and a scraper. I still cultivated with a horse. I put Peter on the horse to guide him down the rows of com. That didn't work out so good so Pete bought a cultivator and a mowing machine because I had also planted alfalfa. Pete assured me I did not have to run the tractor. He and Little Pete would do that. Little Pete did not like to form any more than his dad did but he was one of the 4H boys that raised a calf to sell. Pete did some disking around town for people who had small gardens. Then when he was working on our ditch, the tractor flipped over on him. He had seven broken ribs and three were torn loose from his breast bone. He spent three weeks in the hospital and was unable to work for a year. I got on that tractor and fixed that stretch of the ditch so a car could go on it. I thought no one else could get into trouble there. Puge and Dick went up to finish the dam. I was working up in the field when I heard a crash. Sure enough, Puge was driving the tractor and he went right over a ten foot fall and into the creek. He jumped off and the tractor landed on its wheels so neither the tractor or Puge were hurt. Dick and Puge had to go somewhere the next day so I went to finish the dam. I took some sacks and filled them with dirt and sod. Grandpa (Will) Stocks came to see what I was doing and he filled the sacks and I put them in the holes where the dam was leaking. By the time we were through the water was up to my waist. Then he helped me fence the orchard. He dug the holes and put the posts in. I strung the wire with the tractor and he nailed it to the posts. A six strand barbed wire fence on three sides of the orchard. The creek bank was on the fourth side and needed no fence. When Pete was there his father would say "Here Pete, another little snort won't hurt you". It did. Grandpa, Pete's father could drink the wine and keep going but Pete could not, and no other drink ever satisfied him any more. He became an alcoholic. I was 40 years old April 1, 1945. I thought I was a little too old to have any more babies. What I thought made no difference. Lynda was born June 7, 1945 on mine and Pate's anniversary. She was very tiny and so cute but I told Pete I did not need THE WESTERN PLAZA, NEXT TO MeSTIFFS , so much on the farm. We are still living in the log cabin. It's a bit crowded now. When the war ended there was no market for uranium or vanadium so a lot of men had no jobs. The not hurt but the miners had to find stockmen, fruit growers and farmers were was producing enough to pay taxes and Pete was something else. Our peach orchard able to find short jobs. We lived well. We had pigs, chickens and milk cows. Pete got a contract from Fowler digging gold in Miners Basin in 1947. He hired three men to do the work, driving a drift to a place where Mr. Fowler thought the mother lode was. Pete lost money on that deal. Another deal he had was with his brother Angus (Puge) in the sawmill. Pete bought the timber and paid for a new lumber to build a two room engine to run the sawmill. He got nothing but enough house which Puge built for himself on a piece of ground Pete gave him. At the same time Pete gave him the right to use all the water he wanted. That was against my wishes. Oh well! Pete said it served him right when later he had to pay $3,000 to get the land and spring back. When I got the ditch cleaned up for water turns and the orchard fenced, I had to go downtown and disk some orchards and lots for several people Pete had promised to work for. We needed the money and Pete was in the hospitaL Pete was in the hospital about a week when his brother, Dick, joined him. He had gone all through the war against the Japs and had survived several of their night raids. When he came home he was accidently shot in the shoulder by a friend. Pete was in the hospital about six weeks. He could not work for about six months, then at very limited jobs. I worked at different jobs because I still had to look after the farm, take the water turns, mow the hay and do the canning. When school started I was working at the cafe from 4 to 10. I would take Lynda to Phyllis and they would come home on the bus. I always fixed dinner before I went to work. The boys came home and did the chores, Phyllis took care of Lynda and the house, Pete tried so hard to get back to work and help me. He had several short jobs but Dr. Allen told him he would have to be careful because he had walking pneumonia. He tried some mining and did assessment work on the Wilson Mesa claims that he and Mr. Balsley had. He could not help me much on the farm, mainly because he did not know how to farm. The one thing on the farm he could do and I couldn't was put up the hay. Our orchard was mostly peaches. There.was some cherry trees, apples and pears. I sure found out Pete did not know what he was talking about when he said it would not be any work for me because peaches were almost a year time job. I pruned them in the winter, watered them all summer and fall, picked and sold them in the fall. I |