Old Red and Diamond Drill

We lived on one side of Whitmore Canyon. Dad had built a corral and a nice shed for our milk cow old Red. He also fixed a nice place to keep hay for the cow. In the day time, dad turned old Red, our cow, loose up the canyon to feed. Other people did the same thing. Us three boys, Dell, Andrew, and I, job was to watch and take care of old Red and have her home early evening for milking time.

Above town us kids built a swimming pool in the creek. I was real small, still I did my share. Each kid would bring gunny sacks, the older kids would fill the gunny sacks with dirt and dam off the creek, then we would all pack rocks to brace the sacks and in this way, we had a swimming pool, some places six feet deep. Mama and dad told us boys time and again not to go swimming. They were afraid we might get drowned, but we would go swimming just the same and this is what we were doing instead of watching old Red, our cow.

When it came time to go home, we couldn’t find the cow! Boy howdy, I hope to kiss a grasshopper, we were plumb scared! Especially Dell, as he was the oldest and more accountable than Andy and I were. Just the same, we all three were scared! Dad was a good man, but he was very strict. I sometimes wonder if maybe father wasn’t too strict. Anyway, this is how we learned to swim. And because of swimming, time went by and we lost old Red, our milk cow.

Finally, we gave up looking for the cow and went home. Dad said, “Where is old Red?” “We can’t find her, dad.” Dad exploded! Dell being the oldest got a licking, plus dad sent us back up the canyon in the dark to look for the cow. I don’t believe Andy was with us, just Dell and I and we were real scared and it was dark. Not too long before this happened, some of us kids were up on the mountainside. We had a small fire, it was after dark. Up the canyon, maybe two or three hundred yards, was a mountain lion , a cougar, roaring and squalling, making a lot of noise. Us kids didn’t know it was a lion. People had milk cows just above town, we thought it was a cow bawling. Anyway some men came up, they saw our fire, they asked, “Don’t you boys know that is a lion a roaring.” We said, “No, we thought it was a cow.” One of the men said, “You better get home as fast as you can and we’ll go with you or that lion will eat us all up.” Boy howdy, home we went.

Well, these thoughts were going through my mind and Dell’s as we went up the canyon to look for the cow. Andrew Mortensen had two or three head of saddle horses running up on what we called Jessen Flat and these horses would come down off the mountain to get a drink of water out of the creek in the bottom of the canyon. Dell and I saw them. There was a bay mare called old Fly. She belonged to Mortensen’s and we played with Mort and Lloyd Mortensen all the time. She was gentle. Dell got on first and I got on behind him. Now we didn’t have a rope, no bridle, no nothing to slap her on the side of the neck to make her cross the creek so we could continue on up the canyon to look for old Red. Well, old Fly wouldn’t do what we wanted it to do without a rope and such. She turned to follow the other horses up a real steep bank out of the creek. Dell and I both slid off her back into the water. Now, we were cold, plus soak and wet.

I felt, if we were on that horse, we were safe and didn’t have to worry about lions or anything else. It was real dark. I said, “Dell, we can’t find old Red.” He said, “I know it, but Dad will make us hunt all night to teach us a lesson not to let it happen again.” I said, “Well, let’s go home and talk to mama. So we went home. Dad said, “If I let you stay in the house, will you promise not to lose the cow again?” We replied, “Yes, yes, we promise.” Dad said, “Ok, go out and look in the corral.” We did and to our great surprise, old Red was in the corral and milked. She had come home herself. Dad always gave her a flak of hay and a large pan of brand morning and night. Old Red came home for her special feed. We were a couple of tickled kids.

Boy howdy, another experience, on the opposite side of the canyon and about seventy five yards from where we lived, the creek meandered down through town on this side of the canyon. All the kids in upper and middle town had pooled their efforts. Again, gunnysacks filled with dirt plus rocks and again, another swimming pool in the creek was made. There were always a large group of kids in this pool. Mom and dad didn’t mind letting us boys swim in this pool on account there was always adult people present. The boys wore overalls, legs cut off at the knees and, of course, the girls swim suits completely covered their bodies from knees up.

Just below the swim pool and to the side of the creek, the Utah Fuel Co. had a high power wood pole standing about twenty five or thirty feet high. Down about three feet from the top, there was a six inch cross beam. On each side of the cross beam, were high powered wires carrying power to houses up and down the canyon. In the center of the cross beam was a transformer, I suppose that is what it was, a solid steel black container. I imagine two feet wide and three feet high as near as I can remember. There was a ground wire running down the pole, insulated and fastened to a long, steel rod that was driven into the ground.

Some of the older boys had found out by fastening a small wire to the iron rod and stringing the wire in the water in the bottom of the creek below the swimming pool , little kids too young and not knowing how to swim would go in wading in the shallow water and when they happened to touch one of these wires under the water with their bare feet or legs, boy howdy, I wanna tell ya, you would get a terrible, terrific shock. I, myself, and older boys would wade and get shocked just to dare one another and to find out how it felt.

If my memory is correct, the Van Wagoner boys were the ones who strung the wire in the bottom of the creek in the water. However, no one had any idea how terribly dangerous it really was and, of course, no one’s parents knew about it.

And then one evening old Red, that fine gentle family milk cow of ours, who had been milked, had eaten her hay and pan of brand dad always fed her, left the corral and walked across the canyon, down to the creek to get a drink of water, just the same as she had always done. The pool was full of kids swimming. Some were sitting on the bank. This is what I was doing and I happened to be watching old Red, our cow. Some of the other kids were also watching. Old Red stuck her head down to drink. She no more than touched the water when she fell dead, as quick as if someone had shot her with a high powered rifle. Her front feet were in about six inches of water. Her back feet were out of the water. My brother Dell ran home fast as he could to get my father. In a few minutes a lot of town people had gathered there. There were many angry comments from everyone. It could have been one of their children, and it really was a miracle that it wasn’t one of us instead of the cow.

Everyone said the company should be sued. In a few minutes, company officials came. They said they were sorry it had happened. They didn’t know the kids had done what they did hooking to the ground wire or, I should say ground rod, and stringing wire in the water. The superintendent said they would be glad to pay for the cow and move the transformer if that would make things right. My father said, “No, it’s possible my own boys participated in stretching this wire in the water. Therefore we, as parents, are somewhat to blame. I am only glad it was the cow instead of one of our boys or girls. So I don’t want pay for the cow. If you’ll drag her up the canyon some place, I’ll have my boys go up and burn her up.” To this, the company superintendent agreed.

The next morning, they came with a team of horses. They tied a chain around old Red’s back legs, and they dragged her up above town about a mile into Pasture Canyon a little ways and left her. There was lots of sage brush all around to burn her with. A couple days later, Dad said, “You boys better go up and burn old Red before she begins to smell and stink up the whole country.” So I and my brothers, Mort and Lloyd Mortensen, and a couple of other kids went up to the mouth of Pasture Canyon to burn old Red up. Boy howdy, old Red was all swollen by this time, legs sticking straight in the air. We all went to work piling brush, wood, everything that would burn, we piled on old Red.

When we had a real big pile of brush, eight or ten feet high, all over old Red, we set it on fire. Then we kept piling more brush on her till we had gathered all the loose brush and wood we could find, plus we pulled up all the brush we could and we had a real good fire. But old Red was still there. However, now she was black and she had burst, gone down. Then we began to realize we couldn’t burn old Red up. We had run out of brush and wood to burn, plus we became tired and gave it up.

Pasture Canyon was about two and a half miles long and a tributary that dumped into Whitmore Canyon. On up a little farther in Pasture Canyon from where they had left old Red, the Utah Fuel Co. had what they called a diamond drill, a building built over drilling machinery equipment, etc. Now this drill operated by steam. There was a huge water boiler and, under this water boiler, was an enclosed fire box with a bower fan, a number of valves, gages, etc.

Well, us kids left off burning old Red and went to the diamond drill. When we got there, there was no one about. I think it was Salty Mortenson who suggested we build a fire in the boiler firebox. This we did and soon we had a red hot fire going. None of us knew what the valves, gadgets were for. We turned first this valve and then another valve, monkeying with the boiler. It wasn’t long until the whistle began to blow. We thought this was great! However, this I suppose, was in reality a danger signal of too much steam.

In the meantime, others of us kids were pushing and releasing levers and doing things with the machinery that we shouldn’t have been doing. The results was the drill began to move and to drill, making the building shake. By this time, the whistle was making a terrific, high piercing noise, the blower to the furnace was wide open. Boy howdy! What do we do now? I’ll never forget that whistle, in addition to the noise of the machinery.

We all began to run at the same time, down the canyon we went running down to the bottom of a dry wash. We ran about a quarter of a mile, we stopped, but the whistle kept blowing louder than ever! Then it happened, a great big explosion, sounded like a bomb, a lot of dust, finally all was quiet.

We kept asking each other, “What have we done?” We each knew we had completely destroyed the diamond drill used by the company to core drill down to the earth to see how thick a vein of coal they had, in whatever area they were drilling. We knew that drill cost thousands of dollars. Would our fathers have to pay for it? Worry, worry, our young minds. I was only six or seven years old at the most, the oldest among us wasn’t even eleven years old. We decided to keep our mouths shut and say nothing to no one.

It wasn’t long, however, until the news got around that the diamond drill had blown up! Plus the story got around, us kids had blown the drill up. Dad asked us boys about it. We told him the truth. Dad told the company they shouldn’t have left old Red, the cow, so close to the diamond drill, and that there should have been a watchman at the drill! The company, I think, felt they were partly to blame. They didn’t try or even suggest, at least to my knowledge, they didn’t ask dad to pay one cent. I have often thought about this. Somehow, I think on account of dad being so decent about old Red being electrocuted and not wanting any pay for his cow, the company wrote it off to good experience.

At the time of this writing, I phoned and talked to my brother Andy . I also phoned and talked to Salty Lloyd Mortensen. They both verified what I have written. They both live here in Wellington, Utah. Lloyd said a big fly wheel off the diamond drill, weighing approximately 1500 pounds, is still laying high up on the mountain side where it was blown when the boiler and everything else, I suppose, blew up.