Friday, October 2, 2009

Hauling Potatoes - Walking Tall

During the winter of 1921, Dell, Andrew, and I made a number of wagon trips loaded with potatoes to Sunnyside from Wellington where we lived. We had Uncle Earl Stevensen and his wife, Aunt Chasty, and Uncle Johnny Richards and Aunt Evia all living in Sunnyside. Uncle Johnny was in the butcher business. He lived about a mile and a half out of town. He had a regular house built over a wagon and that was his meat wagon. The meat wagon would go to town six days a week loaded with a variety of meat.

Uncle Earl, Aunt Chasty, and Uncle Johnny would take potato orders for us - a sack of one hundred pounds. Then they would let Mama know how many orders they had. If there were enough orders, Mama would send two wagons. Each wagon would be loaded with thirty to forty sacks of potatoes. Bill Jones, our neighbor, a true friend and a good Mormon, would take his team and wagon along with our team and wagon following him. He went with us a couple of times and from him we learned about how many sacks of spuds to load on a wagon. First, we had to learn that the wagons had to be well greased each trip. Our horses, Ted and Jack, were bigger and stronger than old Bess and Nell. Therefore, we would put about ten more sacks of potatoes on the wagon that Ted and Jack would pull.

After a couple of trips, Mr. Jones didn’t go with us any more. He had a large family and his time was valuable to him. I have heard mama say she had trouble trying to get Mr. Jones to take any money. Mama, being a widow with six children. Mr. Jones felt it his God given duty to do all he could to help mama. In later life, I met Mr. Jones and his family a number of times and, always, God was first in his life. I have never forgotten how he helped our family.


It wasn’t easy hauling and selling our potatoes at Sunnyside. It was dead winter and extremely cold. We had to line the sides and the bottom of the wagon boxes with quilts and also cover the top of the spuds with quilts. It was so darn cold!

In those days people would iron their clothes with what they called drop flat irons which they heated on the stove. While they ironed, they had maybe three or four drop irons on the stove getting hot. When the one they were using began to get cold, they would set it on the stove and, with their fingers press a little latch, which would unlock off the iron, then they would hook the handle on a fresh hot iron the same way and go on ironing.

Well, Mama would heat two or three of these flat irons, wrap them in a sack or blanket to hold the heat, then she would place the irons at our feet. She always put a couple of heavy denim quilts across our laps and over our shoulders. At least a half dozen times, she would tell us to be careful, kiss us good-bye then we would call out to the teams. “Get up Ted and Jack, get up Bess and Nell” and we’d be on our way.

If we got to Sunnyside in time, we would try to deliver as many of the sacks of potatoes as we could, if we had the house numbers of the people who had ordered them. But, generally, we would have to take them to Uncle Johnny’s place where he had a cellar and we would unload all the spuds, then load them again the next morning and deliver them. This was difficult for me because I couldn’t quite lift a hundred pounds of spuds. However, I could work in the wagon and would grab a sack by the ears and drag the sack to the back of the wagon, then, Dell or Andy, and sometimes Uncle Johnny would carry the spuds into the cellar and out again the next day. I believe I finally got the strength to help carry the spuds.

We had to haul four or five bales of hay with us to feed the horses. Most of the time, we had a lot more potatoes than we had orders for, then we would go from door to door trying to sell our spuds.

I can’t remember for sure but it seems to me the price was $1.25 a hundred. I can also remember many disappointments. We had lived in Sunnyside and knew a lot of people. I would think surely Mr. And Mrs. Buckly will buy a sack of potatoes, but they wouldn’t. And a great many would try to jew us down. And maybe our hay for our horses would be all gone, and we had to drive twenty miles to Wellington. Dell and Andy would say, “We’ll let you have a sack for a dollar or maybe seventy five cents.” And again, we wouldn’t be able to sell.

We would take the left over potatoes down and put them in Uncle Johnny’s cellar. Then we would go home with our teams, and Uncle Johnny would take a couple of sacks of spuds each day in the meat wagon and try to sell them for us. All in all it was a tough roll, a hard go. We were between a rock and a hard place. This was all the money mama would have. In those days, there was no relief and mama had six children, the oldest being just twelve years old.

Dell, Andy, and I were all three short horns. We didn’t know sickum, but we were beginning to spread out and to walk tall in our society. We were finding that money to a great many people was their God. We were beginning to find out that to a great many people, a man’s success was judged by the size of the check he could write.

God said, “Love thy neighbor, do unto others as you wish to be done by, peace on earth good will towards all men.”

The cold business world has no place for these bible teachings. Money is too valued and it’s always “first hog to the trough.” But once in a while, we do meet a real good Christian whose convictions are leading him to a much higher victory. Such a person was our great and wonderful neighbor Bill Jones and his wife and children.

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