Stories of Parley R. Neeley -- the early days.
"I've been asked several times how we made money as children when we were growing up and I thought it might be interesting to talk about that because things today aren't like they were then . . ."
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"We could get a candy bar for an egg, that is a nickel candy bar for one egg, but the candy bars were about 3 times the size of a regular candy bar today."
"We would scrounge hay stacks and Jampa Rhead's farm and other places around the country and that's one of the ways, when we were quite young, that we got things like goodies and candy. We'd go down to the store and trade them in."
"We weeded gardens, tended children, etc. until we finally got big enough to work and then we would go out in the fields and help haul hay and load hay. It was loaded in by hand then, into a hay wagon, with a pitchfork and when you got to the barn or hay stack you pitched it off onto the stack and built the stack. they didn't have modern things like they do today that haul hay, and cut it, and bale it, and take it in. Balers were very, very rare and they had very few in the whole country out there."
"We also used to haul grain. The grain was shalked in the field, cut with a binder, made into bundles, and then you had to go out and pick up the bundles and stack them up and stand them up with the head up. About five or six bundles were called a shalk. Then you let it stay there for two or three days until it dried out and then you went back to the field and hauled and threw the bundles up onto a rack. Then you took it into the farm yard and built these into a circular straw stack. It looked something like a beehive when you were through. "
"It wasn't an easy job to be in the rack when there were two or three people pitching it up to you and you had to sack it into the hay rack and stomp it down so it would be tight and it wouldn't fall out and so you could bet a full rack. Jampa Rhead used to haller up to us and say, "Build up those corners! The center will take care of itself." So you were always tromping in the corners and throwing hay and they were burying you with the hay, and you'd jump up and down on it and pack it down in the hay rack. Of course the hay racks were driven with horses and you had to drive the horses around too.""
"The hay was first cut with a mower and it was in long rows and then you went along with a special rack and racked it up and left in in little bunches. Then you drove the wagon along with those bundles of hay and they pitched them up onto the stack. Oh I know that you wouldn't believe it but I've pulled rattlesnakes out of the hay because it wasn't uncommon to have a rattlesnake in the hay."
"When we weren't working in the field pitching the hay, why we'd be the water carriers and we'd have to go to the house and get a jug of water and take it out to those who were pitching the hay, both in the field and in the barn. Oh, we might get 5 cents a day for doing something like that and we might get 25 cents when we were stacking the hay and hauling the hay in as we got as little older. But 25 cents was a real lot of money in those days!"
"As we grew older and could lift heavier things, we worked for the stores. Lou and I were fortunate enough to be able to work for the Coalville Co-op. In those days they shipped the lumber in box cars and you'd have to unload the box cars onto a wagon (roll the lumber onto the wagon), then take the wagon to the store. They had big long sheds and you stacked the two-by-fours in one place and the two-by-twelve's in another -- different lengths in different places.
"Car loads of cement were shipped in the same way and all things came in by railroad and you'd have to go down to the tracks and unload the box cars and haul them to the store. Goods came mostly in wooden boxes in those days."
"The farmers, of course, brought their goods into the store in big wagon loads and we'd get big wagon loads of wheat, oats, barely, etc. There were special bins for storing these things and we would have to unload the wagons and put the grain into bins and then later in the season we would be hired to sack the grain. We sacked it into sacks and stacked it up to get it ready for the store to sell."
"Canned goods and other things of that nature came in wooden boxes. Of course, they had to be put on the store shelves so we would open the boxes and put the cans on the shelves. We had to keep the shelves especially full on Saturday when the farmers came to town to purchase things."
"Farmers would bring in eggs in big buckets and we would take the eggs downstairs and 'candle' them -- that is: we'd hold them up to a light to see if they were good eggs or bad eggs and then we'd have to sort them out as to size and color; brown eggs in one place, white eggs in another, and in-between eggs in yet another place. Then they were put into crates and shipped to different parts of the country. We, particularly, shipped white eggs to a restaurant in New York City."
"We cleaned the store, sweeping it every night and cleaning it out well -- it had to be all ready to go for business the next day."
"When we got older then we were put out delivering things around town. They had a delivery service. What you'd do is call the store and ask for what you wanted and then we'd wait until we had a full load and then deliver around to the people of the town. Originally it was done by teams, but along about 1913, the Coalville Co-op bought a real station wagon and we were taught how to run it. You see I was only 10 years old or perhaps a year older and we learned how to run that truck. We'd deliver the goods all over town and sometimes up over to Uptown, which is about 15 miles away, and down to Henefer and Wanship and all over the valley. Since we were driving that truck and delivering goods we learned at a very early age how to drive a car. The roads weren't oiled -- they were all rough farm roads that were still mostly traveled by wagon and we had some great experiences getting stuck in the mud and getting out again. We felt very lucky if we earned a dollar a day and maybe we'd earn a dollar and fifty cents to two or three dollars a week in the summertime. In the wintertime there wasn't much to do. We surely didn't earn much money when you come right down to it but to us, in those days, it was quite a lot of money."
Tipping the theatre floor and selling candy.
"We had the old theatre and I've talked about that before in one place -- how as we got older we could get a job tipping the floor. It was a spring floor and you'd tip it up on an angle and then put the chairs in there for a picture show. Then you'd tip it back to level, take off the canvas, take all the chairs off, and then you'd have a dance. We had to keep the place clean and take tickets at the picture show too but that was good because it gave us a chance to get to see the show without having to pay."
"We ran a little stand there in which we had candy and we made a little bit off that -- but not much. We'd eat nearly all the profit! ;-)"
"In the springtime it was necessary to clean out all the ditches. Chalk Creek was just what it is today and in the springtime it ran a lot of mud -- so did the Weber River -- and we were able to get jobs cutting out the ditches or cleaning out the ditches because during the summertime they'd clog with mud and had to be cleaned. There would be an old fellow walking along the ditch and put down a stick and between sticks was where you were supposed to clean -- you had to clean so many rods (a rod = 16.5 feet) depending on how many shares you owned in the ditch. If you couldn't clean the ditch yourself you hired it out to someone like us kids. I'd see this fellow go walking along and he'd 'stumble' and I know that some of those rods, instead of being 16 and a half feet, were twenty five and thirty feet long. He was pretty smart in that." ;-)
"During the first World War, Jampa was left alone with a big farm. I had to help Jampa with the farm and it was very hard work. See "Farming with Jampa . . ." for more on this. In between farming though there was an opportunity of making money by hauling gravel on the roads. So I'd get up early in the morning -- around two or three o'clock -- and get the team ready and go up to the pit 4 or 5 miles away and haul gravel from the pit onto the roads. I'd haul gravel all day and at night I'd go home and feed the horses and do chores around the place."
"When I was a little older I was able to also work on the railroad as a 'Section Jerry'. We changed the ties, straightened the rail-bed, and leveled the rail-bed all between Coalville and Wanship. Then for a period of time during the war they took us up into Echo Canyon and we helped build the double track up through there during the war."
"I think I earned 50 cents an hour on the railroad and we used to have contests of throwing rocks and then the winners of the contests were able to go to the old Boyd Drug Store and there the others would pay them off with banana splits. Most of the money that I was able to earn to go the school was from working on the railroad in the summertime as a Section Jerry."
"We also used to trap muskrats in the fall. We'd set our traps along the slews and on the Weber River -- the best places were along the Weber River slews -- and we'd take the muskrat hides and Oh . . . we could get maybe 15 to 50 cents a hide. If you got a dozen hides you did pretty well. It was mighty cold going because we didn't have rubber boots and we didn't have good warm clothes, but that's one way we could get money" if we were willing to brave the cold.
Odd jobs -- tearing down an old house.
"I remember one summer Lou and I tore down an old house for the sum of $25, which included pulling all the nails, and stacking the boards neatly."
"We also played baseball with the local baseball club, The Coalville Club, traveling to Park City, Kamas, Morgan, Evanston, etc., and we made a little bit out of that also."
"Lou played the cornet and I played the clarinet in the local band and we would on occasion go to different celebrations around the valley and area and we'd make a little bit out of playing on the 4th of July and the 24th of July and other types of celebrations that the towns had."