Dad's personal history

Mom and Dad are taking my personal history class. Here's some of Dad's writing so far . . . I'll post more tomorrow.

The Elkhorn Ranch

After a year in Shelley my mother decided she wanted to finish her bachelors degree. She had only a two-year teaching credential from Idaho State and some extra classes from Idaho State and summer school at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. I remember stories about the summer in Moscow. I was a few months old. I was the cutest, smartest little baby you have ever seen. At least that is what I was told. During this time we went to see an aircraft carrier in Seattle Harbor and I was very well behaved. While my parents were in school, a niece of Kate Bennett—another teaching friend of my mother—was my baby sitter. She really learned to love me.

I know that she learned to love me because she told me so. She lived in Concord, California while I was on my mission in Walnut Creek, California. She had my companion and me over to dinner several times. We taught her husband who was not a member of the Church a lesson or two, but he wasn’t interested enough to make much progress. He was a nice guy and told us a very funny story on himself. He was painting their house and a little friend of his daughter stood and watched him carefully while he stopped and had a cigarette. Finally he asked the little boy if something was wrong.

The boy said, “You are going to die.”

He said, “Why!”

The boy said, “Because you’re smoking a cigarette.”

So he put out the cigarette and asked, “Am I going to die now?”

The little boy said, “I don’t know.”

What does all this have to do with the Madson Ranch at Elkhorn? Nothing except my mother discovered that she had enough credits that she could get her degree if she spent two semesters full time at a University. She decided to go to Brigham Young University and leave me with her mother on the Ranch in Elkhorn for the year. I have no idea why she picked BYU. Idaho State, University of Idaho, Utah State and the University of Utah all seem to make more sense. BYU was a small—about 2,000 students—liberal arts college that emphasized teacher training. Maybe she thought it would be easier.

Anyway it was decided. My mother was going to spend the school year at BYU in Provo, Utah and I was going to live with my grandmother on the ranch at Elkhorn. To get to the ranch from Malad, Idaho you drive west on Elkhorn road through St. Johns past the LDS Chapel and turn right onto Madsen Lane when you see the red brick one room schoolhouse. My mother taught her brothers and sisters in that school during her first year out of school. She said it was “hell.” The ranch is about one mile from the school on a dirt road. The road continues on a couple miles until it reaches the foot of the mountains. The Madson ranch is the only ranch on Madsen Lane. I don’t know why there is a discrepancy in the spelling. All I know is may great grandfather spelled his name Madsen. I don’t know if their was a falling out in the family or if they the “o” made it more American.

The Madsens were Danish and originally settled Salem when the got to Utah. My grandfather and four of his brothers ended up in southern Idaho or Northern Utah. They worked as sheepherders and freighted wheat to the railhead at Corinne, Utah near Brigham City. They took honey and other goods back to Idaho and sold them to the settlers. This is how my grandfather got hooked up with a pretty little Welch lady, Ann Amelia Clark. They had 11 children—Earl, Hattie, Elva, James, Jack, Orville, Rex, Grant, Parke, Orlin and Amelia Ann. Earl was killed in 1928 in a farm accident and my grandfather died of a heart attack in 1930 when he was 55 years old. When I came to live at the ranch in 1940 I was five years old and very excited to be living with my aunt and uncles. Amelia Ann was 11, Orlin was 13, Parke was 15 and in high school. Grant was 18 and we saw him quite often. James and Jack ran the farm and had since grandfather’s death. James was the oldest son. He was 18 at the time of Grandfather’s death. He gave up college to take over the ranch. He had just married Idonna Nuttal from Downey when I came to stay at the ranch. So he had a new wife and the responsibility to take care of her, his mother and three teen age siblings and me. He immediately started remodeling the house and by putting in indoor plumbing. That first year he and Idonna lived in a rented house in St. Johns.

It was called a ranch, but it was really a dry farm. My grandparents were married in 1905. They bought the dry farm in Elkhorn the next year. It was isolated—the last farm before the mountains to the north. It took several years of hard work to clear the land of sagebrush—“grubbing sage”—and preparing the land for planting wheat. A dry farm depends on rain to water the crops. The main crop was winter wheat. The land is plowed and harrowed in the spring lays idle all summer. It is planted in the fall. The farm also had some barley and spring wheat—planted in the spring. There was alfalfa grown on some land several miles away that had water rights. I learned about bringing in hay when I was a teenager. The ranch also had milch cows, pigs, chickens, sheep and range cattle—anything to make a buck and feed the family. Of course there was also a vegetable garden.

The house replaced the original log cabin in 1919. The toilet was an outhouse; water was pumped by a windmill that was housed in a shed just east of the house. The only source of hot water was a teakettle or a hot water reservoir on the wood stove in the kitchen. I had a bath every Saturday night in a tin washtub whether I needed it or not. The house was lit by acetylene gas that was pumped through the house. There was no electricity except for that generated by a small windmill attached to a tree east of house. The electricity was used to power a radio.

The first thing I remember about the ranch was how excited I was when James drove up with his new car and his new bride. It was a brand new 1940 Chevrolet deluxe. I guess I could read a little bit by then because I remember how impressed I was with the word deluxe. James was a quiet man. He didn’t say much. When he did speak it was to tell you what to do or correct you. At least that is how a five-year-old little boy felt. I was in awe and intimidated by James. It wasn’t much different when I worked for him as a teenager. I slept on a cot in the attic of the house—a huge room that was filled with all kinds of old gems such as old wind up record players with a huge horn.

Victrola Talking Machine