I remember working in the onion and potato fields to get enough money to buy me clothes to go to school each year. We were very poor and I earned all my clothes by working out on the farms each summer.

This is a true story.

When first grade was out, a kid, Henry Irons next door, came and he had a dollar to go visit his sister that was in Buhl, Idaho. I went with him and we were in Jerome, Idaho. Had to go ten miles to the canyon – no bridge across then – so we had to go down into and out up and on to Twin Falls.

We bought hamburgers and root beer couple places, went to the show and bought some candy. That was the last of our dollar!! So we asked the way to Buhl; that was about 15 miles. And when we got there no one ever heard of his sister! The old night marshall bought us a sandwich that we divided and he let us sleep in the little jail that was empty.

Next morning we started for home, stopped in an apricot trees and filled up on them. We had come about 10 miles on the outskirts of Twin Falls and a cream truck passed us. They dumped two cream cans off ahead of us and I walked up and looked into it.

And Henry turned to me and said, “They will put you in jail.”

I said, “They can’t put you in jail for that.”

As I looked into the second can, a lady in a white house said, “Bobbie, bring in the cream cans.”

I said, “My name’s not Bobby, but I will bring in the cans.”

And then Henry came back and we took them in.

Would you believe that was his sister’s place? They wrote [in a letter] that they moved out on the highway towards Buhl, not to Buhl! They took us home!

I spent many hours climbing the [Snake River] canyon, one time taking a sack and filling it up with black walnuts and carrying them home to crack and put in fudge candy!

Climbing up a wall, a rattlesnake rattled so loud in my face as I started to reach up for a hold on ledge and I jerked my hands down but couldn’t move my feet or sudden death below! By myself, that was a shakey strain! I finally eased around it as I figure it crawled back into a hole I guess.

How many kids would go ten miles and down into canyon and scrape up old walnuts and [bring them] back these days? We had to cut a lot of sage brush to keep warm when we couldn’t buy coal!

My mother bought me a pair of knee pants to go to school the first year, and the kids teased me. One boy came up to me and said, I was a sissy with knee pants. Most of the boys wore Levi’s. When he told me that, I walked over away from him and started to cry. He came up and said that again and that I had red hair and freckles. I grabbed him and threw him down and put the Scissors [hold] on his stomach. That finished him to where he never bothered me again! That seemed to put me on the line, fighting all the time. I never started fights, but I never would back out if they picked on me.

One year I stayed at my brother-in-laws (Jack Graham) farm while mother got to go visit relatives back south. I chopped wood, fed chickens, and gathered in eggs. I was told to feed the chickens and I told him there wasn’t any feed in the cellar, and twice he told me. I checked and then he put one down there and asked me again [to feed the chickens]. I said [the] same [thing]. He took me down [to the cellar, to show me the feed] and then I knew it was put there. And he gave me a good beating. I was five years old. So I said that no one was going to beat me when I got big.

One Russian boy called me a liar, so I said we would meet up town after school, where the Principal couldn’t stop us. After school the whole school knew it and all marched up to see us go toe-to-toe at it. It was a hard fight, but I won.

Another boy who had boxing lessons came to our school and I was warned about him, but marching out at noon he was in front of me and trying to put his coat on. I reached out and held his coat and he didn’t like it, and said he would pop me me one if I did that again! Of course I did it again. So over the hill, him and I had it out toe-to-toe. I got him a good one on the nose and mouth and he finally said , “I got to go eat now.” No more trouble there.

Another time a Mexican boy was the talk of the school. Every kid was following him all over. After school [was] out, I was standing uptown and this kid had a bunch following him. And he was telling them a wild story and he said, “I grabbed that guy like this… ” He grabbed me by the chest shirt and pulled me up to him. I busted him in the mouth a good one, cut his lip a little, took all the fight out of him.

He cried, “I didn’t do nothing!”

I said, “Nobody lays a hand on me.”

In high school it was more of the team spirit that didn’t get me into much trouble. My first fight was five years. The cowboys up town got me to go against a kid and we ruff and tumbled as they call it … I won and they pitched us money. I was so proud that I took all thirty five cents home and gave it to mother.

She said, “I can’t take this. [This] is blood money.”

I didn’t understand.

In the grade school county track meet, I won two ribbons. One first blue for chinning 23 times. Second was red for broad jumping. I beat a boy that could chin with one hand!

When I was about the fourth or fifth grade I traded a bicycle that was given to me for a twenty two single shot rifle and a small pearl handle pistol. I took kids hunting rabbits on weekends. They all asked to go with me and I would only let three go each time, as two with the guns would walk in front and two in back, for safety. There were no good places to ride bikes.

When we got into trouble we had a six-foot (about) 200 lbs Principal that had a rubber hose in his office that he used once on me. I told a teacher that went out the night before with a high school football player on a wild spree… I said, “So you went out with Dillinger,” as she passed me uptown, after school. I was in fifth grade. She told the head man and he took his rubber hose down from in back of George Washington’s picture on the wall and I got about 15 to 17 good stripes on my back and bottom. Couldn’t hardly sit down! I came back to the [class] room with tears. [I was] trying to smile, as if it didn’t hurt. I wanted the kids to believe [that]. Ha! Soon after that they got together and put a stop to that.

In the fourth grade we had a two hundred pound lady that took mean streaks. She jumped up and said every body face the front. We folded our hands and froze facing the front. She bent over to look me in the eye and I must of moved as she stuck her head so close. She swung that big arm of hers, lifting me clear out into the isle to fall on the floor. Boy, I saw stars and my head hurt all day. I cried. They got rid of her after others had trouble with her. That was the hardest that I had ever been hit!!

The Jerome Twin Falls bridge is torn down and another one built by it. But the old one was completed in 1927. I was about 14 then and I climbed up it just to say I did. It was 476 feet high and over 1500 feet long. More than 75 people have taken their lives there. One boy in our school … we all thought he had it so good. His folks bought him a car and not any other kid that I knew got a car. But he had broken rules his folks laid down and he just couldn’t take it. He drove to the bridge and stepped over!

I went to California for my first two [years] of high school in Santa Cruz, where my sister Lola and Jack Graham lived. I worked for my board and room for two years and then I went back to Jerome Idaho to the last two years of high school and graduated in 1934.

One time, we went swimming up Frisco, Oakland Bay. There [are] places across the water [that] looked gray and about three blocks [in length]. And I was in good shape and I said, “I can swim that.”

When they said, “Just try it” and I took off. When I turned [over] on my back to look back to shore, then I should of came back. But I kept on, and its a miracle that I am here. I swam, swam, and swam. With two fingers, one. On my back, tried to float. (Nearly cramps) I just made it. A row boat came, and I rode back. Never again should one be so crazy without a life saver.

When I graduated from Jerome High School in 1934, we worked on a farm to get money to go to a radio school. My friend and I didn’t get paid, so we joined the army at Fort Douglas, Utah (on the hill above Salt Lake City). We got 21 dollars a month! I was in headquarters company, and finally got into the radio operator section and was a good [Morse] code operator. You had to know the dot-dash system. I took a year of it in California. That is when in high school I learned radio, one year of it. Eight and a half years of [army] service. I won a sweater for the middle weight [boxing] champion of Fort Douglas.

One fight I was waiting for the bell to start and all the people around said, “Now you are going to get it.” The guy I was fighting had won in some Golden Gloves in his home town. I planned to give him a one two and not jab and look to see what happened, just a follow through on a fast one two. I did when the bell rang and that was the fastest knockout ever there (22 seconds). No one ever beat it, 22 seconds.

While in the infantry, we went to Camp Ord California. It was just a tent city, but now they have buildings for miles of hills that we had only brush and snakes. Now they have over 100,000 there now! Also we had 100 mile hikes. We walked from Pocatello to near Logan, Utah. Another from Fort Douglas to Park City, and up around other places to get the 100 miles in. Cloud burst at Park City [got us] all wet. Ha!

I joined the army in 35 and transferred to the air corps in 1939. I was sent to radio school in Scott Field, Illinois to learn about the radios in the airplanes. And after I was kept there as an instructor until discharged in 1941. I came back to Salt Lake and got a job as a guard at Remington Arms plant making bullets. Soon world war two started. [As I was] going to work one morning it came on the radio, the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, and that sneak attack started it, for us. Hitler was already fighting England and others.

When your mother Sandra Jean Beall (Marx) was little, I was drafted back into the army. Refresher training and the new gun carbine, I made sharp shooter without any practice. Before I made expert rifleman and pistol in the infantry. Now in Air Corps. When in HQ. CO [Headquarters Company] I made the highest score with the 45 colt pistol. Expert, Sharpshooter, and Marksman badges.

I was shipped out to Blythe California, to Tuscon Arizona, to Nebraska, to Fort Lewis, Washington. And over seas to the isle of Guam. We had the biggest planes B-29’s bombing Tokyo, Japan. I kept four B-29’s going. I took care of the radio equipment and setting radar signal. They gave us campaign ribbons. I got one with four battle stars on it (means in four engagements). I like to tell about things that I experienced in lot of places. May add more of that later.

I married your grandmother Louise Carlson when I transferred from the infantry to Air Corps. I was instructor at radio tech school, [in Scott’s Field] Illinois. As I mentioned on last page. I also had to march the students from the barracks to classes each day.

(Back track a little) I was on all the teams, Track, Basketball and football.

Every time I got the ball (half back). The other team would yell, “Watch that left handed pass!” (Ha). I was a good southpaw. In our big study hall, (room). And one little freshman with high top boots would come in and slide my books down under the seats, and go out in the hall waiting for the bell to ring that was for us to be in our seats. One day I said, “I’ll get ya.”

And I waited by the door when the bell rang. He was only one out and he was scared of me. He tried to jump by me and I was senior and him [a] little kid. I grabbed him by the seat of pants and spun him around and upside down into the big waste basket by the door. Every one just had a big laugh at that and even the teacher smiled for the first time all year! His boots stuck out. Every one remembered that and I told it at a 30-year class reunion with this ending, that they didn’t know.

Back at [radio tech] school, marching kids, one big six-foot something guy asked me, where you from? I said, “It could be a lot of places.” Then I looked up at him, I said, “I would have a hard time putting you into a waste basket now!”

When the war was over, I was on Guam and I joined the church and was baptized in the ocean. I came back to Salt Lake and got a job at the Jordan steam plant (Utah Power & Light Co.) for about 2 years. Then I went to carrying mail as a mail man for the rest of my working days.

When I joined the army I had to send home for them to send to a Alabama to get me a birth certificate and my sister made my name out wrong. So its wrong on it. Just my second name she put S T E W A R T on it, but I was named Stuart, and I like that better and have used it all the time.

At home my first bishop was a wonderful man. His boy was really nice also. He was then fighting over in Korea engagement. Bishop Louis Jakobson came up to me and said, “Roscoe the war department (telegram) said my boy couldn’t live 2 days and I know he will, so pray for him.” And we all did; fasted and prayed. He came back and I worked with him in the church. He told of pushing off two men after an explosion he got scared and jumped up and started running, and was shot down, got up and was shot down again. His dad is long gone and he was a bishop out west of us before he passed away too.

Your mother was about 6 in 1945. I should go over all this and fix it up nice, but I will leave it as I have first wrote it. I got sick 1960, tumor [taken] out between heart and lung. Three years later, tumor and part of other side lung [taken] out. Seven years [later], again more of that lung cut out. So [now I want to] get some [writing] done before its too late.

My first marriage to Louise Carlson, we had four girls: Sandra Jean, (Jerome’s mother), Pamela & Patricia. Janet died about four months old with a hole in her heart (born that way). She died on December 20th. The same day my dad, John Gainer Beall died in 1917! Then my second marriage to Nora Hendriksen I have one boy Stuart James, and Bonnie Marie, Joy Lynne. Joy Lynne was born on Dec. 20th. Just about all my second marriage I have been sick and have had did all I can to get up and go for another day. Today [I’m suffering with] pleurisy — Can’t spell that now! I thought I better get this [biography] done before it’s too late. I am under oxygen most of the time. I cry, pray, and choke a lot and know I have to endure to the end, and stop the thoughts always coming to end it all to get out of pain. I’ve been disabled [and] retired 14 years now (1978). All that time I have worked under 5 or more bishops as secretary, and have done a lot of good, but would like to be able to do more!

Here I think of a funny experience about 12 yrs. ago. I was a high priest and only year in that ward, when an elder came back to the ward from a mission. They made him president of the Elders [Quorum] and he had to go get some Elders to go to administer to the sick at the hospital. He came up to me looking over his glasses on his nose. He asked, Do you know how to administer to the sick? Or can you do that work? [In an uppity] up to up tone. I counted to ten slowly under my breath.

Looking him in the eye, I said, “I administered to the sick at that hospital before you were born.” That was the truth.

Now some things very short: about 1933, the President Roosevelt started a CCC Camps (civilian conservation corps) where boys joined and used surplus army tents, gear and we worked on roads through the hills in around Salmon Idaho, practically by shovel and hands. We got 25 [dollars] a month about. I was only in one summer and out to finish high school.

During the war, we were in a boat for Guam. For nine days the tide, or storm was terrible. High waves, couldn’t see, lost four men over board. Couldn’t do anything about it !! Radio black-out, didn’t want the Jap subs to pick up signals and find us. I was praying they wouldn’t sink us, and everyone was sea sick & we just slipped through the vomit all over. One boy threw up on the table next to me and [it splashed onto my plate. I said, “Aw, why didn’t you turn your head?!”] He said he didn’t have time to turn his head.

Anyway my plate was ruined and I said to myself well, anyway I would just get up and throw it up on the way back to bed. One time I was returning to bed and one boy was seasick in bed a hurting and patting his stomach, saying “I hope it sinks, I hope it sinks.”!! (Ha-Ha.) And I was praying that it wouldn’t sink.

Our first night in the jungles, Tokyo Rose came on the radio and said, “You boys from Utah will never see home again!” I have helped a lot of people & desire to live and do more is kept me alive this long. Several who laughed at me have all passed away cause I didn’t drink.

Granger, Utah

To Jerome, about some of the things I have tried to tell about my mother and I. I never knew a person that didn’t just love my mother. To understand, one must first know that my father died when I was 4 years old. Mother and us kids crawled down onion rows weeding and thinning. It was very hot and we only got $8. an acre, but it got us clothes and food for winter. We didn’t have welfare like today. Sometimes Mother had a $28. a month pension of some kind, but that didn’t hardly feed us. Mother never married again, although she had two old men that tried to take her out and she wouldn’t go once with them and I see that she had had it with 16 kids! I was the 13th one! Mother worked hard to keep us in clothes and food and always tried to keep us clean.

Mother gave me the last 15 cents she had in the house when and the other big kids were gone to the circus as they hauled to the elephants water to get to go in. I went – although I knew that I had to slip through the fence to get in – and I walked around all over watching guys throwing and win the girls a big doll.

I saw pink lemonade that I thought would be so wonderful just because I never did taste that kind, and I drooled over that till I finally spent my dime on a glass of it. Boy! That was a big let down… just cool water and no sugar in it. (Ha-Ha)

When cars seem to be coming in, Mother got a guy to take us sleigh riding with his two horses and square bed of boards with runners under it and after the first bunch went I had to go and under a quilt at night about ten below!! I just froze all the way, even with overshoes and coat and cap. I will never forget how cold I got (Ha).

When dad died in 1917 then the war (world war one) ended, then the flu was killing people all around. Mother was up day and night with them as Jerome, Idaho didn’t have any hospital. We never complained about being alone as mother was with the sick all around us. No one was ever turned away when they wanted something to eat. Some kids around us came home to [our] place to get something to eat and they were nearly starved; been on the bum and hadn’t eaten for 2 days. Mother scrapped the flour and water [to make] pancakes for them and they sure did eat a bunch!!

I remember no food in the house and I said, “Mother, I’m hungry”. And she said to go on the ditch bank for some greens (I called them dandelions). Thats all we had to eat that day. They were bitter, but kept us alive. I never did like them, Ha.

I remember best when we would have a get together in the summer and have a big tables and lots of food, all good!! Each summer I worked in the hay fields driving team and when I got bigger I pitched hay in the summer time to buy my clothes and books for school, clear through High School and then I worked all summer to get enough to go to a radio school, I wanted to be an Radio Operator.

My two older brothers were Radio Operators in the Navy. Well, the man didn’t pay me so I was out and I joined the Army – 38th Infantry at Ft. Douglas, Utah – on the hill from Salt Lake City. There in Hq. Co. I was a Radio operator. I bought a radio with the plug in plate that sits on top of this big radio and plays records. We would bring records home on leave and play them. My mother never had a fridge. No one on the west side of town had one. I bought a refrigerator and sent it to Mother. Mother was so proud with it, and she shared it with all around. When I came home on leave the bottom of the fridge was full of bottles of milk from all the neighbors around. Ha.

Mother was good to everybody. I wrote Mother that my wife’s sister Viginia was having a hard time, as she had a stroke and couldn’t use her one side and leg, and had kids to take care of. And we would come visit Mother [in Jerome] and then on way back to [Utah, we stopped at] Virginias place in Idaho Falls. As we left, Mother gave me a big box of jam and fruit jars too. She said, “I want you to take these to Virginia.” Mother never knew Virginia or ever saw her but she took pity on all that had troubles.

On your mothers side, your great Grandma Myrtle [Sims] Olorenshaw was always good to others also. Many a times her and I took our weekends and rushed up to Virginia’s and cleaned and painted her house. Her husband was a no good beer drinker. Thats Virginia’s husband. We had to get the beer cans out of the house and away from a big pile by the door every trip up there!! This is to show Jerome that his other great grandma was also kind to everyone, and she likes to be around people and parties with kids, and everyone. Myrtle and I rode her three wheel bike clear down to Riverton and back!! It was a hard time, and I wouldn’t do it again. (Ha.)

Myrtle’s first husband was John Carlson, who was a great Grandfather to you. He was always polite and nice. He got Parkinson’s Disease, and arthritis in his knees formed a cap on them and his legs stayed bent like sitting in a chair. And I took him riding in the car; had to go so easy when I picked him up and sat him in a car seat to go riding. He worried so much that I would bump his legs getting in the car!! He worked hard all his life and sometimes he only had two slices of bread for his lunch going to work.

Continuing about Jerome’s Great Grandfather… John Carlson was a sincere, humble, good man that I remember that he always said his prayers and blessed the food even when he was alone. John’s wife Myrtle, died of cancer. Your grandma Louise took care of her till she died. Myrtle sure liked the little baskets of fruit that I would bring her before she died.

When your mother was little, we would go visit my mother (Della Reid Beall) a lot of times up to Jerome, Idaho. When I didn’t have but little money to go on, Mother would give me a ten and make me take it as I just didn’t want to. But my older brothers, that were scattered all around the country, would send Mother some money. And sometimes I guess she thought it was more than she needed, so she was as always ready to help others. I have five pages written out and now trying to type them, I leave out a little here and there. Page five is mostly about me, so won’t repeat that, save it and you can read it if you want to.

When I was little I would go up to the only show house we had in Jerome, Idaho and stand there, no money to get in, the lady would soon call me over and send me across the street to get her some nuts (sometimes Cashews) and then I got in the show for doing that for her. I was about five years old then.

I remember one time I fell asleep and they locked me in for the night!! I woke up about 4 A.M. and it [was] so black I felt my way to the front door and couldn’t get out! Felt my way to the side door (Fire Escape door) and I got out that way. (Ha-Ha).

This Lady who owned the theater wanted to adopt me, but Mother said no. One day later when mother was telling another lady about it, I came up and asked Mother, “Why didn’t you let me go? You had a lot of kids left!” Mother just [couldn’t] say anything then.

Some people go through life without ever enjoying the blessings from helping and giving. The best gift in life is when we give of ourselves. I wrote my life story one time and I think I have a lot of very unusual experiences, some put in and others I might add. I am sending this without much of the fifth page as I mentioned, and you can save what you like. Will sent it all – I hope this will be of some value to all who read it.

As Ever – Always,

Roscoe Stuart Beall