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Ruby Ray Tangreen Zufelt

ORAL & DOCUMENTED HISTORY

Interviewed by: Lula DeLong May-August, 1997

(801) 269-7651 In Moab, Utah

Q. Ruby, tell us where you were born.

A. Well, my dad was born in Pennsylvania. His folks lived there and they had a big ranch

and some good horses. He worked with his dad all the time on the farm in the

summertime, and in the winter they had a coal mine he opened and ran. So he mined

coal in the winter and worked the farm in the summertime. He got up to about nineteen

and had a girlfriend he wanted to date. He asked his dad for five dollars and his dad

wouldn’t give it to him, so he left the country. He’d already joined the church and the

elder that baptized him lived in Sunnyside, Utah.

Q. What church was that?

A. Latter Day Saints (LDS) Church. The elder lived in Sunnyside, Utah and it was a coal

mining camp. There wasn’t a church there and they had to come to Wellington, so he

met my mother in Wellington at church. My mother’s great grandmother was from

Scotland and she married William Bell from England. She was a Farnsworth, I think.

They come across the ocean after they joined the church. I think she joined. I’m not real

sure if she married before, or Bill was her only husband (to that point). She buried four

children in the ocean coming across. There was a disease on the ship while crossing the

ocean. It was Scarlet Fever, or something, and she buried four children coming across.

She just raised the one daughter that was my mother’s grandmother, and she was a Bell.

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Well, that’s the ancient history.

Q. And that’s part of your history.

A. Then Dad married Mother in Sunnyside, Utah at a fireside party, then they were later

married in the temple. The marriage was on June 26, 1907, and I was born July 25, 1908.

Dad filed on a desert claim south of Price, and he made a cellar, then he built a log

cabin. It was so hot. I think it was two years after that they were married in the Salt

Lake Temple. It was so hot in the summer and the midwife said, “Well, Susie, why don’t

you put your bed down in the cellar where it’s cooler. It’s so hot up here.” That’s what

she did and I was born in the dugout. Then the dam went out and the irrigation project

failed, so Dad gave up the homestead and went to work in the mine.

Q. Where was the dam?

A. Well, it was somewhere south of Price, near Cleveland. The area was called Desert Lake,

but it wasn’t very far out, maybe eight or ten miles. Then he went to work in the coal

mine at Stores (near Helper). And that’s the only time I can remember living in the coal

camp. That was when I was three or four years old.

There were different little things I remember that happened. One day Dad went to

town with some folks in the wagon to get groceries and he came back with a little ring

for me and I was so proud of it. I went playing in the dirt and lost it.

Then there was the time he told Mother that grandma so-and-so died. She was just

some lady that he knew. I felt just terrible to think there was anybody I could have called

grandma and she died before I knew it.

Dad filed on a claim between Price and Sunnyside (a place called Kamo), and my

Uncle George and Aunt Jenny had a claim there and it was irrigated. He filed on a claim

out there and we lived there in a tent house in the summer for two or three years, then he

worked in the mines in the wintertime.

Excerpts from The Early Years of Ruby Ray: (An oral interview with Wade Tangreen as the

interviewer.)

I remember walking hand-and-hand with Nona and Nellie (cousins) out into the

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trees, and we found a robin’s egg. They finally let me hold it and it broke. They washed

my hand off with dirt. I’ll never forget that. Then I remember being in the tent house

and I was pulling Vern around in a little wagon when he was able to sit up. I had a little

play house. There was a little bit of a granary there and Mother nailed a box up on the

wall for me to put my dishes in. The box fell off the wall and the dishes broke. I just had

a few memories of being out there.

I remember Dad had a little toothpick holder that he got at the World’s Fair right

before he left Pennsylvania. I don’t know where the world’s Fair was, but the holder was

red and white and it had his name (Lewis) written on it in gold. But Mother lost those

dishes. She packed them up in a box and left them in the tent house when we moved to

the coal camp (Stores) for the winter. They were gone when we came back. There was a

green sugar bowl and cream pitcher, real beautiful, which Mother cherished, you know.

It was a real pretty cream pitcher and sugar bowl, light green with flowers on it. It was

among the things Mother left packed. The next summer we went back to the tent house

and they were gone. Dad took Mother and I and we went over to visit the Greeks that

lived close to the dam. I saw Mother’s sugar bowl and cream pitcher in the lady’s

window. I kept trying to tell Mother, and she would just say, “Oh, run on and play, I’m

talking.” I couldn’t never get to tell her. After we got home, I told her that her pitcher

and sugar bowl was in that lady’s window. She said, “Well why didn’t you tell me?”

This is like people do, push little kids off.

Back to the DeLong interview:

Just before I started school Dad decided to go to Idaho. His brother, Uncle

Charley, was in Idaho. I had been there before, but I can’t remember that time. He

started out in a one horse buggy and he was selling aluminum cookware. It was pretty

new. Everything had been granite up till then, and it was really something. He started

canvassing and selling the cookware all along the way to Idaho. I was in the first grade

in Wellington, before we left for Idaho. At Christmas time, Mother took us kids on the

train and we went to Uncle Charley’s place in Idaho.

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Excerpts from The Early Years of Ruby Ray:

We went on the train. We got to Ogden and had quite a layover. They took me

over to a little gift shop of some kind and bought me a pair of white moccasins with

beads on them. Walking back, it was dark and we were walking across the train tracks in

the coal slack. I never remember being in Idaho, but I remember being scared I’d get

those slippers dirty.

There’s lots of little remembrances that don’t amount to much. One time Dad was

in bed with the blood poisoning and we were living in a tent house in Stores. There was

a door come in the front and one going out the back of the tent house. It was just one

room. Our horse Daisy come in the front door one time and Mother had to lead her out

the back door to get her out of the tent.

The next year Dad had typhoid fever and was in the hospital. Mother took in

boarders to make ends meet, while he was gone. She had quite a few boarders, maybe

six. She let me wash the dishes. She put the dishpan down on the bench we used to sit

on. I washed them and dried them and had to reach up and put them on the cabinet. She

give me a quarter one time to get a can of tomatoes in the cellar. The cellar opened off

the back door into the cellar.

I remember having the croup there. I don’t remember being sick. I just remember

being bundled up and Mother making me sit in a chair. She said I had the croup. I didn’t

realize I was sick, but she kept me bundled up.

When I had my tonsils out, I was wrapped up in a sheet on the kitchen table and

the doctor was there. I never could stand the smell of chloroform. After I got older,

Mother had some chickens out east of Monticello and sprinkled them with louse power.

It smelled like chloroform and I couldn’t stand the smell of it.

When I was little and living in the tent house, I remember Aunt Ruby was staying

with us for a while. She took me up on the hill on kind of a cliff overhang. We was

sittin’ up there and we could hear the church music and the people singing from the

church on Sunday. It was quite an adventure, just getting up there and hearing the

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Sunday school songs.

I had a playhouse out back and there was a bunch of oak brush growing right next

to the tent. I had a big rag doll. I remember lifting her up and putting her on top of the

oak brush for a cradle to hang her up. I played around a little while and started back to

get her and there was something ugly under the bush. I went, “Mother there’s something

awful ugly under this bush where my doll is.” She went out and it was a rattlesnake. She

called a neighbor man to come and kill it. I remember seeing it all coiled up under the

bush and I didn’t know what it was but it was awful ugly. I didn’t even want to go close

and get my doll. I guess Dad was moved to Stores in the winter, then back to the farm in

the summer time.

(After that) we lived in a little log house in Wellington. I’ve got the picture of the

log house with Mother holding Ireta and Vern was little. I was just coming home from

school and these people, photographers, came around and they took pictures of all the

little old shacks in town and sent them back east. Mother found out later, the pictures

were used as postcards showing Dwellings of the Mormons. They didn’t show the

pretty

yards or any thing, just the houses and people. They sold them on the street as

postcards.

I guess Aunt Earla must have got a hold of one. (See photograph in this report.)

I went to school in Wellington in a little building up high on a hill. It was a long

climb up there. It burned down later. They built a new school house down on the level

of the ground. I went to school in Wellington until Christmas, when Dad decided to go

to Idaho.

Back to the DeLong interview:

Uncle Charley had a little place to live and we went right out there late at night.

There wasn’t any transportation and he wasn’t there to meet us. Mother had to hire a

buggy to take us out to Uncle Charley’s. But the man had another customer to take some

place first, so we had to wait in the depot ‘till he got back with the outfit. I think he had

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a spring buggy. The depot man gave us, Vern and I, a little box of stick candy. It was

just a little bit bigger than a toothpick box. We were so tickled at it. Vern was just little,

about three, I guess.

We got out to Uncle Charley’s on Christmas Eve. They hadn’t planned on it and

Mother hadn’t either, so they didn’t have much for Christmas. I got a little set of pots

and pans that were child-sized, from what Dad had for samples; also a ball of something

that Aunt Tina shared with us. Course we had candy and stuff. It was a nice Christmas.

I went to school there the rest of the winter. It was just a little one-room school

house with all the grades together.

Q. And that was in Idaho? What town?

A. Jerome.

Q. You were just outside of Jerome, Idaho?

A. Yes. Then we moved to town, into Jerome, into a little cabin. It was just a one room

cabin, but it was comfortable.

Excerpts from The Early Years of Ruby Ray”

Dad got a pair of old link springs with a frame on them. He put casters on it and rolled it

under the bed. Vern and I slept on it at night. They rolled it under their bed in the day

time. We didn’t have much. Mother had a sewing machine and they bought a new

chiffonier, a tall dresser with a little mirror. They called it a chiffonier. They bought an

Aladdin lamp and we had that before we left Idaho, but we never had a good lamp after

that. We just had coal oil lamps. (With the Aladdin lamp) you pumped them up and

they

had a round wick and it made a bright light like lanterns do. It had a tall chimney and a

globe on it. I guess they sold it before we left Idaho, because we didn’t ever have it after

that.

Back to the DeLong interview:

I went to the second and third grades, while we were there. I remember the

teacher’s names were Miss Gadow, second grade, and Miss Arps. As soon as school was

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out, we left and came back to Utah. Mother couldn’t stand the climate there. She

couldn’t stand to be around any alfalfa or hay. She’d be deathly sick with asthma and the

doctors told Dad to get her out of that country or he wouldn’t have a wife for very long.

So, he fixed up a covered wagon, a nice covered wagon, and got another horse. He

always had old Daisy. He got another horse to go with her, and hooked up that covered

wagon. I hadn’t seen it, but I went to school to get my report card and got home early.

They had the wagon loaded and were sitting in the seat waiting for me to come so they

could leave.

We spent the summer in that covered wagon coming from Jerome, Idaho to out

east of Monticello where we finally landed. We stopped and spent a couple of weeks at

Aunt Jenny’s and Uncle George’s ranch, between Wellington and Sunnyside. Dad

helped Uncle George drill a well, line the house, and do some farm work.

From The Early Years of Ruby Ray:

Then we went out to Aunt Jenny’s. She lived out east of Wellington in an area

they called Kamo. They call it Kixs today. They had a farm out there and it was

irrigated. They didn’t have much; they were pretty poor. I know she had some spinach.

It was on and we had spinach nearly every day. I never could stand spinach. She made

bread and it soured and Dad said, “Well Jenny, I just can’t eat that sour bread.” She said:

“Oh, you’ll eat it all right, we can’t waste it.” Later she crumbled it up and made

pancakes out of it. When it was all gone, she said: “Well, Lewis, I told you you’d eat that

sour bread.”

Nora and I were really good friends and we went out to cut alfalfa to feed the hogs.

I cut my finger with the sickle. I still have a little scar (from the cut).

Back to the DeLong interview:

Then we started out again. Uncle George didn’t have any money, but he had a

store building that he had rented in Sunnyside. We had to go to Sunnyside, on the trail,

and get groceries for the money Dad had coming for the work he had done. We got to

Green River on July 3

rd

, and kids were buying firecrackers and stuff. Dad pulled us out

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of town and sent me over to a little grocery store. It wasn’t very far to go for a loaf of

bread. I went in the wrong door and got in the pool hall. I was so embarrassed. I went in

the grocery store and got the bread. We got out of there as quick as we could so we

couldn’t get any firecrackers.

From The early Years of Ruby Ray:

We went on and camped out at Courthouse. There was a cabin there then, and it

was vacant at the time. We took care of the horses (Snipp and ol’ Daisy) and cooked our

supper on the campfire, as usual. Dad was restless and couldn’t sleep that night, so he

got up and drove on to the (Colorado) river and crossed the river.

Mother woke me up so I could see how beautiful that river was. I was just scared to

death of the water. I hated going across the Green River, couldn’t hardly stand it. I’d

just been awful happy if she’d have just let me sleep going across that river. But she

thought I’d enjoy the scenery. I woke up and seen it, but it sure scared me. Then Dad

went on into town. We camped there by the troughs at the river. The water was piped

over to the road so the people could water their horses, ‘cause everybody was using

horses then. We saw very few cars on the road, lots of covered wagons. . . . Dad went

on into town, looked around, talked to people. Ireta fell down in the mud and that mud,

was red and stained her dress.

An insert Ruby added later:

I remember when we passed through Moab in our wagon, there was an old

blacksmith shop where the old road used to go on Fouth East. They called that area

“Monkey Wrench Flats” because every time the guy that ran the blacksmith shop got

mad

he would come out and throw a monkey wrench out in the road. I think it was a Mr.

Grimms that ran the place.

Back to DeLong interview:

We got to Monticello about the eighth of July. Pop camped by the Carlisle Ranch

and

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there was a pond there. Dad went into town and checked around. He ran into a man he

mined with by the name of Dan Black, and he was cuttin’ hay. Mr. Black had raised this

crop of hay and he hired Dad to help. Black had a couple of other guys to help him. So

we stayed there a week or ten days. They had a little girl my age named La Preal. I had a

nice time. The women would get the dishes all ready to wash. We had to wash them in a

dishpan and rinse them in another dishpan, like they did then, because nobody had

running water, or hot and cold running water. We just had to wash them in the dishpan

and scald them with hot water out of the tea kettle. We washed dishes and played and

had a good time while we were there.

Dad contracted to grub forty acres of sagebrush for Mr. Black. It was about eight

miles out of town, I guess. So we moved our camp wagon out there and started grubbing.

Dad railed it down with a big log. He put an angle iron across the front to make it sharp

and two poles lying back to keep it level. He hooked the horses on to it and he’d drag it

both ways to break a lot of it off. Then we’d burn it. Vern and I would help burn. We

would do that at night when the fires were pretty. It was just kind of a recreation thing.

Then we had to grub the brush that was left. Vern and I had to pick it up, pile it up,

with some that was still alive and standing, so we could get that too. We picked

sagebrush for a month, I guess, then we got the job done and moved out farther and

looked for a place to locate.

Dad knew he had to go away to work, because there was no way to make a living

around there. Nobody was hiring. We knew Mother couldn’t manage alone, without

water and wood, like most of those dry farmers had. We went out to Herm Butts. He

was just going to move to take over a store in Dove Creek. It was just one building that

was built inside of a hill. You walked into the downstairs part and that was the store.

You climbed the stairs up the hill to get to the living quarters. Pearl had a couple of extra

rooms she rented out, and that was the hotel and grocery store. That building is still

there. I don’t know what they use it for anymore, but we see it every time we go through

Dove Creek.

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Well, Dad ran that ranch for a couple of years. My eighth birthday was when we

got out to the brush patch, where we grubbed sagebrush for my birthday out there. We

ran the ranch for a couple or three years, while he ran the grocery store. Dad found a

place next to Herm’s that had a spring and timber on it, ‘cause he knew he couldn’t go

away to work and leave Mother where she would have to haul water and wood. She

wasn’t able to do much of them things. So I was practically the man of the house when

Dad was gone. I had to carry the water, wash on the board, and gather the stuff off the

hillside that I could chop up for wood. We lived in Herm’s place for two years, then Dad

filed on this place and built a dugout, a cellar, a pretty nice cellar. You walked in from

the ground level. It was built into a hill, with one log around the edges to hold the roof

up. We got the cellar dug and the log around the edges. It was getting winter. We

needed the roof. The Malotts lived about two miles over the Colorado line and they had

a post office. It was called Northdale, I believe. But, anyway, they ran the post office

and we’d go over there after the mail once a week.

One time he was over there to get the mail and Mrs. Malott said, “Well, Lew, why

don’t you put your wagon sheet over it (the dugout). It will make it light and keep the

storm out, and you can live in it that way.” So, Dad put the wagon sheet over it and

fastened it down good. We were just getting ready to move and it snowed two feet and

the wagon sheet fell in with the snow. We had to shovel the snow out and put a roof on

it

after all. Then we moved into it and lived in it for a couple of years. Dad had to go to

work as soon as we got moved in. When we were done with it there was some kind of a

scare about the world coming to an end, or something, about that time. He was worried.

He came home. He was working in Monticello. He came home for a little while and

chopped up a bunch of wood and stacked it up along the dugout, so we’d have wood to

keep warm if something terrible happened. The world was in kind of a panic about that

time. We had a little ol’ stove with the oven door that opened on both sides. There was a

grate in front where you took out the ashes. It slid back and forth. The firebox was up

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here where the grates were, where the ashes fell down. We didn’t have any coal oil

around, so Vern and I would go chop chips off the lonely pine that Dad had cut down.

We chopped chips off of that and carried them up to our place to burn on that hearth. It

dragged the smoke up through the firebox to the chimney, so we could have light. We

didn’t have coal oil. I think we had a little bit to start with, but we had a lot later when

Dad got home. So that’s all we had for light, but it was warm all the time.

It was the same temperature all the time. We didn’t need the stove much for heat,

but our neighbor would come over to see us and she would just freeze to death. She was

living in Herm Butt’s house then, and it was just through the fence and about a half or

quarter mile each way to their place.

Q. How many children were there that lived in this little dugout house?

A. Three, Vern and I and Ireta. But we had two beds in there and it was comfortable.

Didn’t complain. We had very little to read that we could understand. Mother had the

church books, but that was a little heavy for we kids. We played checkers and dominoes

and Mother would tell us a story once in a while. We thought we got along just fine.

Then Dad built the house when he had time. He built a pretty good house. It was

the best log house in the country. It was sixteen by thirty two, a big house. It could be

divided off into a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and hopefully a bathroom

someday. He cut the space out of the logs when he laid them up, so he could get the

window in there. After he got the logs up, he had to go to the Lone Cone sawmill to get

lumber for the roof. He and Vern went and were gone two nights and he come home

with enough lumber to put a roof on the house, so we could move out of the cellar.

Before he built the house, he went up on the hill, on the other side. We were in kind of a

deep draw. On the top of hill was some good rock about six to eight inches thick. He cut

it out of the rock on top of the hill to make a hearthstone to build a fireplace. Before he

started building the house, he borrowed Herm’s team and drug it over where he was

going to build the house. So it was in the middle of the floor when we got the house

built. He was ready to build a fire and he had the hearthstone down.

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Q. He was pretty sharp, wasn’t he?

A. And he was a good, hard worker, and planned well. He got other rocks and built the

fireplace. I don’t know what happened to that little cook stove, but we didn’t have it any

more. We cooked on the fireplace for a couple of years in Dutch ovens. Mother had a

cupboard board that she used for an ironing board. Maybe she could have kept it on the

table, but anyway her flatiron handle broke. She didn’t have a flatiron handle, so we had

to use a stick to push the iron around with.

Q. Was that the time you had three of those irons and you’d put one of those irons on

the Dutch oven, while you would use the other one?

A. Yes. I think we only had two, but we had to heat it in the Dutch oven because we didn’t

have the stove. But our clothes were ironed. Mother wasn’t hardly able to wash on the

board, so I tried to do quite a bit of it. I was Dad’s right-hand man, because I was ten and

strong and healthy and able to do things to help. Vern was awful small for his age and

not very handy. He just couldn’t do much of anything. He was too little, and he liked to

play.

Q. Now Vern was your only brother?

A. Yeah. I had three more sisters later, but the last one was born a year after Dixie, my first

daughter, was born. So I didn’t have much chance to get acquainted with her.

We were happy. I worked with Dad doing everything he needed help with, like

building fences and planting gardens. Anything he needed help with, I was the one that

did it.

After we got the house built and moved in, a man come along on horseback and he

said, “Lew, how in the hell did you ever get that ridge-pole up there?” Dad said, “Oh, me

and that girl did it.”

Q. That girl was you. . .was Ruby?

A. Yes. It was built back against the hill and Dad cut a long leaf pine to get that long of a

log. We dragged it up along the hill with a team, on top of where the house was. Then

he got a couple of long poles and put down to the house with oak brush and stuff in

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between. They reached. Then after he got the poles in, he and I got up there and rolled

that log down those poles to the back of the house, then across the house to the front.

We

got it situated and put up in good shape. He was pretty proud of “that girl”. Mom was a

little jealous. She wasn’t able to do the things that had to be done. She wasn’t able to

follow him around to build fences and help like, you know, a healthy woman would.

She was quite frail so she couldn’t do any of that stuff to help. She kind of resented me

because I was so handy and could do everything. Dad showed me how to do things and if

he showed me once I could do it. He could show Vern three times and he didn’t

remember. Years later, Mother came to live with us a while and she got quite sick. I told

the neighbor something about Mother always favored Vern and the neighbor mentioned it

to Mother. She said, “Well, I had to favor Vern. Dad favored Ruby and I had to favor

the rest of the kids.”

Anytime Vern and I had a quarrel, or anything went wrong, I was always with

Mother, and Vern would always get the benefit. He got to have a 22 riffle and go all over

the county shooting, getting acquainted, and I had to stay home and work.

We lived there for a few years and never did have a toilet. We did the laundry and

hung it on the bushes, and we used the bushes for our backhouse.

When we left I was fourteen. We went to school in Ucola. They finally got a

schoolhouse within a couple of miles from our place. The people that had lived in it

moved away and went to Washington. The girl that had lived there was my lifelong

friend. She died of cancer a few years ago, but I wrote to her all the years in between.

They had a two room log house. The guys cut the partition out and that was our

schoolhouse, when we finally got a teacher and a school. I was in the seventh grade,

Vern was in the fourth, and Ireta was just in the first grade. We had to walk about two

miles to school and it snowed real hard. We ended up with about two and a half feet of

snow. Ireta didn’t try to go to school that day. Vern and I went and we took our lunch in

a gallon syrup bucket. When we got there, there was nobody there. Nobody else had

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gone to school. The door was locked. So we said there’s no sense carrying this lunch

bucket back and have to bring it back tomorrow. We just set it there inside the door.

Later in the day, the teacher got over there in a buggy, a horse and wagon outfit, and

swept off the porch; made a little trail around, built a fire, and ate our lunch. So we went

to school the next day. Dad borrowed a horse from Herm and hooked it on a little pine

tree and drug a trail to school so we could walk without having to wade in the snow. So

the next day the man teacher was kind enough to give Ireta half of one of his sandwiches.

She was the little one.

Q. And you and Vern went hungry?

A. Yes. Then in the eighth grade a family moved in not too far. . .oh, about halfway

between us and the school. They had three children, a girl my age and one younger and

Roy, who was in the seventh grade and I was in the eighth. Viona was in about the fifth.

That first year, the man teacher didn’t teach us anything. He said if you read good books,

like Evangeline, you won’t need English. He didn’t give us geography or history. All

we got was arithmetic.

The next year we had a real good teacher. The best teacher I ever had and she was

a doll. If you didn’t get your lessons, you had to stay in at recess and get them. You

didn’t get away with any foolishness. We had to do all of our history and geography and

all of our arithmetic just a little bit, a few pages that we got the year before, and English.

So we had to do two grades in one. She was a marvelous teacher.

Q. Do you remember her name?

A. Ethel B. Finch. I wrote to her for quite a while, after I was out of school and we moved

to Idaho or to Wyoming, but I lost her address. I don’t know what ever became of her

after that. But she was a wonderful teacher. Every month she’d put a quotation on the

board and make us learn it, and it was good things, good quotations that you had to learn

every month. I don’t remember many of them:

“Do not look for wrong and evil. You’ll find them if you do.

As you measure to your neighbor he will measure back to you.

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Look for goodness. Look for gladness. You’ll find them all awhile.

If you bring a smiling visage to the glass, you’ll meet a smile.”

Excerpt from The Courting Years of Ruby Ray: (Notes written by Ruby in 1993.)

Out at Ucola, in the long summer days we got up early and worked all day. We

retired early, partly because we were out of coal oil for the lamp, but Dad tried hard to

make it pleasant for us. He’d read aloud to us when we had light and he could borrow a

book. But that summer he made up a story to tell us after supper. It was about four

children, “near teenage I guess,” who built a play house out of scrap lumber they could

gather up, and some tin. They got it all built and were playing in it and a big whirlwind

came and blew it up onto another planet. The rest of the summer it was about their

experiences there, finding water, edible plants, bulbs, fruit and nuts they could live on.

Later he told me he’d spend the day thinking about what he could tell us that

evening. Mother would do the dishes, then come out and sit with us in the twilight and

listen to the adventures. It was the perfect end of a hard day and we looked forward to it.

The story was always continued ‘till tomorrow and we went to bed happy.

Excerpts from The Early Years of Ruby Ray:

When we moved on out east of Monticello, near Ucola: (When I was eight) Cap

Hanson had a cabin out there and there was a well down the draw a little bit so we

could pack water. It was quite a ways to pack it, but there was water we could get. We

stayed there all winter. Of course you couldn’t go to school.

Vern, Mother and I went down and haggled off a Christmas tree. It was a hard job

for us. There was just a post in the middle of the cabin that held the roof up. We put the

Christmas tree by the post and it left room for a bed on each side and the stove and the

table. We didn’t have any ornaments. Dad went to town and bought a little roll of tissue

paper. We cut tissue paper in strips and pasted it together to loop around the limbs for

decoration, then cut out pictures from a catalog for the ornaments. We thought it was

beautiful to have a tree, because we’d had a sagebrush the year before. We hadn’t seen

any Christmas trees for ever, and it was wonderful to have a Christmas tree that was a

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Christmas tree. Mother made a new dress for my doll, Vern got a pair of mittens made

out of socks, and Ireta got a ball made out of raveled out socks. That was our Christmas.

Dad was sittin’ there and said, “I’m sure hungry for some candy.” Mother got up and

went outside. Pretty soon she screamed and we thought old Snipp was after her. That

old horse we had was pretty ornery and Mother was scared to death of him. Every time

she’d go out, he’d try to nab her. So she screamed and we thought sure Snipp was after

her. We run out and Mother said: “Oh, I saw Santy Clause and he just jumped over the

fence there. He dropped this bag of candy when he jumped the fence.” So we had some

candy.

We grubbed another twenty to twenty-five acres of sagebrush for Cap Hanson.

That fall we grubbed about sixty-five acres. It took a lot of hard work.

The next summer we moved over to Herm Butt’s place. Dad farmed his farm for

him for a couple of years. I guess I turned nine while we was there. Then we went to

Mancos for school that winter. Thelma was born November 3, 1917.. . We had gone to

Mancos in a covered wagon. We had to put the damned box back on the wagon and it

was a heck of a job. . . . When Thelma was born, I had to stay out of school for a week or

so to take care of Mother and the baby. I baked bread and the midwife came in and

checked on mother. I had several loaves of nice bread baked sitting there on the cabinet.

She just was so amazed that I was able to bake bread, but I had been doing it for quite a

while.

The next year they had a fair at Lockaby. Lockaby isn’t even there any more, but

Lockaby was a store and post office. They had a country fair there instead of

Monticello.

I baked loaf of bread to take over to the fair and won first prize. I got a blue ribbon on it.

(The war was on) and food was rationed. Everything was rationed during that war,

mostly flour and sugar. You bought twenty-five pounds of flour, and you had to buy ten

pounds of cornmeal or oatmeal or some other kind of grain to use with to so that yu could

make bread and not use all the flour. They put a recipe for cooking with the different

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grains. Sugar was rationed, you couldn’t get very much sugar. They hadn’t started gas

rationing then because nobody had cars anyway.

Dad’s name was up (for the draft) but he never got called. The war ended not too

long after Thelma was born. Thelma was born on November third and the war was over

on November eleventh.

There was very few telephones and no communication. . . . Radio was unheard

of, or record players or anything like that. (When the war ended) people just went up

and

down the street screaming the news to everybody in the country to know: “The war’s

over, the war’s over.” Everybody was out having such a good time, so happy.

Then the flu epidemic hit and there was quite a lot of people died with the flu.

School was closed for about a month twice through the winter. (This epidemic killed

600,000 people across the country.) I was in the fourth grade, I was in “B” class and I

was pretty mad about that because I knew I was better than a lot of the “A” class

students. But I passed and a lot of the A class students didn’t pass, because school was

out so much at the time. I passed the fourth grade.

We had an old dog we called Fido. I guess he[d been a sheep dog and the sheep

herders had beat him or something, so he ran away and came to us. He was pretty much

afraid and hid under the granary for two or three days while we was at Herm Butts’ place.

We took a little milk and fed him. Dad finally got him to be not afraid of us. Then he

was a real good faithful dog, and we always loved him. He’d go around in the snow and

find a rabbit track, then chase the rabbit down under a log or a rock or into a hollow log.

Then he’d bark. Dad made us a wire switch with two twists of bailing wire and a little

prong on the end about four feet long. We’d carry that wire twist and go find where the

dog was barking. We’d twist it down into its fur and pull it out of the log, and get a hold

of its hind feet and lop its head off. And the dog would grab the head and guts and we’d

take the rabbit home to eat. We had rabbit all the time that winter, about all we did have.

Thelma’s birthday came along and I think she was three and she wanted rabbit pie. She

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didn’t know anything about a birthday cake, didn’t know what that was. Mother was

telling her about Heaven, how nice Heaven was, or something, and she said, “And do

they have board floors?” Pearl had board floors in her house and we just had a dirt floor.

We’d got out of the cellar into a log house Dad had built. It was a big house fourteen by

thirty-two feet. Up there most people just had a small cabin, but we had a pretty good

sized house. It had a dirt floor and one window and a homemade door, and we had a dog

to help us get some meat.

Back to the DeLong interview:

A. I don’t know what the reason was, but we moved to LaSal. Left the home and the

cellar and the spring and moved to LaSal. Dad filed on a place there. We got quite a

bit more ground and there was a little old log cabin. Just a little one room cabin. There

was room for Mother’s bed and cook stove and a cupboard she had. We had to sleep

outside. I said, “Let’s build an arbor over the front of it,” ‘cause I remembered going on

a picnic when I was about four. The community had a picnic away from the house, down

the canyon a little ways, and they had built an arbor with brush over the top. Of course

they had the table under it, if it happened to rain. They called it an arbor. So Dad planted

the posts and got the framework up, then he had to go away to work so we put the brush

on it. We got it off the cedar boughs or whatever we could find, and we had a shelter to

sleep under. It was real good. We kept the sun out and the rain, when it rained, so our

bed was outside.

Excerpt from The Courting Years of Ruby Ray:

I turned sixteen the summer we were at LaSal. The Tangreen’s had a nice big

ranch down the draw a mile or so from our place. Mr. Tangreen died in June. Mrs.

Tangreen hired Mother to stay with Collin, who was about eleven, and take care of the

chickens, milk the cows, etc.. Lucian had taken over the ranch after his father died and

had to go back to Idaho and get his household goods and family. He had a wife and three

kids.

Clarence came out to the ranch and brought his horses and was going to Indian

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Creek to punch cattle. Cowpunchers was the only thing back then. There were the heroes

in stories and shows that were all about cowpunchers and how wonderful they were. I

thought he was really something. He stayed around awhile, came to see me every night,

sang cowboy songs and let me ride his horse. He had a beautiful gray mare that was a

single footer, rode like a rocking chair. He left her there on the ranch to pasture and told

me I could get her to ride any time I wanted to. I did get her and rode up Summit Point

and spent a couple of days with a girl friend. Then I went on down to Ucola and spent a

day with Dorothy Rasmusson. (It was) about the nicest time I ever had. Clarence wrote

to me from Indian Creek and continued to write. He wrote nice letters.

Excerpts from The Early Years of Ruby Ray:

(When we lived at LaSal). . . in the draw there where that light thing is going up to

the Far West uranium mine. . .we started to dig a well. Dad “witched” it (located water

with a forked willow stick, a practice still used by some people today) and found where

water was running. Then he built a “windlass” (a winch, worked by a crank, to pull

buckets out of a well) . I dug the dirt and he pulled it up till we got down to bedrock.

Then I pulled it and he dug the rock. But I got a blister on my hand and it kept getting

worse and worse until I knew I just couldn’t hang on to that windlass. I said, “Mother, I

don’t dare run that windlass today. I don’t think I can hold it. I’m afraid my hand is too

sore and I’d drop the bucket on Dad.” And she said, “Well, why don’t you tell your

Dad?” She wouldn’t tell him, so I got down to the well and said, “Dad, I don’t think I

can run that windlass. I’m afraid my hand is too sore and I’d drop the bucket on you.”

He looked at my hand. “My God girl, I guess you can’t run the windlass. Why didn’t

you tell me you had was sore?” It swelled up and I got on the horse and went up to the

town site at LaSal. I showed it to Mrs. Herring and asked her what to do for it. She said,

“Well, put pitch gum on it.” So I put pitch gum on it and it swelled up clear around here

and way up around my fingers and clear back down around my wrist. And the pussy

blister wouldn’t come to a head. I could hardly hold the lines to drive the horses. We

had to haul water from Big Indian. There was a mill there where there had been a copper

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mine. Elaine Skews lived there in the summer, and Dad was care taker.

When I was in the sixth grade, some friends asked Mother if I could go up and live

and go to school at Blanding. They said they would keep me in school and she let me go.

I went to school there in Blanding for two or three months. Then Dad decided to move

out to Sego to go to work. Mother called me and told me to get on the bus at noon and

come to Monticello. She met me and picked me up in a cart. Dad had taken and put a

box on the front funning gears of the wagon and it was just a two wheeled cart. We went

back to Monticello in that and every time we’d to over a bump, I’d wait for the next one,

‘cause we’d been use to riding in a wagon. Then he put the wagon back together and we

went to Sego in the wagon. It took several days, quite a while to get there. Then he

turned the horses loose on the desert and left the wagon and kept the damned harness.

We had a big old box and kept the harness in that box. Turned the horses loose on the

desert, abandoned the wagon and hauled the harness around and you wonder why.

That was the sixth grade. I went a little while in Blanding and then we went to

Sego. We were there till Christmas, then Dad got disgusted with the mining company,

‘cause they paid once a month. They give you script to use in the store and charged you

double price for everything, then when your check come there wasn’t enough left to be

worth while, you know. . . . And Dad was pretty dissatisfied. After Christmas he had

enough check to move on.

Dad was funny. We got on the train then and went to Provo. . . . Aunt Stella lived

there. We stayed there two or three days, then we took the train to Leeds. I can’t

remember, but anyway we went on the train to Leeds, then took the stage to St. George.

Leeds was as far as the railroad went. We took the stage to St. George, hauling that big

box of harness and all of our worldly goods, which wasn’t much. We got a hotel room

and spent the night. The next morning Dad went down and looked around town. And we

got back on the stage and went back to Leeds. Dad decided St. George wasn’t the place

for him. There was no work

At Leeds we got back on the train. Someone on the train told Dad that there was

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work in Oasis. So we got off in Oasis and spent the rest of the winter there. We thinned

beets all summer, and Dad went to Salt Lake and got a Model T car. We got around in

that to different beet fields, to thin beets. We all worked all summer. Mother was

pregnant with Jenny, so she didn’t work much. We camped in a little shack and just

lived and worked hard. Then we moved on. We got in that little old Model T and started

back to LaSal. Had to walk up most of the hills. The car wasn’t running very good and

dad didn’t know anything about it. We got to Monticello and the tires wore off. Of

course we didn’t have enough money to buy any new ones, or get any second hand ones,

so we went on rims and it rained like heck. We all huddled up in the car. Vern got under

it and slept on a quilt. We huddled in there until morning. Then Dad walked on up to

Bradford’s and got them to come and get us in the wagon. They took us up to their place

and come and got us in the wagon. They fed us a good breakfast and took us on to the

ranch. There we were.

From the sixth to the eighth grade, we were there on the ranch. School was in the

old Fuller house about two and a half miles away.

Back to the DeLong interview:

Dad went away to work and mother rented a house uptown for ten dollars a month,

which some people had just moved out of. She set us up at the town site, where we

could

get to school comfortably, and I went to school that year. Took the eighth grade just to

get to go.

Q. Was that LaSal?

A. Yes. Next year, just about the time school started, Uncle Charley came by and Dad went

with him to go find work. They went over out of Denver. Then he wrote and said if we

wanted him to support us, we’d have to come where he was. We got the corn harvested.

We had this big field of corn. Dad had worked for Prewer, up to LaSal, during the

summer. I guess he borrowed Prewer’s equipment, because he had a plow with handles

that you followed with the reins around your neck. But he had a riding attachment, a seat

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and two wheels. Well, I plowed about twenty acres with that, then one day it caught on a

big old bush I had to get out. While I was pulling the bush out from the plow, there was a

rattlesnake in the rear of it. I had to walk back to the house to get a shovel to kill the

rattlesnake.

Q. Ruby, I’ll bet you were scared.

A. Well, I didn’t like snakes, and I’d killed a few of them, but he was asleep and never did

wake up. Didn’t think about taking the single tree off the plow to kill him with. I had to

walk back to the house and get a shovel. Anyway, I plowed that field and dug a trench to

plant the corn in. It was kinda like a cultivator, but just had one blade on it, so we made

furrows, and planted the corn. I can’t remember if we borrowed a harrow, but we

harrowed it in. Anyway, we planted a field of corn and then had to weed it all summer. I

could hoe two rows while Vern hoed half of one. We hoed the corn all summer and got

it cut and shucked. We raised quite a good patch of beans. I think we had fifty or

seventy-five pounds of beans.

Q. That’s dry beans?

A. Yes. After we got ‘em thrashed, Dad made a flail. It was like a big stick, and he fastened

a rubber string along it, then tied another piece of wood, about this long, like a handle.

That piece of wood fell flat with that flail, so we got the beans all pulled in on a cart,

then hit them with that flail. It did a lot better job than walking on them or anything else

we knew of to do.

Q. That was the only way you could shell the beans?

A. Out of the pods when we got ‘em finished. We had about seventy-five pounds of beans

and quite a big stack of shucked corn, all harvested and ready to go. Then we got a letter

from Dad saying he wouldn’t send any more money back to San Juan County. If we

wanted him to support us, we had to go where he was. He was out of Denver, about

twenty miles north. Lucian bought this corn we had shucked, and Mother canned some

peaches. Lucian took Vern out to get a load of wood, then took him to Moab and sold

the wood. I went to the store and bought a case of fruit jars. We ate some of the peaches

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carrying them home on the saddles from the store, which is about four miles. Now, what

we couldn’t eat Mother canned. She had to sell them to Lucian, too. We got a little

money out

of it, not much, but it helped us along the trail.

We started out with that darn little buggy. It was like a little wagon and team that

they used to deliver milk in. The big old black horse was crippled and the horses didn’t

have any shoes on. We started out in October and went as far as old LaSal. We stopped

at Lynn Day’s father’s place for the night. Lynn was just a boy ‘bout my age. It snowed

six inches. The next morning we had to move out in six inches of snow and go down

Paradox Hill. We spent the night at Paradox, where the store is. We had our beds that

rolled out on the ground, and Dutch ovens and frying pans to cook in.

Q. Pretty primitive.

A. Oh, I wrote that story and Del (Ruby’s fifth husband) just had a fit. He said, “Well, who

greased the wagon?” I said, “Well, I did an Vern helped me. I could pull the wheel and

he could put the axle grease on. He knew how to do it.” The horses could only make

about twenty miles a day, ‘cause they were not shod and the roads were so bad. They

were gravelling the roads with great big ol’ rocks. The horses were weak to start with,

‘cause they had just grass all summer, while they were in the pasture. When we got to

Gunnison, Mother stopped and went in the post office, or somewhere, and asked how

we’d make it over the pass. There’s a big pass somewhere over there. The men told her,

“You’ll never in the world make it. You’d freeze to death in that outfit. You could never

make it over that mountain with that outfit.” There was a farm down there and we went

down to see if they’d take the horses for the winter. The lady took us in, fed us, and let

us sleep in a bed. That was in Gunnison, Colorado.

We got that far and Mother called, or wired, Dad. She told him we couldn’t make

it any farther with that outfit. We left the horses there to pasture for the winter, and Dad

sent us train tickets. It took two or three days for them to come. Mother went up town

and bought a little piece of cotton crepe and made me a blouse, then bought me a little

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skirt to go with it. Vern had overalls that he could wear, but I didn’t have anything but

overalls. I couldn’t go on the train with nothing. We got to Lafayette, ‘bout twenty miles

out of Denver, and got off the train.

From The Courting Years of Ruby Ray:

I continued to correspond with Clarence (Tangreen) after we got to Lafayette. I’d

dream when letters came in on the train. I was so homesick for the blue skies and

mountains in Utah. The skies were always grey there (in Lafayette).

Back to the DeLong interview:

Dad had a house rented. There wasn’t much in it, just a bed, a stove and a table,

so we got by. We stayed there till Christmas, when Dad got out of work. He had sold

aluminum and knew how to sell people stuff, so he took a job of canvassing ladies’ wear

and men’s socks and stuff. He got me a case, too. We went to Ft. Collins and tried our

luck at selling that stuff. And he got me a pair of high-top, old fashioned lace-up shoes.

We didn’t have too much luck.

We went to Ft. Collins on the bus to work. We didn’t do too good so he took the

cases back. He got a job in Ft. Collins on a farm. He hired a truck to move us up to Ft.

Collins. It was winter and cold. He, Mother, and Jenny rode in the cab. He loaded what

little furniture we had and a couple of quilts on top. We were in the back with those

quilts, but it was still cold as heck. I was quite sick when we got there. I vomited and

was sick all night. He didn’t know I was sick, and told me I’d better go out and canvas

that stuff. We still had the kits at that time, and there were some houses away from

where we lived. I went up and canvassed a couple of those and didn’t do any good, so I

came on home and went to bed. I came down with rheumatic fever. I was sick for quite

while. He didn’t realize how sick I was. He come in and said, “You’d better go to town

in the morning and see if you can find a job.” Well, I hobbled over to the neighbors on a

broomstick and called an ad that was in the paper for a housekeeper. They said they had

already hired a girl. The next morning they called back and the girl hadn’t shown up.

They wanted me to come to work. I was quite miserable. My hands and feet were all

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swollen, and I couldn’t stand up very long. The lady was old, I’d say about fifty or fifty-

four, but she seemed old. I had to sit down to wash dishes, and I had to make the bed.

Then she helped serve the meals and stuff. I couldn’t lift the coffee pot, because I had

rheumatic fever and was crippled. It took me twenty minutes to lace up my shoes in the

morning, those high-topped shoes.

She let me keep working. I could sit on that high stool and wash the dishes. She

had about twenty men she fed all the time. I could do a lot of the work, but there were

some things I couldn’t do. She’d have the other girls pour the coffee and do the things I

couldn’t do, so I worked there until May, I think.

School was out and they had just put in a new sugar beet factory up in Wyoming.

Dad decided to go up there and thin beets, ‘cause he could work the whole family that

way. And they were furnishing transportation. They had rented a train car for the help

to

go up there on. We piled into that car and went to Wyoming.

Q. He must have had an awful struggle trying to raise and support all of you.

A. Wages for a man was three dollars a day, most of the time, when you could find a job.

Mother was simply never able to do much of anything. She crocheted and sewed blocks

and fussed around. She cooked meals most of the time, but sometimes she wasn’t able to

even do that.

Q. Where did you go in Wyoming?

A. Wheatland. I had to quit my job at the boarding house. I had a boy friend that took me to

the theater and places there. He went out to see me one day, and we were gone. He

found us at the train station long enough to say goodbye.

Q. Do you remember his name?

A. Harry Hosmer. He was real nice.

Mother got a job taking care of this lady who had hiccups so bad that she couldn’t

do anything. Dad was working for the farmer, and he had a little two room shack that we

lived in. I was chief cook and bottle washer, as well as baby sitter for the kids. I had to

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do laundry and everything, get the meals and take care of the baby. Then Dad wanted me

to go pitch hay with ‘im, be a man. I told him I wouldn’t do it.

Q. Is that the first job you refused?

A. Yeah. I was only sixteen, but he thought I should go out and pitch hay, ‘cause I was

strong and able to do most anything. But I wasn’t going to go out and pitch hay with a

bunch of men. They got the hay up.

From The Courting Years of Ruby Ray:

Dad had heard what a wonderful place Bellingham, Washington was and had

written the Chamber of Commerce for information, which sounded wonderful. (About

that time,) Clarence came to Wheatland to see me. He asked be to marry him and I

excepted and we were engaged. He sent me a diamond ring and a wristwatch. We all

left the gate at once, Clarence going back to town to catch a train back home, the rest

going the other was (to Bellingham).

We had packed our bedding, dishes, etc., into a big box and shipped them to

Bellingham. We were picked up by a flat bed truck and all got to Cheyenne, Wyoming

together and stayed in a camp park that night. The next morning we started out together,

down a nice street full of houses, Dad in the lead, the rest of us trailing along behind. We

met a young lady and her boy friend. I heard the girl say: “What a way to travel.” I stuck

my nose in the air, like I owned the town. I’d like to have gone through the pavement.

Dad divided the money he had, $16.50 to me, $16.50 to Mother, $16.50 to him and

$7.50 to Vern. He took Ireta and Thelma and caught a freight train. They got there soon

without incident. Vern got picked up by the cops as a runaway and had to give them my

life-long friend, Jewell Fuller’s name, who lived in Mt. Vernon, Washington. She

cleared him with the cops and they let him go.

Mother and I had Jenny. She was two or three, too big to carry and not big enough

to walk. We had a suitcase and a couple of quilts in a bedroll. Mother and I walked and

walked. I’d carry Jenny and she’d carry the bed roll and suitcase, then I’d carry the

bedroll and suitcase and Jenny would walk a ways.

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We got two or three short rides, then some people going through Yellow Stone

Park gave us a ride. We camped with them at night and they took us to the Montana

entrance. We went a couple of days, rolled our quilts out in a bar ditch and didn’t get

very far. Then a man picked us up and was very kind. He bought us some snacks and

had to make a side trip on this business. He said if we’d wait until he got back he’d take

us to the next large town. He was very kind and told us “Hold your hand up, stick your

thumb out, let people know you need a ride.” We did better after that. . . .

. . . We went through a redwood tree with the road cut through it, and picked

blackberries growing wild along a fence. We got to Mount Vernon, looked up the Fullers

and had dinner with them. Went on to Bellingham on the inter-urban. Some of the track

was built out in the ocean.

We lost our suitcase and bed roll off one of the rides we got. The people that

found the suitcase found our address in a a letter that was in it and sent it to us.

Back to the DeLong interview:

We got to Spokane, Washington. A trucker picked us up and took us through town

to a little town the other side of Spokane. We’d run out of money, so Mother stopped at

a store and Post Office and inquired about work. There happened to be a man there that

was looking for someone to cook for his harvest crew. It was in the wheat belt. All

rolling hills and all wheat. The thrashing crew hadn’t got to his place yet.

He was a widower. He said, “Well, I’ll need a cook for the crew, when I get the

combine. I don’t know how long it’s gonna be, but you’re welcome to come out and

stay, then I’ll pay you when you begin cooking. It will be four or five days work.”

So he took us out to his ranch. He had a nice home and a piano. I poked on it a

little bit to kill time. He said there was a neighbor up there who had a little pony in the

garage and he was quite a pet. He said, “You can take this pony and ride anytime you

want to.” The night we got out there, he went out to chop his wood and cut his finger

off.

Mother was petrified. She couldn’t begin to stand the sight of blood. I had to take care

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of his finger. I wrapped it up and put turpentine on it, and did the best I could. He had

to

go work everyday, but that finger was pretty bad. I would jump on that little pony and

take some bandages to where they were threshing, and dress his finger at noon.

Q. And you put turpentine on it?

A. Yeah, that’s all I knew and that’s all he had.

Q. And it saved the finger”

A. Oh yeah. Well, no, it was cut off and he lost the finger. He found it the next morning,

but it was too late. Mother couldn’t take care of it, she couldn’t even start to. Ruby

could do it, Ruby can do anything. He told me there was a girl about my age just a

couple of farms over, and how to get there. He says, “You can get on that little pony and

go see her if you want,” so I did that one day. Her name was Octavia Dubois.

Q. I marvel at how well you can remember names from that long ago.

A. Well, it was such a different name. I’d never heard of Octavia before and I always

remembered it.

Q. Now this is while you were in Washington?

A. We were where the wheat belt is over there in Washington, not very far from Oregon.

It was in the wheat belt and the threshing was going on. We stayed at his place close to

two weeks, before he got the combine. Then there were two or three days of cooking for

a bunch of men to feed. After we got a little money, we were on the way again.

We wrote to Dad general delivery, ‘cause he got there in three or four days,

with just the girls on the train. He had a house rented and had groceries and things

when we finally got there. I think we called him and he come and got us. He was

working where there was a post office. Mother wrote to him from where we were and

got a letter written back to him general delivery so he knew we were coming.

Q. What did you do in Bellingham?

From The Courting Years of Ruby Ray:

I went to work in the canning factory, canning pears. You cored fifty half pears to

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a pan, and did two pans for six cents. I made about $2.60 per day. That was about

standard wages. The new sugar factory was just opening up and Dad got on as a

carpenter. He got me on as relief operator, so I did a different job every day for six days.

That lasted a couple of months.

Back to the DeLong interview:

A. . . .After that, I worked for a lady who had an operation. She couldn’t get anyone to take

care of her little kids. I was sixteen by then.

(Continued from Courting Years) Then mother had another sick spell and I was

home to take care of her for a couple of weeks before Christmas. At Christmas time

some charity organization delivered a big box to us with a lot of food and a few toys.

Mother and Dad were pleased. I was embarrassed.

Q. Your schooling was by learning experience, wasn’t it?

A. I guess so, I didn’t get much help. I was taking a correspondence course in sewing and I

think the books were three dollars. I got through with the books I had, then I couldn’t

afford to get the others. I didn’t have any money when I was married.

Q. You must have learned an awful lot from those books. You’ve always been a good

seamstress.

A. Mother wasn’t particularly a good seamstress, but I just had an eye for it I guess. I

learned before I opened the books, ‘cause I took in sewing when we first moved to town,

before Lenore was born. (Tape changed and new session.)

A. I don’t know where we left off on the other tape, but by this time I’d married Clarence

(“Doc”) Tangreen and we were living in a sheep camp.

Q. You didn’t have much housekeeping, did you? The floors were pretty small.

A. Housekeeping wasn’t up to much. I had a pine bough and I’d sweep the floor, what little

was left after we rolled the beds up.

Q. I wonder how people would manage if they had to do that today?

A. They probably would if they had to. If they had to, they’d know what it was all about.

They couldn’t believe it now.

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Q. No. No, they couldn’t. Now they’d run the other way, wouldn’t they?

A. No place to run (in those days). No paved roads or paved sage brush. It wasn’t that hard

then, because it was what you were used to, what you expected.

Q. Were all your children born here in Moab.

A. Yes. Dixie is the oldest, then Andrew. Dixie was born in the hospital, and Andrew was

born in the house Lucien lived in. It was next to Mrs. Bailey, where Ralphie lives. When

Dough was born, Clarence made arrangements with Mrs. Hector to keep me and the two

little kids till my baby came. We lived with her for a month, then Doug was born. Then

we went back to LaSal and lived at Lucien’s place.

Q. Did Lucien live in Montana at one time?

A. No, I think he lived in Idaho when his dad died. They came back from somewhere up

there. I can’t remember the name of the town, but it’s on the border of Idaho, I think.

Anyway, her brothers were in Idaho. When Clarence’s dad died, they took over the ranch

and moved back here. They were my mother’s neighbors while we still lived at LaSal.

Q. Did you live up at old LaSal, or down where it is now?

A. Down where it is now, but we lived way down in the valley where the Hecla Mine is.

My cornfield was where the light company is now. It’s all grown up to sagebrush now.

Q. You were going to tell me about some of the experiences when you milked the

cows.

A. Well, we lived on the ranche for quite a while and it was quite a ways from town. I didn’t

know anything about town. We finally moved to town before Lenore was born, and

Clarence bought a little old shack that didn’t have any lining in it at all. It was just 2X4s

inside, 2X4s on the roof, no sheeting. I had to carry cardboard boxes from town and open

them up and tack ‘em up on the walls. I covered the cracks with strips of sheets, so the

cracks wouldn’t show and then I took in ironing to get enough wallpaper to wallpaper the

inside. But it looked decent and I took in ironing enough to make curtains. The floors

were bare, but I scrubbed them with lye and soapsuds and got them nice and shiny and

clean. Water ran down through the cracks when I washed. I’d do the laundry on the

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board, then I’d scrub the wash basin, potty chair, and highchair, besides the floor. I’d

usually get the laundry or ironing in and do that the same day. Then I could take or do

sewing for people.

Q. What did you charge people for sewing?

A. Well, I made a dress for Maude Reed. She had some material someone had given her,

calico. I made a dress for her for fifty cents and took an old hen for pay, and made soup

for the kids.

Q. Is that the only time you had to take chickens for your work?

A. That’s the only time I took chickens. I sewed for Aunt Lou to pay her to take care of me

when Lenore was a baby. She would come up and dress the baby, and give me a bed bath

while I had to stay in bed. We stayed in bed ten days, in those days; not just get up the

next day. That was quite a change. They thought that it would make the generations

stronger to have the mother stay in bed until she got her strength back.

Q. All she did was get weaker?

A. Yes. I don’t know. I raised a garden that year and Lenore was born the sixth of

September. She wasn’t due until the fourth of October, but she came early and I didn’t

have a stitch to put on her. I had a little ol’ shirt that Mother made for me when I was a

baby, ‘cause I only weighed four pounds. She couldn’t buy one that fit me. So Lenore

wore that shirt and a dish towel for a diaper.

Q. Oh, boy. And you washed that diaper a lot of times, didn’t you?

A. Well, I had two or three dish towels, of course. And I had several flour sacks, so we got

by for a little while, until I could order some flannel to make diapers out of.

Q. I wonder what girls would do today?

A. If they even had to was diapers. They just buy Pampers and it costs about $600 to keep

a baby in Pampers in their diaper years. I don’t see how they can afford it.

Q. It seems like today the girls don’t try to help the husbands save and make money.

They want to spend everything he brings in. Like we did. We were actually more

concerned about saving than spending.

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A. Everything is so high, I don’t know how people live any more. But they don’t wear

much, a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and everybody’s happy. I guess they get along fine.

Q. After Lenore was born, who was next.

A. Eva Lou. And she was born in the same house. It was across the street from the Seventh

Day Adventist Church, First North and Third East, second house from the corner.

Q. How long did you live there?

A. Oh, I don’t know. We moved to Tropic one year when my dad was there. Clarence got

Lucien to show him the house. And we lived there. We rented a two bedroom house.

Dad had a coal mine outside of town, about five miles. I took care of Mother’s two girls

who were in school; Jenny and Wanda. Wanda was a year younger than Dixie, and Dixie

was nine and Jenny was thirteen. They took turns doing the supper dishes. When Jenny

did ‘em, she put all the kettles in the warming oven behind the stove so Dixie would have

to do them when she did the dishes.

And then after school had been going a while, we kept the girls in school and

Mother stayed out with Dad at the mine. I had all those kids to take care of. In about

October, Jenny and Wanda had the itch. My kids got it, so we had to doctor that. They

all had to have a bath every evening and I had to daub sulfur and lime in lard on their itch

spots, and either wash their cloths or hang ‘em out in the sun every day, along with their

pajamas and whatever they wore. So I had my hands full. Lenore and Eva Lou were

both little, in high chairs. We had two highchairs. We took one with us and there was

one in the house, so there was a highchair for each of them and that’s how we managed.

Eva Lou would be about a year old and Lenore about four.

The house we rented belonged to the people who lived next to us and they had a

pretty big apple orchard. We’d picked apples on shares, so we had a big bin full of

apples on the porch. We had lots of apples for the winter. Ireta and Sy came over for

Christmas. They lived down the country.

Q. Were they in Orderville at that time?

A. In Orderville, yes. And they came over for Christmas. Jenny went back with them and

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stayed the two weeks for vacation time. I had a miscarriage Christmas day.

Q. How long were you in Tropic?

A. Just that winter. In the spring Lucien came and got us and we went back to Moab.

Clarence went to get a job, but he couldn’t find a job anywhere else but Moab. He come

back to Moab and went back to work with the sheep, so we moved back. He was up on

the Mason ranch. Lucien moved us up there. He was so busy he couldn’t even feed us

when we got there. Just yard work and sheep right there.

Q. You and Clarence lived most of your married life here in Grand County?

A. Oh, yes.

Q. It was quite warm in Tropic in the wintertime, so it wouldn’t have been as cold in

Panguitch?

A. We had five foot of snow in Tropic, Utah. It covered the fence posts. We were snowed

in. Couldn’t hardly get out, and then Rose died. Thelma’s husband had a little one

seated car and they got the roads cleared so we could get out and we came to the funeral

in Moab. They got us over to Moab and back to Panguitch.

Q. Now who was Rose?

A. Clarence’s (and Alta Larsen Tangreen’s) daughter. She was a little younger than me, but

she had three little kids. She died with the last baby. She said, “I wish you was my

mother.” I said, “Well, we’ll just play I am and we’ll be fine.”

Q. You took care of her?

A. She had two little girls and she’d come up to the house everyday about 11:00 o’clock. in

time for dinner. I didn’t have anything. That was about the time Lenore was born. I had

a garden and a charge account, but I was awful careful, because I knew that I couldn’t get

more than thirty dollars worth of anything. Not that much because, of course, Clarence

had to have his tobacco and whatever. But she’d come up everyday about 11:00 and have

dinner and then she’d stay until after supper. Then she’d have to leave right quick to get

her kids to bed, and leave the dishes for me to do, too. But she was a sweetheart and

those kids were very precious. That was before we went to Tropic, ‘cause she died the

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winter we were in Tropic and there was five foot of snow and we came to the funeral.

She was married to a Darrow. Anyway, she is buried in that lot. Helen’s mother died.

That’s the youngest of those three girls of Clarence’s (and Alta’s). When her mother

died, she brought her over here and buried her in the lot. She had to buy the lot, ‘cause it

hadn’t been paid for. Then when my Del died, I went to Burke (Taylor) to try and find a

lot. He asked me if I wanted the new cemetery or the old one. I said I would rather have

it in the old cemetery, but there isn’t any room left there. He said, “There is a lot and it’s

a lot bigger than it used to be.” He said, “When Helen’s mother died, she had to pay for

it, and probably nobody will ever want to use it anymore. She hasn’t got any relatives

that would want to use it, has she?” I said, “No, I don’t thionk so. Helen’s sons said

they

wouldn’t.”

But it turned out people had just ordered the tombstones and had put them just

anyplace there in the lot. Burke had to locate the graves and put them where they

belonged. Burke found that there’s room for me. I didn’t have to pay for the lot. Dixie

called Helen’s son, who is still living in Grand Junction, to see if he had any objection to

us using the lot. He said, “No, they’d be very glad to have someone on it who was

interested in taking care of it.” So that was good. Del is buried there and there is still

room for me. Burke gave me a deed to the lot.

Q. That was one break you got. Where is Clarence buried?

A. He’s buried in the Trangreen lot, just across the road. It’s on this side of where the

building is where they take cazre of their equipment. And we’re on the other side and

down a little bit.

Q. So you’ll be pretty close to him anyway, won’t you?

A. Not that it matters.

Q. No, it doesn’t. Things in this life we get kinda shook up about, but it doesn’t

matter

where we are.

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A. We had a hard time finding the deed to that lot. Well, Helen had to pay for it when her

mother died. And her name was Havashielt. They looked under Havashielt and found it,

so we got it squared away.

Q. What about things you’ve made in your life, the things you’ve sewed and given

away, the dolls you’ve dressed?

A. Doug come by the other day. I said, “Look around this place and see if there is anything

you’d like to have?” He looked around and said, “Well, I’d like to have one of those

little dolls you made for Christmas one year, that sit on the roll of toilet paper.” I had

one in on the toilet in my bathroom. It was faded on the skirt, so I took it off and turned

it wrong-side-out, then put it back on. I got it for him. I couldn’t find a doll to make a

new one.

Q. That must have been a childhood memory of his.

A. No, Delma took theirs when she left him. That was the only thing he wanted that I gave

him for Christmas. I made them for all the kids at Christmas, and that was the one thing

he wanted. She got about everything they had, even that little doll. When they got their

divorce I spoke to her and said, “You were my daughter for forty years.” Her eyes got

teary and she gave me a good love, but I haven’t seen her anymore since.

Q. How many dolls did you make like that?

A. I made enough for all my kids and a couple of friends. I can’t remember, eight or ten.

Q. Well, I remember a few years ago when you were buying dolls at yard sales and

decorating them up. I think you made about twenty, didn’t you; and gave away to

your grandchildren?

A. I got the dolls, but I don’t think I got ‘em dressed. I gave one to Katie’s little girl in the

wheelchair. She can’t talk. She can’t do anything. She can make a sound, but she can’t

say anything. She can look please and happy, and she was so pleased to get that doll. I

dressed it in the dress I made for Vicki when she was little. This is Kay’s and Dennis’

granddaughter. She was born that way. She’s thirteen now and she’s pretty hard to

handle. Her daddy has to carry her every place. She lives in Orem, I think. They come

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down for Christmas and maybe the fourth of July or something. I give her that little doll

and she was so tickled with it. I was making a white and lavender afghan. I had just

finished it and her mother said, “That’s her colors,” so I gave it to her and she was so

tickled.

Q. You have made a lot of people happy with your afghans, haven’t you?

A. Oh, a few. I give quite a few away. The other day we had a fellow come and do the

sprinkling system. He come in to get paid and I had yarn all over the floor. I said, “I’ve

made a lot of afghans, too.” I opened the closet and showed him and he said, “Would

you sell one?” I said, “Well, I guess so, I think I have plenty.” So he picked one out and

said, “How much do you want for it?” I had to think about how much yarn was in it, and

then I told him $20.00. He brought me the money just yesterday.

Q. That wouldn’t have been enough money, would it?

A. Not any more than enough, that’s for sure.

Q. You ought to get $50-$100 for those.

A. Nah.

Q. That was all your love thrown in, huh?

A. I told him he could have a rug, too. I give him the rug. He took it home and he really

liked them.

Q. How many rugs have you made?

A. Oh, maybe eight or ten. (Ruby’s great grandmother brought the pattern for these rugs

from Scotland. Her mother had one from before she was married. She made another one

later when Ruby was about thirteen years old. Ruby helped sew this one and has made

several since that time.)

(There is a break in the telling and then it starts right off.

. . .I made two bedspreads, about this long and this wide, you know. I pieced them

together and made one bedspread out of it. I’ve got one of them left and gave the other

one to my friend who lived up the country. She’s dead now.

Q. You’ve been real creative.

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A. If I had to have anything, I had to be creative.

Q. But that’s when we do our best thinking is when we’re the most desperate, you

know it?

A. If I hadn’t been able to sew, we’d never had a stitch to our names.

(Another break in the tape and it starts off again.)

And in the spring, Clarence come home and he’d sold the sheep to Charley Red for

$3.00 a head. We’d paid $9.00 for ‘em, and he’d sold the sheep to Charley Redd for

$3.00 a head. Then he went to work for Charley Redd for $25.00 a month, instead of

forty he was getting. And we were living in that little ol’ shack. I can’t remember if it

was before Lenore was born, or not. It was later, but anyway he went to work for

Charley

Redd on about the 28

th

of May. He took a ten day layoff for the 4

th

of July and come

home with a brand new Stetson hat, cost $8.00. That’s not a lot, but when you’re

working for $254.00 a month, it’s quite a bit. It always took $5.00 a month for his

tobacco. When he come home with that new Stetson hat, a quart of whiskey, and some

damn firecrackers, and not a damn penny in his pocket for us to eat on, or for anything

else the kids might need, I was not amused. Can you believe it?

Q. That would be hard to believe. He must not have had any schooling in

mathematics.

A. He didn’t have any sense in anything. A quart of whiskey and a bunch of firecrackers

with four kids almost starving, and his wife with no cloths, except when she could

manage to get some material and sew some.

Q. Is that why his first wife left him? (His first wife was Alta Larsen Tangreen.)

A. Oh, I don’t know. I have no idea. She worked and she had three little kids and he never

provided for them at all. He said he had Essie Larsen (Alta’s sister) make out an order

for coats for them one year for Christmas, and he sent the order and paid for ‘em each a

coat. They probably had coats, but Alta told ‘im she sent ‘em back and got the money.

Well, I don’t blame her. She probably had to send them back and get the money.

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Q. He just thought you could live on thin air, huh?

A. Those sheep were ready to lamb and they’re warm. Dil probably wanted the wool.

Clarence got mad and quit and sold them to Charley Redd for $3.00 a head. Then he had

the wagon and team to get rid of. He turned that over to Lucian and he traded ‘em or

sold ‘em and give Clarence a little money, not much. Just can’t believe them dumb

things he did. He took five dollars a month for his tobacco. I never saw five dollars,

ever.

Q. I can’t believe you stayed with him that many years.

A. Oh, I was a good Mormon. I thought that I had to have the marriage to have my kids in

the next world. Now it doesn’t matter. They’re growing up on their own. And I don’t

want the ones ahead of me telling me what to do.

Q. You want to do what you want to do. What do you want to do?

A. I don’t want anybody judging me.

Q. We live and learn, don’t we?

A. I don’t know if we learn or not.

(There is another break in the tape. Starts abruptly with

Ross came down from Salt Lake for Christmas vacation and put wainscoting around

inside of the house and sheetrock out side.

Q. Was John (Shafer) angry that you were angry that you were adding a room?

A. He didn’t seem to be, didn’t say anything. But my mother was there and he said, “And

she thinks I’m going to help put heat in.”

Q. Did he not want your mother there?

A. No, he had a real crush on Mother. They were having a helluva good time. But when I

had to take Mother in, he had such a fit. We got the room finished. Dixie and Ross came

up to watch television on Mother’s television, ‘cause they were used to having it in Salt

Lake. And they came up to watch television this one evening. Wade had two or three

boyfriends in the kitchen and they had a Warshaurke (sp?) catalog. That’s a car parts

catalog. They were talking about car parts and what they needed for what they were

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doing. They didn’t make a loud noise. They didn’t talk loud or anything, but it was

summertime, and it was hot. John could hear them. He went to bed, but he could hear

those boys talking. Next morning he got up madder ‘n hell and he “wasn’t puttin’ up

with all that shit.” We had to have that air conditioning, and those kids in the kitchen

were bothering him. So, I went up to LaSal and got a job.

Q. How old was John? Was he a lot older than you?

A. I think he was eleven years older. I didn’t realize what was going on, but Ross told me.

She was cooking dinner for him, and John and she had three hamburgers with the

potatoes, so he had to go home and eat.

Q. Did your mom live with you until she passed away?

A. It’s a sad story, but John raised hell about Wade having a little company ‘cause he’d

never put up with anything that Wade did. Wouldn’t let him play his record player.

Wouldn’t let him do anything. And Wade never asked him for a quarter. He went and

shined shoes at the barber shop to get spending money, ‘cause he wouldn’t have accepted

it if John offered it to him. John was afraid I’d give Wade a dime and he wouldn’t give

me any spending money. The first year we were married, he went down to the store

every week and bought twenty dollars worth of groceries. I had a pretty good start on

that. Then he got tighter than hell. Then he got so he give me ten dollars every Monday

morning for groceries. There was Kay and Wade, and my dad was there most of the

time. John and I had to eat. One week he gave me $2.46, and one week he told me he

didn’t have any money. I cut his and Wade’s hair and now, if I could have a hair set we

could all look nice. But he never give me any money for a haircut. If I was a poor

working widow, I wouldn’t feel too bad about going to Sunday school without hose, but

when I’m married to somebody that thinks they’re the richest man in town, and I can’t

afford a pair of stockings, that’s bad. But he didn’t give me any money to buy a pair of

stockings. He was just tighter than bark on a tree.

After this incident where he raised hell because Wade had a little company and he

had to have air conditioning because the noise bothered him, he got up and went out to

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the trailer the next morning. He was going to pull out. So I went up to LaSal and got a

job. I knew I could get one anytime. I had a little trailer, a small one. I was sleeping on

the couch in the back room. He come out there one night. I said, “Well, I hate to tell you

this John, but I’ve gone up to LaSal and got a job. I’m going up there to get to work. So

he stalked back in the bedroom and that was it. I had to take Mother to Salt Lake, and I

went to LaSal.

Q. So then was your mom at your sister’s all the rest of the years before her death?

A. It wasn’t very long. I think she was all broken up. She was a conscientious little person.

She’d been enjoying a little attention, which she had never had. I don’t believe she could

handle it. She was in the hospital for several months before she died.

Q. And then back to LaSal you went, with Wade?

A. I went to LaSal and cooked at the café. Wade went to work in a filling station and went

to school in Monticello.

Q. And then John was gone?

A. I didn’t have any idea it was a permanent split-up. I’d come down, clean the house up,

and cook something for him anytime I had a little time off. John stayed in town. He had

son there.

After that I went up to LaSal, he come up there one time and took me for a little

ride. He asked me for Mother’s address. He said, “I want to get her a box of candy,” but

his voice broke when he said it. So I gave him the address, but I wouldn’t ride home with

him. I walked back to the café.

Q. So then you went to LaSal and just worked up there until you met Orville?

A. No, I worked up there for a while. Then I worked at the hospital as a cleaning lady. The

people who were just starting that garage up there come down and asked me if I would

go up there and run the café. They offered me a pretty good job, so I quit the hospital

and bought a big trailer and went up there. That was back to LaSal, and Wade was going

to high school in Monticello.

Q. So you spent a lot of your life at LaSal, off and on?

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A. Yes, cooking at the ranch house and cooking in the café.

Q. So during the years that you worked in different jobs, after John and before

Orville, did you have other boy friends that you liked, just not enough to marry?

A. No. I didn’t go out much. I was too busy. I still had quite a family.

Q. But you loved to dance back then.

A. Never had a chance. I didn’t have a chance to dance until I met Orville. He was a

dancing fool.

Q. He was dancing fool, was he? So where did you meet Orville, in LaSal?

A. No. I went down to see Andrew and Eva Lou in Arizona. Andrew was in Tuscon. I

went

and took care of her kids while she worked after her husband left. And then I went down

to Tucson and helped Andrew out for a winter or two. They were having a real hard

time. He wasn’t getting any benefits yet, and couldn’t work. His wife was working and

they were living in a little tiny trailer and hard up as hell, and his pickup was broke down.

So I went down there and let him use my pickup. Bought groceries for the family and

helped them out through that winter. Drove back and helped Eva Lou out through a bad

time when her husband left. Took care of her kids. She went to work in a little truck

stop café. I made her go to work, and I stayed home and tended the kids. Then she’d

take the days off to be with the kids. I got the kids straightened out pretty good. See

that

they had what they needed. Then I went down to Andrew’s another winter. I was at

Eva

Lou’s off and on. I helped her out quite a bit after her husband left.

Q. So there were quite a few years there between John and when you met Orville?

A. There were eight years between John and Orville. So I chased around and spent time

with different ones of the kids. Spend one year in California with Wade.

Q. Bet you had a pretty nice eight years there after all those years with Clarence and

John. You deserved those eight years.

Eastern Utah Human History Library

Ruby Ray Tangreen Zufelt October 9, 1997

42

A. My dad come back. Hell he was eighty-two when he went down to Baja somewhere and

bought two acres on an island twenty miles off the coast, and built a house and a dock

and some boardwalks. They he sold it and come back to Phoenix and called me and let

me know he was in Phoenix. So I went down to Phoenix and got him and brought him

up to Utah, and took him down to Cottonwood to visit terry. He bought a little trailer.

He wouldn’t stay with me in Moab, ‘cause he didn’t think my kids liked him, or

something. He wouldn’t stay. I took him down to Terry, ‘cause I didn’t want him to be

alone. Terry is my nephew.

Well, he bought a trailer and stayed there. I moved a little trailer I had in Winslow.

I had it here, and Eva Lou’s husband wanted to use it. He come up and got it so it was at

Winslow. I had it moved back down to Cottonwood. Dad moved there by me, and I

could look after him.

Q. Then did he live there until he died?

A. He lived there most of the time. Then he went down to Ireta’s. She was in Phoenix.

Then he got mad at Ireta, and had Andrew come and get him and take him down to

Tucson. Andrew fixed a trailer space out on his place and then he got mad at Andrew.

He got sick. Andy called Jenny to come and get him. She was living in Phoenix at the

time. She finally put him in the hospital.

Q. So where during this time did you meet Orville? In Tucson?

A. My nephew Terry’s wife was Orville’s daughter.