Charles Frederick Zitting
1894 - 1954 (60 år)
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Navn Charles Frederick Zitting Født 30 mar. 1894 Harrisville, Weber, Utah, USA 
Køn Mand Referencenummer 43X2-W5 Død 14 jul. 1954 Sandy City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA Person-ID I2334 Bjarklev Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022
Far August Fredrick Zitting, f. 12 aug. 1871, Harrisville, Weber, Utah, USA , d. 25 sep. 1953, Glendale Hospital, Glendale, Los Angeles, California, USA (Alder 82 år) Tilknytning natural Mor Susanna van Etten, f. 21 okt. 1872, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 6 nov. 1952, Los Angeles, California, USA (Alder 80 år) Tilknytning natural Gift 28 dec. 1892 Ogden, Weber, Utah, USA Familie-ID F851 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 1 Minnie Affleck, f. 17 sep. 1898, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 3 apr. 1968, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 69 år) Børn 1. Frederic Affleck Zitting, f. 15 jul. 1921, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 21 apr. 1988, Redondo Beach, Los Angeles, California, USA (Alder 66 år) [natural]2. William Affleck Zitting, f. 26 mar. 1924, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 20 mar. 1985, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 60 år) [natural]3. Elaine Affleck Zitting, f. 19 jan. 1926, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 14 apr. 2007, Springville, Utah, Utah, USA (Alder 81 år) [natural]Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F854 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 2 Edna Aleen Christensen, f. 8 maj 1899, Elwood, Box Elder, Utah, USA , d. 18 dec. 1991, Colorado City, Mohave, Arizona, USA (Alder 92 år) Gift 13 aug. 1928 Børn 1. Allen Christensen Zitting, f. 27 okt. 1933, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 12 dec. 1957, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 24 år) [natural]Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F10052 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 3 Orpha Cope, f. 6 sep. 1900, Tropic, Garfield, Utah, USA , d. 18 maj 1940, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 39 år) Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F6216 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 4 Nellie Smilley Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F6215 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 5 Rachel Wells Børn 1. Edna Wells Zitting, f. 3 jul. 1928, St George, Washington, Utah, USA , d. 3 jul. 1929, St George, Washington, Utah, USA (Alder 1 år) [natural]Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F6214 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 6 Laura Tree, f. 4 feb. 1894, Centerville, Davis, Utah, USA , d. 13 apr. 1985, Sandy City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 91 år) Børn 1. Richard Tree Zitting, f. 1 okt. 1929, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 5 maj 2011, San Antonio, Bexar, Texas, USA (Alder 81 år) [natural]2. Darrell Tree Zitting, f. 29 apr. 1932, Cottonwood, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 6 okt. 1937, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 5 år) [natural]Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F6213 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 7 Frances Stokes, f. 28 maj 1918, Clinton, Davis, Utah, USA , d. 12 dec. 1993, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 75 år) Børn 1. Naomi Stokes Zitting, f. 1 jun. 1936, Clearfield, Davis, Utah, USA , d. 17 aug. 2011, Colorado City, Mohave, Arizona, USA (Alder 75 år) [natural]2. Alice Stokes Zitting, d. Hildale, Washington, Utah, USA [natural]3. Orpha Stokes Zitting, f. 17 sep. 1939, Murray, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 26 feb. 2017, West Valley City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 77 år) [natural]4. Mabel Stokes Zitting [natural] 5. Chief Information Officer at Lender Feed Inc. Louis Stokes Zitting, f. 8 feb. 1943, d. Bennion, Salt Lake, Utah, USA [natural]6. Lola Stokes Zitting, f. 2 dec. 1944, Murray, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 21 jan. 1945, Murray, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 0 år) [natural]7. Charlotte Stokes Zitting, d. Colorado City, Mohave, Arizona, USA [natural]8. Clarence Stokes Zitting, f. 1950, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 1950, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 0 år) [natural]9. Living Zitting [natural] 10. Sheree Stokes Zitting [natural] Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F857 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 8 Bonnie Elaine Kilgrow, f. 14 feb. 1925, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 5 maj 2005, Colorado City, Mohave, Arizona, USA (Alder 80 år) Gift 14 feb. 1940 Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA Børn 1. John Kilgrow Zitting, f. 27 okt. 1942, Murray, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. før 2014 (Alder < 71 år) [natural]2. Alfred Kilgrow Zitting, f. 12 nov. 1943, Draper, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 5 okt. 1985, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 41 år) [natural]3. Charlene Kilgrow Zitting, f. 18 dec. 1945, Sandy, Utah, USA , d. 8 sep. 2014, Ogden, Weber, Utah, USA (Alder 68 år) [natural]Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F856 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
Familie 9 Elvera Olson, f. 1894, Harrisville, Weber, Utah, USA , d. 2 jun. 1993 (Alder 99 år) Børn 1. Carl Olson Zitting, f. 26 apr. 1934, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA , d. 25 jan. 1984, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA (Alder 49 år) [natural]Sidst ændret 25 feb. 2022 Familie-ID F855 Gruppeskema | Familietavle
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Notater - (Research):THE LIFE OF
CHARLES FREDERICK ZITTING
ONE OF GOD'S NOBLE MEN
Written by his wife, Laura Tree Zitting
With Some of Charles' Own Words
Copyright 1988
LIVES OF GREAT MEN ALL REMIND US WE CAN MAKE OUR LIVES SUBLIME, AND DEPARTING LEAVE BEHIND US FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME.
[1] Charles Frederick Zitting, the memoirs of whom I write, perhaps would not be considered great in the eyes of the world. Only a few noted his advent into this life and comparatively few, his demise. Yet, his name was known for good or ill in a wide circle; surely he has left his mark in the hearts of each member of his family because of his faith, courage and integrity and the stand he took for covenants' and principles' sakes when he seemed to virtually stand alone and was held behind prison bars for two years and seven months. Yes, his footprints will be marked on the sands of time and shall carry on down through the ages as long as his children and grandchildren continue to uphold and sustain the principles for which he lived and fought and died.
Charles sprang from sturdy pioneer stock from both his father's and mother's families. His grandfather, Carl August Zitting, was a native of Stockholm, Sweden, having been born June 7, 1818; and his grandmother, Sophia Wilhelmina Ervolder Zitting was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on January 9, 1840. Both emigrated to Utah for the gospel's sake when the West was still an unconquered wilderness. The paths of their lives met after they came to Utah and they were united in the holy bonds of matrimony in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City on April 26, 1865.
Grandfather Carl August Zitting was very expert in fine carpentry and he did a considerable amount of work on the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. He also worked on the Tabernacle organ when it was in the making. He built all the original music pipes with his own hands. He was fired once by Mr. Ridges, the builder of the organ, because he was so slow at his work. They could find no one else who could do the work good enough so Brigham Young instructed Mr. Ridges to put him back on the job again and let him take the time he needed.
Grandfather Carl August Zitting was also an accomplished piano player. His son, August Frederick Zitting, followed in his father's footsteps as a carpenter and was very apt with carpenter tools which he used often down through the years as a supplement to his means of livelihood.
The grandmother, Sophia Wilhelmina Ervolder, as a child helped her parents in making a living for the family. Her mother died when she was only 15 years old. She lived with her aunt after she graduated from school at age 15. After this time she worked for her own support, joining the Mormon Church in the course of a few years against the wishes of her father. She had to walk a long distance over the ice and snow at midnight in the month of January to the place of baptism. They had to cut away the ice in the stream to baptize her. She worked hard to earn money to pay her way to Utah, U.S.A. Starting her journey in the spring of 1862, she was ten weeks on the ocean and then crossed the plains by ox team. A good deal of the way was traveled on foot and many hardships were endured before arriving in Salt Lake City in September of 1862.
She became acquainted with Mrs. Julia M. Grow of Salt Lake City, and did a good deal of knitting for her family as a means of helping to support herself. It was evidently through Mrs. Grow [2] and her husband that she met and later married Carl August Zitting. Mrs. Grow's husband was one of the foremen working on the Tabernacle at the time when Carl August Zitting was working there.
In 1869 they moved to Harrieville, Weber County, Utah, where they homesteaded and raised their family of three boys and two girls; Charles J., August F., Abraham, Wilhelmina, and Cecelia. In 1896, Grandfather Carl August Zitting passed away. Grandmother then moved to Idaho with her youngest daughter Cecilia, and lived there until 1910, when they returned to Ogden, Utah. She lived in Ogden until her death, December 1, 1915.
Charles' maternal grandfather, Elisha Wheat Van Etten, sprang from the Pennsylvania Dutch. His birthplace was Newark, New Jersey. Just when he accepted the gospel and moved to Utah is not known. However, he did live in the Salt Lake Valley during Brigham Young's lifetime.
He had a large livestock ranch and fruit orchard in West Jordan. His sheep and other livestock grazed on most of the land in the Salt Lake Valley west of the Jordan River. He brought the first 200 head of merino sheep to Utah, driving them across the plains. Also, he owned fine cattle and imported expensive breeds of horses from the Eastern States.
He traveled some with Brigham Young and folks say he tried to have as nice a carriage, horse and harness as Brigham Young owned.
He was a polygamist with several families. However, it ie reported that he took his first wife and family and went back East where he spent the rest of his life, leaving Charles' maternal grandmother, Lucy Ann Cutler Van Etten and two other wives with small children to fare for themselves. Charles' grandmother had three little daughters at the time he left and later she married Arthur J. Crane and raised a large family with him. Their home and farm were in Farr West, Weber County, Utah.
The grandmother, Lucy Ann Cutler, traced her lineage back to John and Priscilla Alden, who came over with the pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620. She was born in Pottwattney County, Iowa, March 31, 1852. Evidently, her parents were among the saints who were driven out of Nauvoo, Illinois, after the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, and had found a resting place in Iowa before continuing on to the Salt Lake Valley.
Lucy Ann Cutler was the granddaughter of David Pettigrew, who was the oldest man and the chaplin of the Mormon Battalion. They came to Utah by way of California after making that famous march. They arrived in Utah in September, 1847, just two months after Brigham Young's arrival. David Pettigrew was the first bishop of the 10th Ward of Salt Lake City, and was the father of several families.
Lucy Ann's father, Harmon Cutler, homsteaded and developed a farm where the town of Midvale is now located. He too had several families. His forefathers came to America soon after the landing of the Mayflower. They came in the ship Fortune in 1621.
Charles' father, August Frederick Zitting was born in Harrisville, Weber County, Utah on August 12, 1871. Charles' [3] mother, Susannah Van Etten Zitting, was born in the Sugarhouse section of Salt Lake City, about 12th East and 18th South. As mentioned before, her mother married again after her husband deserted her and from then until her marriage to Charles' father, Susannah was known as Susannah Crane.
Now we come to the life story of Charles Frederick Zitting. While incarcerated in the Utah State Penitentiary, from May 15, 1945, to December 15, 1947, because of his religious convictions, Charles attempted to write his life history, in a rather disconnected strain as memories came to him, and so from here on, much that is written will be copied from his own record or in other words--
We have gathered bouquets
From other men's flowers; Nothing but the vase that holds
Them is ours.
He commences his story as follows:
"I, Charles Frederick Zitting, was born at Harrisville, Weber County, Utah on March 30, 1894. The house I was born in stood where a service station now stands, on the first bend of the Harrisville road running northwesterly from Five Points in the north part of Ogden City, and just about two miles from the place where my father was born.
"I am the oldest son of August Frederick Zitting and Susannah Van Etten (Crane). My brothers and sisters are John Albert, Lucy, Cora, Oliver August, Rosie, and Lola. One brother, Jesse, died in infancy when we lived in or near Ammon, Idaho.
"I lived in Harrisville and Farr West, Weber County, Utah, until I was five year" old, then we moved to Ammon, Idaho.
"I still remember several experiences in the first five years of my life which I will try to relate here. I first remember a large bed of red roses in front of Grandfather Crane's home. I remember also, mother peeling apples with an apple peeler, one summer out in an orchard. I would pick up the apples in my little wagon and haul them to her. I had to cross a narrow foot bridge in doing this and one day while crossing, my wagon ran off the edge of the bridge. I held to the tongue of the wagon until wagon, apples and I were pulled into the water by the force of the stream. Mother heard me holler and came to my rescue.
"I also remember going into a field of green tomatoes owned by a Mr. Randall, on whose place we were living at that time, and picking the green tomatoes and piling them in little piles. I didn't know I was doing wrong until Mr. Randall got after me and mother corrected me.
"I remember too, of climbing on a shed with a willow and straw roof on it. It gave way letting me fall into a pig pen with two very large pigs in it. I thought the pigs were going to eat me so I screamed and again, mother came to my rescue.
"I remember the day we left for Ammon, Idaho where my father had gone sometime before to get established before sending for us. It was the day after my fifth birthday.
[4] "As my mother, my brother John Albert, who was about three years old, and myself waited for the train at the Hot Springs depot, I found a dime in the sand on the sidewalk which thrilled me very much. When the train pulled up to the depot, I got frightened, thinking the engine would run over me, and I ran away from it. The entire trip to Ammon, I remember as if it were yesterday.
"My father's brother, Uncle Cal, (or Charles J. Zitting), met us at the station in Idaho Falls that night and took us in his buggy over rough dusty country roads through nothing but sagebrush all the way to Ammon about five miles southeast of Idaho Falls. It was very dark and it seemed as though we would never get there as the roads were rough and we had to go so slowly.
"We found the town of Ammon consisted of a few log cabins, surrounded in every direction by sagebrush. The school house, a one room log building where the school marm taught the three R's to all eight grades, was also the center of all social activities in that little community. We went there to dances, church and any other meetings of importance.
"I remember the first time I attended Sunday School in the school with my father's sister, Aunt Cecilia. I remember partaking of the Sacrament but I didn't understand it. When I returned home I told mother, they served us lunch but all they gave us was water and one tiny little piece of bread with no butter on it. Mother explained the purpose of the Sacrament to me. From then on, all my life, I attended Sunday School and other church gatherings and ward celebrations regularly.
"Mother always dressed my brother John and me in red calico waists so she could more easily see us when we wandered a long distance away from the house in the sagebrush. We would find many bird's nests and wild flowers in our rambles, buttercups that looked like yellow shiny wax flowers, larkspurs, wild pinks, etc. One day I found a beautiful flower and took it home to mother. I found it in the sagebrush patch just west of the school house. Mother told me it was a sego lily, the Utah State Flower. lt was the only one I ever remember seeing in the Snake River Valley.
"One day I came home with a little animal I had caught in the sagebrush and I thought it was very beautiful. I told mother to open her hand and I would give her something very pretty. When she held out her hand, I placed a horny toad in it. She was very frightened and screamed and dropped it. I felt badly because I thought she had hurt it.
"As a youngster, they would have me on every program to recite as I could speak loud and clearly enough for all to hear. My dear father and mother always encouraged me in my church activities and school work and always taught me correct principles of life.
"I remember the little town of Ammon always had a large Christmas tree, decorated and loaded with presents for the children and lighted with candles every Christmas. In connection with this they would have a good program of recitations and music and a dance for the children, nuts and candy for all and a dance at night for the big folks.
[5] "I was nearly seven years old when I started school. I remember the first day. It was mid-winter and the ground was covered with a heavy blanket of snow. I remember the cold snow sparkling like thousands of diamonds as I trotted off to school that cold winter morning.
"My first teacher was Miss Swank. She taught all eight grades in that one room schoolhouse. I believe some of the boys were older than the teacher. Two of them had mustaches.
"During my first year of school, I talked very brokenly and many of the older girls would give me candy and gum if I would walk home with them. They liked to hear me talk. The girls of my age liked to play with me, too. I would put a string on their arms to play horse and drive them around in pairs. Sometimes I would drive three pairs at once. Once I brought a large red apple to school and announced to the girls that I would give the apple to the one that would give me a kiss. A beautiful little girl by the name of Rebecca stepped up and kissed me and got the apple.
"Another little girl by the name of Lacresa (I called her Cresa), was out in the sagebrush with me one day. We had dug up a beautiful buttercup to take home. After we had it dug, Cresa felt badly because she was afraid the buttercup would die. She carefully replanted it and put her little handkerchief over it to shade it from the hot rays of the sun so that it would go on growing. She said that little flower wanted to live as well as we do. That was her last day with me as she went home sick that day from school and a few days after, she died. All the school children went to her funeral and saw her in her coffin. The next day at school I was feeling very sad and lonely because of my lost friend and while thinking of her I wandered out where we had last played together. There I found her little handkerchief over the flower and it was fresh and growing. I have prayed for her to this day and hope some day she may belong to my kingdom.
"When I was a few months past eight years old, they took a number of us children to a stream in Ammon and baptized us, and confirmed us members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As I was put under the water, my foot came up so they had to do it over again. The second time, my whole leg came up so the third time, Brother Cooley who was baptizing me, held me under the water long enough to look around before he brought me out and it strangled me."
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Charles' boyhood days were spent very much as other country boys', playing when he could and working when he had to. In the summertime they would swim and fish in the Little Sand and Big Sand Creeks running through Ammon and in the wintertime they skated on the frozen streams and went bob-sleigh riding. He earned considerable money trapping muskrats and would occasionally catch a mink or a weasel.
As he grew older he and his brother John worked for the farmers in and around Ammon in the beet fields or potato patches or wherever work was available.
[6] In his record, Charles stated that his father was always a good provider for his family. For twelve years he traveled for the J. R. Watkins Company as a salesman and often, as most of his travels were among the farming communities, he would get produce for his pay rather than money. He would often bring home a dressed beef, mutton, pig, honey, or fruits and vegetables. To supplement this, he was a great hand at fishing and hunting. In those days Henry's Creek and Taylor's Creek abounded with fish. Pine hens, sage hens, and prairie chickens were in abundance, to say nothing of wild berries that grew along the mountain streams.
Sometimes their father would let Charles and John go along to help him pick berries. However, he always claimed Charles was too loud-mouthed to go fishing with him as his shrill voice would drive the fish away.
A few more childhood memories, Charles states as follows;
"When my sister Lucy was born, father left my brother John and me at Grandma Zitting's home and said he was going to get a little pig for us. When he brought us back home and showed us our new sister, we were very pleased. He told us he had traded the pig for the sister.
"One day when father came home from one of his trips for the Watkins Company, he found that I had gathered up seventeen cats from around the neighborhood. He asked me what I was going to do with so many cats. I told him I intended to raise cats and skin them and sell their furs. He said it would cost too much to feed them whereupon I stated that there would be no expense whatever because as I skinned the cats I could use the dead cats to feed the live ones.
"When I was about seven years old my mother sent me to the store for articles and would wrap the money in a piece of paper or cloth so I wouldn't lose it. One day I found some tin foil from the wrapper of chewing tobacco. I discovered I could cut it and make a little disk about the size of a nickel and by laying a nickel on it and tapping it with a hammer the print of the nickel would be on the tin foil. I wrapped it in a piece of paper as mother would do and took it to the store and bought a nickel's worth of candy, leaving the store before the clerk unwapped it. I was too young to know there was anything wrong in making money. Mother soon found it out, told me it wasn't right and had me take a nickel out of my bank and go pay the clerk for the candy. All my plans that I had made while eating the candy, to become suddenly rich by making money from tin foil, were blasted when I was informed it was wrong.
"I well remember the day President McKinley, President of the United States, was assassinated. It made me feel very sad. I also remember when I rode my first horse alone. Father put me on the horse and sent me to the post office for the mail. I was about seven years old and it was in the winter. The horse went slowly on the way to the post office, but on my way back he was in a hurry to get home and started out on a fast trot. I saw that I couldn't stay on and at the same time I saw a large snow drift [7] ahead. I lay on my stomach and put my arms around the horses neck and held on until we reached the snow drift and then I rolled off into the drift without getting hurt. I remember later getting thrown from a horse a few times. Once a horse threw me head first on a hard road and I lay in bed that time for a couple of weeks, sick and dizzy. Once a wild colt ran away with me for several miles but I managed to stay on him and didn't get hurt.
"I had the usual child diseases such as measles, chicken pox, and scarlet fever. The measles left me with very weak eyes and my parents were about to get me glasses but my mother taught me the principle of faith and by faith I overcame my weak eyes.
"I suppose one should write the bad as well as the good in one's Journal, so here goes. Two other small boys and I, one day in our rambles came across a sheep camp. No one was around so we entered the wagon and took two sacks of Durham tobacco and some matches and made cigarettes and smoked them. We didn't inhale the smoke. It was the only day in my life that I ever used tobacco in any form and I have never been drunk nor used strong nor hot drinks as a beverage any part of my life. I have tried to live the Word of Wisdom and other principles of the gospel to the best of my ability and understanding.
"When I was a very young boy, almost as far back as I can remember, in the early morning hours when I awoke and looked up, an extremely beautiful personage stood in the air above my bed, bent over me and gazed at me with a heavenly smile. It was so real that it would frighten me and several times I pulled the quilts over my head and didn't dare to look up for some time. Other times it would seem to disappear as vapor. This continued until I was a grown man.
"As a young boy I was bothered often by Satan in my dreams. I would dream of bulls and bears and other fierce animals after me. They seemed as big as a meeting house, and I couldn't get away from them. Just as they caught me I would wake up and was always so glad to find it was just a dream. At other times I'd dream I was falling from a high cliff but I'd always wake up before I landed and was so glad it was just a dream. One dream I have had repeated time and time again. I dream that I walk up through the air over people and above telephone lines and high buildings. It seemed more real every time I had that dream. Once as a boy after having this dream, I thought I could to it. I got on top of a haystack to get a good start. I looked down and decided to try something lower so I wouldn't have so far to fall in case it didn't work. I then got on top of the manure pile, about three foot high, to try the experiment. With both hands out in front of me I started up through the air. It didn't work and I went to the ground with both hands in a place where the cow had been. It seemed so real in my dream that I couldn't understand why I couldn't do it.
"Whenever a circus came to Idaho Falls, Father would put his family in his white top buggy and take them to see the circus. Once a great wind came up and pulled the large circus tent loose and busted up the circus.
[8] "One day they had the elephants down at the edge of Snake River to give them a drink. Somehow they got away from the caretaker, and jumped into the river. We stood on the bridge and saw them go end over end down the middle of the river and under the bridges. First a trunk would come up and then their hind legs as they rolled down stream. They lodged on an island a mile or two down the river and luckily they saved them all.
"When I was ten years old, mother took her children on their first trip back to Farr West and Ogden, Utah, to visit her folks. There was only one automobile in Ogden at that time. It was a little one cylinder car with no top and no windshield, owned by a doctor. Every afternoon at the same hour he would come along a road leading to the hospital past my aunt's place where we were visiting. People would line up in front of their homes on both sides of the road as far as you could see, every day waiting to see him pass at the unbelievable high speed of about ten miles per hour. He traveled on the rough dusty roads on the bench east of the business district.
"One day Grandpa Crane took us on a trip up Ogden Canyon and at a resort in the canyon I saw and heard for the first time the Edison phonograph with a large brass horn. It was one of the first ones out. I also remember when the cream separator was invented, and the flying machine of 1903.
"I always took an active part in the church organizations and became a deacon when I was twelve years old and later, a teacher and then a priest before I left Idaho. The summer after I became a deacon, my Grandmother Crane and mother's brother Sam Crane visited with us for several weeks at our home in Ammon, Idaho. We boys had moved our beds out in the granary for the summer. A hallway ran through the center of the granary with a large grain room on each side. In one room Uncle Sam and my brother John had their beds and in the other room I had mine. One day everybody went to Idaho Falls leaving my brother John and me home alone. They hadn't been gone long when I said to my brother,
What kind of a trick can we play on Uncle Sam when he comes home?' In a few minutes I said,
I have it, there's a rafter high up over Uncle Sam's pillow. I am going to get a beer bottle and fill it full of water and after putting the cork in it, I will tie it upside down to the rafter over Uncle's pillow. Then I will fasten a string to the cork and run the string over the rafters to my bed. After we get to bed, I will pull the string while Uncle Sam is asleep and the cork will come out and let the water down on his head.' My brother agreed it was a good plan so we fixed it up just that way.
"In the early evening I went to my deacon's class, leaving my brother home alone. I had been gone only a few minutes when the folks came home. Uncle Sam went into the granary to get his chore clothes on to help with the milking and he noticed the bottle tied to the rafter over his pillow. He called my brother in and found it all out. Then he got John to play traitor and help him put some boards across the rafters over my pillow and a leaning five gallon can on the boards nearly full of water and pieces of potatoes. The very string that I was to pull was disconnected [9] from the cork in the bottle and tied to the stick holding the leaning can from tipping.
"I came home from my class after playing hide and go seek with some boys of the town until about ten o'clock. I got a friend of mine, Jay to sleep with me that night to experience the fun. Jay was somewhat taller than I and his feelings were very easily hurt. After we had been in bed about half an hour, I whispered to Jay and said,
I believe Uncle Sam is asleep now.'
"He said,
Sure he is, let it go.'
"We were both lying flat on our backs with our eyes open when I jerked the string. About four gallons of water and pieces of potatoes hit us in the face. It was the biggest surprise of our lives. The first thought that came to us was that the Lord had taken revenge on me for playing such a trick and that the sky had broken in on me. I immediately called upon the Lord in prayer for forgiveness while Jay was bawling like a baby and brushing the water from his underwear. My brother and Uncle Sam got a big laugh out of it."
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Life went on in the grade schools for Charles pretty much as it did for all the other boys in the neighborhood. His friendship with his boyfriends was enduring. Jay Walters, David Owen and Edwin Soelberg seem to have been the closest to him.
In his journal Charles records the incident when he had the only real fight in his grade school days. It was with Jay Ower a marble game and that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't been egged on by some bigger boys. It turned out to be a real blood and thunder fight Charles came out with a broken nose and Jay with two front teeth missing.
Charles graduated from the Ammon School eighth grade in the Spring of 1909. The graduating class consisted of six members. Charles was a very apt pupil in arithmetic. He states that he and David Owen came through their arithmetic finals with a 100% grade.
About the same time that Charles graduated from the grade school, his father filed on a homestead of 160 acres and later when the enlarged Homestead Act was passed, he was able to get another 160 acres adjoining it. This dry farm was five miles or more from where they had lived in Ammon. His mother was very much against her husband's homesteading and vowed time and again that she would never go into that dry wilderness to live. When the house was built, despite her protesting, she moved out there and did very well as a pioneer along with the rest of the family. There were doors in each end of the gable roof, and through the summer Charles and John slept in the loft.
His father moved his family back to Ammon each winter so the children could go to school. Before Charles started high school, his father bought a four room house in Idaho Falls and the mother and children spent their winters there.
Charles and John found themselves plenty busy helping to build the house and straw-roofed sheds for their cows and horses [10] and a coop for the chickens. They helped get cedar posts to fence the farm. They helped clear sagebrush off about 250 acres of the land and plow it all with a hand plow. They also helped dig a well by hand, about a hundred feet deep. After all their labor they found no water. A neighboring homesteader got a drilling rig and dug seven hundred feet deep with no better success. All the years they lived on their farm they had to haul water in barrels from Henry's Creek, a distance of about five miles round trip, for their culinary use and their livestock.
They grew good crops of turkey red wheat, pearl barley, oats, white navy beans, brown kidney beans, potatoes, melons and other garden foods. When funds got low, Charles and his mother took a few sacks of choice dry farm potatoes to Idaho Falls, a distance of about twenty miles round trip, in their white top buggy and got a good price for them.
One spring, when supplies were rather low, a man who had been a school friend of Charles' father, told him to come and get a load of potatoes to help out until his were ready for digging. This man had a large potato farm not far from their dry farm. He was known as the potato king of Idaho at that time. Charles' parents were very thankful for his kindness to them.
For the next three and a half years, Charles spent a good deal of his time on the dry farm helping his father. When the work slacked up there, he'd hire out to some of the farmers around about. One summer he worked on a large irrigated farm at the mouth of Henry's Creek. There Charles learned a good deal about farming. He learned how to stack hay, how to catch a swarm of bees and many other useful things. He mentioned how he liked to sit in the parlor at evening and listen to their phonograph. His favorite record was "When You and I Were Young Maggie."
While living on the dry farm with their father, Charles and John often made a trip to Idaho Falls in the white top buggy for provisions, or to Ammon to thin beets or other farm work. On their way home, tired from the days work, they would often fall asleep. The horses knew the way home and would pull up to the gate and stop and the boys would sleep on until awakened by their father or mother.
Charles was gifted with an inventive mind. Down through the years he invented some very practical and useful articles but never had the means to build and patent them. He lived to see several of his inventions built and come into use by others. When he was in the sixth grade in school he invented a new kind of calf muzzle. He tried to get his teacher to finance a patent on it but he would take no interest in it.
While working in the beet fields, he invented a beet topper that would cut the tops at the crown of the beet and pile the tops in windrows to be hauled off and then the beets would be plowed and loaded in wagons.
One summer after the dry farm crops were planted, Charles worked for a month or two with an old friend Lorin on his father's dry farm near Ozone, Idaho, plowing and preparing ground to plant in winter wheat.
[11] Of this occasion Charles says, "We nearly always had bread and milk suppers. Lorin and I were growing boys and we had such an enormous appetite that his sister Neta would get angry because we could eat bread almost as fast as she could cut it. I then invented a bread slicer but did nothing to get a patent on it and years later, I found the same thing in common use."
In the summertime on the dry farm, nearly every Sunday Charles watched for a dust to appear over the bench, because that meant that his friend, David Owen was coming to spend the day with him. They often went to Henry's Creek to gather service berries and choke cherries and to fish. In those days the mountain streams were full of trout. They often caught forty or more in one afternoon.
Charles had a dog and a gray pony. He taught one of his dogs to eat service berries and choke cherries from the limbs. The dog got in the habit of howling when he came to a bush until Charles came back and broke down a limb for him. On these trips they often found Indian arrow points.
Two or three winters after Charles graduated from the eighth grade, he spent time on the dry farm with his father helping get out quaking asp and red birch poles, cedar posts and dry cedar for firewood. A part of one winter, he also helped a friend get out timber on several feet of snow. He helped a doctor who had homesteaded near his father's dry farm. In frozen ground he dug post holes and built a fence.
Charles and his brother John got orphan lambs from the herds of sheep and raised them on cows' milk with a bottle and a nipple. They helped to drive large herds of sheep to the foothills in the springtime and if a sheep should give out or get lame so they couldn't keep up with the herd, the sheep herders would leave it behind, telling the boys they could have it. Occasionally, they found a stray sheep lost from the herd and would carry it home before the coyotes got it.
Once Charles and John cornered a beautiful wild ewe on the edge of a high cliff. When they tried to catch her, she jumped off and lodged between some rocks about ten feet down and couldn't move either way. Charles watched her while Albert went home for some long ropes. Charles climbed down and tied the ropes around her, and with great effort, they got her out and took her home. A few weeks later she had a pair of beautiful twin lambs and raised both of them. By 1911 they had raised quite a herd of sheep which their father sold.
While Charles was still in grade school he bought a good line back milk cow for thirty five dollars, the money he had earned working for different farmers. He kept the increase and by the year he started high school he had seven cows, and they all had a white line the full length of their backs. He gave them all to his father when he started school.
One summer Charles, his father and brother John contracted to thin, weed and harvest twenty acres of beets. The last few piles they had to dig out of the snow.
[12] Another summer, about 1912, while Charles was still living on the dry farm, he hired out to a surveying crew to survey mountainous government land. They surveyed the township east of his father's dry farm which took in a big part of Henry's Creek and the town of Ozone.
He started out as a flagman but soon learned much about government land surveying in rough country. He says those days gave him a hearty appetite and plenty of blisters on his feet.
The head man of the surveying crew said he liked to tell jokes to Charles because he got the point so quickly and got a hearty laugh out of it.
The men Charles was working with were a rough bunch. They were from the large cities and had plenty of evil ways. They wanted to teach Charles how to smoke and other bad habits but he refused to join them in their ways.They boarded at the home of an old friend of Charles' from Ammon who had taken up a homestead at Ozone. After they had eaten their breakfast, there were plenty of fried eggs, cheese, meat and other things left on the table and each man fixed his own lunch to carry with him. The men used to laugh at the large lunch Charles fixed, saying it would weigh him down so he couldn't work well. They had to tie their lunches in large handkerchiefs to the back of their overalls.
When Charles finished grade school, he had a great longing to go on to high school and college. He saw a friend go away to Logan to the Brigham Young College that next fall and several others of his friends had gone away to school, but Charles' folks were poor and his father had just taken up his homestead and needed his help. He tucked his longings away in his heart and went manfully about the business of helping his father. He spent the latter part of one winter and the early spring sorting potatoes. His uncle Abe Zitting was helping on this farm with the lambing. One evening as Charles came into the kitchen of his mother's home, he heard his uncle talking with his mother in the living room. He said that Mr. Anderson had made the statement that Charles was one boy who would make something of himself if he had a chance, but he wasn't getting a chance. He meant that Charles' parents didn't have the money to give him an education.
His mother spoke up and said, "Don't worry about Charles, he'll get there." He always remembered the words of his mother and they urged him on all through his life when the going got rough.
During those long winters on the dry farm, he did considerable trapping. He had a good set of traps, a rifle, and three greyhounds which were his only companions on these long tramps to Henry's Creek and Rock Hollow where he caught coyotes, badgers and other wild animals for the furs which he sold.
During one of these solitary tramps, he had an experience which brought about a great change in his life. Recorded in his own words he writes:
"One morning about January 3, 1913, I came to the edge of Rock Hollow, a deep dry canyon northeast of our dry farm and stood there with my rifle and my three greyhounds, gazing at a large dark object in one of my traps in the bottom of the canyon. The [13] sun was just coming up over the east mountains and the snow was drifting over the brim of the canyon like a shower of diamonds in the morning sunlight. I called my dogs and went over the snowdrifts to the bottom of the canyon. As I arrived at the trap, I found a large American Eagle caught by the fleshy part of one leg, nearly torn from its body. It had nearly bled to death and as I came up it raised its head erect and looked me straight in the eye as though to ask me why I had done it and then dropped its beak into the snow and died. It had come there to eat the rabbit I had used to bait the trap for coyotes. I was a lover of birds and this was the most beautiful bird I had ever seen. It had a gold rim around the edges of its bill and it measured six and one half feet from the tip of one wing to the other. I was heartbroken and decided then and there that I was through trapping.
"I took all my trap" back to the dry farm that morning. The next day I took my Coyote and badger furs into Idaho Falls and sold them, bought some new clothes and started to high school January 6, 1913, if I remember correctly."
Charles graduated from the Idaho Falls High School in the spring of 1916. While in school he took part in public speaking and debating teams and played basketball, football, and baseball. His best girlfriend was Alice Field.
Of this he says, "I spent many happy hours at her home with her and her sister Hazel. She has been dead for many years and to this day I still remember her in my prayers. She was a very good and lovely girl."
During Charles' high school days he picked up odd jobs whenever he could to help defray expenses. One summer during vacation he helped dig sewer trenches in Idaho Falls, and helped build cement curbing, gutters and sidewalks there. He also worked for a lumber and coal company one summer and at other times worked with his father on their dry farm when he needed help.
All through his high school and university days, and for sometime after he got married, he kept a diary in which was an accurate account of his daily earnings and spending, no matter how great or small the transaction might be. He was always ready and willing to share his last penny with those he felt were less fortunate than he. He kept an envelope in his suitcase which he called his tithing envelope, and there he deposited his tenth as his meager earnings came in. Those earning were down to bedrock a good many times during university days. Several places in his diary he records: "I spent 25 cents for this or that today, I have nothing on hand."
The spring that Charles graduated from high school he was "dead" broke and had to borrow money from his brother John to help buy clothes to wear to graduation exercises.
That summer he worked at a dairy just south of Idaho Falls, bottling and delivering milk. The mother of one of his school friends was one of his customers. She seemed to take a great interest in his future, and tried to encourage him to go on to college, saying that he was too big for the job of delivering milk.
[14] When the summer was over, he paid his brother the money he had borrowed and loaned his father the forty dollars he had left. He told his father he would like to have it back that fall for he intended to go to college. He helped harvest and stack wheat before leaving. His father tried to persuade him to wait for another year when he would be able to help with his expenses. This year's crop was the first one he had of any importance and he had to use it to pay off the debts accumulated in getting the farm built up and into a state of cultivation with farm machinery, fencing, building, etc.
Charles told him he had already lost three and a half years after he completed the eighth grade before he had the opportunity to go to high school and he didn't wish to lose any more time. He had written to Dr. Widtsoe, President of the University of Utah, asking him if he thought it would be possible for him to work his way through college. Dr. Widtsoe answered promptly saying it was hard to do but students with a good determination had done it and he would do all he could to direct Charles to part-time work. It was a very encouraging letter.
When his father saw that he was determined, he went to Idaho Falls with Charles to see him off. His mother gave him a few dollars that she had saved, and with the little money he had, he went uptown and bought a suitcase and a railroad ticket to Ogden, Utah, and had twenty cents left in his pocket. While Charles was packing his suitcase, his father went to a friend and borrowed the forty dollars that he owed Charles and gave it to him at the depot as he was leaving. Farewells were said and Charles was on his way to a new life.
He hadn't been away from Idaho Falls and the little country towns round about since he came to Ammon, Idaho, with his mother when he was only five years old, except for one trip to Ogden with his mother when he was ten years old. This was quite an experience for a country fellow to be entirely on his own in a strange town, the largest he'd seen, with nothing but his determination and faith in God to carry him on.
Charles stopped off at Ogden enroute to Salt Lake City and visited with his Grandfather and Grandmother Crane and Uncle Arthur in Farr West for a few days, and his mother's brothers and sisters in Ogden. While he was there he went with his grandfather and uncle to the sand ridges south of Ogden, to set some peaches and there for the first time in his life, saw peaches on the trees and ripe tomatoes on the vines. His grandfather and Uncle Arthur took him to Salt Lake where he stayed with his Uncle Sam Crane the first night.
He writes in his record, "I didn't let any of them know how little money I had to go to college on. I next went to the university and had a talk with the president, Dr. Widtsoe.
"After paying my tuition, part on my books, some clothes and a book of student street car tickets," Charles continued, "I was left with that proverbial 20 cents again and still owed part on my books. I had registered but school wasn't to start for a few days so I got busy looking for work."
[15] He found in the newspaper want ads the name of a rich family of the Federal Heights district, advertising for a Japanese school boy to be their cook to pay for his room and board. Charles answered the ad and told the lady he thought he could cook as good as any Japanese. (The only thing he had ever cooked was a jackrabbit over a bonfire.) He was informed that the Japanese boy who had cooked for them last year had just been there and asked for the job again, but he wouldn't be able to start for a week, so Charles could take the job for a week if he wanted it. He gladly accepted it as it would afford him room and board while he hunted for something more permanent.
His duties would be to prepare the morning and evening meals so he would have time through the middle of the day to try to locate another job. He was given a nice bedroom in the basement and an alarm clock so he could be up by seven o'clock in the morning.
He states, "I earnestly prayed that night that the Lord would help me with my new job as cook."
The next morning when he arose at seven o'clock and went to the kitchen, he was happily surprised to find the lady of the house there to help him. She told him she always did it all the first day and he could watch so he could carry on after that. He memorized everything she did and the next morning he put on the white apron and cap and went to work. The lady seemed very pleased with his cooking and even told him she hoped that the Japanese boy wouldn't come back.
By the end of the week he had another job lined up as an all-chore boy at the Pierpont Apartments. He had to work four hours or more every day of the week and all day Saturday for a sleeping room and two very small lunches a day (which he nearly starved on) and had no money for more food. It was then that he discovered that some of the well-to-do boys would often throw a good part of their lunches in their sacks into the waste baskets in the cloak room at the university. Charles raided these baskets when no one was around and filled his empty stomach this way.
He went on with this sort of life for about a month. He could see that things had to change. He had no money left even for streetcar fare, and it was about a two mile walk from the Pierpont Apartments to the university. This and the long hours of work and the short rations made him get down on his knees and ask for help, then with renewed strength and courage he started looking for work closer to the university.
The first night he had no success and the second night he was about to give up when he met a man just coming out of his home. Charles asked him if he knew of anybody that would let him work for room and board while he was going to the university. The man told him that the lady next door usually hired a schoolboy so maybe he could find what he wanted there. Charles tried again and the answer he got warmed his heart. The lady said she was just going to the phone to place an ad in the newspaper for a schoolboy when the door bell rang and there stood Charles. She felt that the Lord had guided him to her door, and as he too had been praying for help, he felt the same way.
[16] He was given a nice room in the basement and a place where he could do his washing and ironing. The lady fed him well too, and the working hours were reasonable. This lady had a rented upstairs apartment. The family there had some small children and when they went out for an evenings they often hired Charles to watch the children while he studied his lessons. In this way he earned a little spending money.
While living at this place, Charles had a dream one night that seemed to impress him considerably.
He writes, "I had a strange dream last night. I've never believed much in dreams before but I surely do believe in this one. I was living in a beautiful park where a cub bear lived also. We were both to live there, it seemed, all our lives and could never get out. At last the bear grew large and dangerous. We were bitter enemies and I was to rule or the bear would kill me. With great power I was leading him to the place of death by pushing my fingers into his nose and holding tight. He tried to pull away and the flesh of his nose was badly torn but I held tight. I awoke before I had led him to his place of death so I don't know how it ended. I awoke with the interpretation on my mind. The first thought was that the bear represented some weakness in my character or life that had grown very large and would ruin my life if I didn't use my strongest power to conquer it. I think that the weakness is I am idle too much of my time or don't work hard enough while I do work. I think the beautiful park represents what my life would be if I succeed in overcoming this weakness."
Charles seemed to have been quite poetically inclined all his life and in his younger days had spent considerable time composing poetry and words for songs, competing in various contests that appeared in the newspapers and magazines. It was while he was living at this lady's place that he composed the words and music for two songs that brought their reward. The titles of these songs were "It Faded Away" and "The Bride Of Sunny California."
A young man with some money of his own whom Charles had met at the university loaned Charles the money to get a copyright on these songs and to have one thousand copies printed, for half interest in the songs. Then Charles started in with a will to sell those songs, peddling them from door to door. He spent an hour or two each evening after his work was done and four or five hours on Saturdays. He got rid of all his copies and bought his friend out and kept on selling.
He soon felt that his time was too valuable to waste being a chore boy so he gave up his job as soon as the lady could get another boy to take his place. Charles went to live at a boarding house where one of his school friends from Ammon, Idaho, was staying. He had a room and two good meals a day for five dollars a week. He got his noon lunch at the cafeteria at the university for about 25 cents. Times seemed to be getting better. He had more time for studying and more hours for peddling his songs. During the next three school years and for a while after he was married, he continued peddling his songs whenever time would permit. He canvassed nearly every home from the Wasatch Mountains [17] on the east to the Greet Salt Lake on the west and from the Jordan Narrows on the south up to and including Brigham City on the north. His only means of travel was on foot except for riding on the electric railway to and from the different little towns. He sold over nine thousand copies of these two songs.
This endeavor, with other work that he engaged in at different times, put him through the university and helped finance him in several different business deals that he was interested in. He had bought two business lots at 1200 South State for $2500 dollars which he had nearly paid for when he quit school. Later he sold them to a man who built a sausage factory on them.
During a part of one winter while attending the university, Charles, with a friend of him, worked at a dairy. This gave them plenty to do. They milked twenty-six cows, bottled the milk, fed and watered the cows and cleaned out the barn, all for thirty dollars a month. They had to do their own cooking and walked about two miles across the Fort Douglas Reservation to and from the university every morning and evening, and sometimes through about eighteen inches of snow.
Later that same winter, Charles worked a while at the Wilson Hotel. His duties were to meet the trains morning and evening with the hotel bus and also to sweep and mop the lobby every morning before daylight. He got thirty dollars a month for this, plus a room to sleep in. This hotel bus was the first car that Charles had ever driven. A man showed him how to start and stop it and how to shift gears, then started him out alone, on a busy afternoon just as the sun was going down. He had to cross Main Street at Second South and as he got into the intersection he killed the engine and had to get out and crank.
He says, "I had to learn how to handle it in a hurry. I have since worn out about fifteen cars and have driven a million miles or more."
In his journal Charles writes, "I met many temptations to go wrong while going to school and especially while working at the hotel, but I overcame them all and although I wasn't married until I was past twenty-six years old, I had remained morally clean and virtuous."
Each year when the university closed its regular courses for the summer months, he went back to Idaho either to help his father on the dry farm or to get other work. That first spring when he went back, he had new clothes all through and money in his pockets.
The spring of 1917 when the United States entered the First World War, Charles was back home helping his father and an old pal from high school was running a farm there in Ammon, Idaho. These two got to feeling very patriotic and decided they ought to join the armed forces. Their parents were very much concerned about it and tried to disuade them but patriotism was running rampant through the youth at that time and they felt that they would be cowards if they didn't join. They went to the recruiting office in Idaho Falls, ready to enlist. Their parents finally persuaded them to have a talk with the head of the Selective Service Board in the district before they enlisted. As he talked to them and [18] found they were both engaged in farming, he said if they really wanted to be patriotic and do the greatest service to their country they should stay with their farms until they were drafted as the country needed experienced farmers that summer more than they needed soldiers. Both boys went back to their farms.
* * * * * * * * * *
During Charles' first year at the university, he met a young lady by the name of Minnie Affleck when he was out peddling his songs. She bought both songs but told him he'd have to call back for the money when she got her paycheck. It was love at first sight as far as Charles was concerned. He said as soon as he left her home he walked a few doors west and went in the shadow of a little store, as it was a moonlit night, and offered up a prayer asking the Lord to help him to get her for his wife if it was the Lord's will.
She was about eighteen years old then and Charles was about twenty-three. When he delivered the songs, Minnie invited him back to visit them. Her mother was a little disturbed about it as her oldest daughter already had a young man calling to see her. She told Charles and Minnie they weren't old enough to be dry behind the ears yet, which rather disturbed Charles. She didn't order him not to come back and her girls warmly invited him so he became a frequent visitor at their home after that. In a short time he was bringing a friend along with him who took quite a liking to Minnie's sister Kate. They had many good times together.
The Affleck girls were good musicians and they taught the boys how to sing with them while they played the piano. They sang the songs brought into being by World War One as well as many old time songs and hymns. The song Charles loved to hear Minnie sing most was "The Sunshine of Your Smile."
The peddling of his songs which brought Minnie into his life also brought him to the door of another young lady, who some ten years later became his wife. Her name was Elvera C. Olson. She bought his songs and as she paid him for them she picked a rose and pinned it on the lapel of his coat and he went on his way.
Years later, after she had become his wife, she was looking through her treasures one day and came across these songs and noticed Charles' name on them. She brought them to him and asked how his name happened to be on them. She told him she had bought them from a young man who came to her door years ago. Charles told her he had composed the songs and he must have been the young man who sold them to her, and then the memory of her pinning a rose to his coat lapel came back to him.
When Charles went back to Idaho after his first year at the university, he received many lovely letters from Minnie. Later that summer Minnie and her parents came up to Idaho to visit at his parents home, where Charles and Minnie spent many happy hours together at church and dances and car riding.
In the fall of 1917, he helped his brother John harvest potatoes on his father-in-law's dry farm east of Iona, Idaho. [19] They harvested about 12,000 bushels and sold them at two dollars per bushel. Charles tells about a joke the other farm hands tried to pull on him one night which in the end left them "holding the bag."
He says, "They were talking about hunting snipes or quail, by going out just below a grove of quaking aspen trees where the quail were supposed to be roosting, and driving them out into an open sack while one man held a lantern behind the sack. They said the light would blind the quail to everything else in the dark and they would go toward the light and into the sack. It sounded quite possible to me," Charles wrote, "so I asked to hold the sack and lantern. The boys went into the grove and made noises as though they were driving them out and then they headed for the house. They hadn't been gone but a few minutes when I realized it was a joke on me. By running and taking a different course, I reached the house ahead of them and went to bed, leaving the lantern by the sack. I soon heard them calling me and when I didn't come they became afraid I had left the lantern and had gotten lost in the dark. They went out and got the lantern and spent a good part of the night hunting for me while I slept. The next morning at breakfast they didn't care to talk about quail hunting."
When Charles returned to Idaho in the spring of 1918 he found that his friend Edwin had just been drafted into the army. Edwin had already contracted to operate a farm and had part of the crop planted when he left. Charles took over the farm, paying his friend for the work he'd done. A little later that same year Charles' brother-in-law Elbert was drafted and Charles operated his farm also, which was a little south of Idaho Falls.
The two farms kept Charles pretty busy that summer and fall and when harvest time came, threshing machines came to both farms the same day so he had to get two crews of men for the work, and hired a friend to take charge of one of the threshing outfits. Besides the grain crop, Charles had six acres of potatoes. These he harvested in the green stage and shipped them straight to the army camps.
He says, "As I remember, I sold over 1500 sacks from that six acres. I had planted them in a foothill loam soil that had been planted in alfalfa for years. When the alfalfa was about six inches high, I irrigated it and plowed it under and immediately planted it into potatoes. My Red Bliss potatoes seemed to get the largest. Four large ones laying end to end had a combined length of thirty-eight inches. They had grown so fast they had a little hollow spot in the center."
Charles harvested all his crops on both farms, marketed them and got back to the university by the time it started.
During the winter of 1917 and the fall of 1910, Charles was drilled in army maneuvers with other university students and was in the act of joining the Reserve Officers Training Corps when the armistice was signed.
That winter the Affleck family got the smallpox and as Charles had been keeping steady company with Minnie, he came down [20] with the disease too. The Afflecks were kind enough to take him into their home and care for him along with the rest of the sick ones. He stated that it wasn't so bad being quarantined after all. They had lovely times playing games and singing.
That Christmas Minnie gave Charles a gold initialed ring.
He writes, "It is a very beautiful ring and has always remained on my finger. For many years my finger has been too large to allow the ring to pass over the knuckle and the three initials have worn off leaving the ring smooth but very beautiful. I want it left on my finger when I go to my grave as a token that I was not a quitter and that I have not and will not quit Minnie as long as time lasts, unless God wills it otherwise."
In Charles second year at the university the freshmen and sophomores started sheering off each other's hair, tight to the head. Locks of hair could be seen on most every street corner in downtown Salt Lake City and all over the campus. At a school dance one night, Charles was led by his Delilah to a street corner where he lost his hair.
In his third year he grew a mustache, and a number of the students wanted it taken off. It had been a law of the student body that no one should wear a mustache unless he was a junior or a senior. They held a meeting and appointed a committee to investigate Charles' credits to see if he was a full fledged junior. They found that he was. Most of these boys belonged to the School of Mines and Engineering, where Charles was majoring. They called a meeting of all the engineers and passed a law that no one could wear a mustache in the School of Mines unless he was a full-fledged senior, then they set out to remove that mustache. He dodged them for several days and when they got more persistent, Charles had his picture taken while he still possessed that cherished mustache. A few days later, about fifty men closed in on him in downtown Salt Lake City. One lathered his face with soap and snow and another shaved one half of his mustache and then let him loose. That evening the Salt Lake Herald newspaper ran a good sized article headed, "University of Utah Junior Looses a Misplaced Eyebrow."
The winter of 1919 and 1920 was his last year at the university. He lacked a few credits of having enough to graduate, however, and he never went back to finish up. Charles had majored in Agriculture during his high school days. At the university, he spent his four years in the School of Mines.
In the spring of 1920 Minnie stopped seeing Charles. She told him later that it was the request of her parents. She said she either had to leave home or quit him. She had always been taught that it was a disgrace to leave home so she did what she thought was best.
Brokenhearted, Charles left Salt Lake City and went out to stay with his Grandfather Crane in Farr West. He continued to peddle his songs and later sold brushes too. While he was living there he, Grandfather Crane and Uncle Arthur were bachelors, as Grandmother Crane had passed on some time ago.
One morning Minnie, her sister Kate and her boyfriend, Lon, came there to see him. The girls had had a disagreement with [21] their folks at home and had run away with Lon, whom Kate was planning to marry. Charles and Minnie were happy to be together again. It didn't take long for them to forgive and forget all their past troubles and to be sweethearts once more.
As Kate and Lon had quite decided to get married, they urged Charles and Minnie to join them and make it a double wedding, which they finally decided to do. They started back to Salt Lake City fully determined to carry out their plans whether the girls parents were agreeable or not. The boys went first to the home and after much gentle persuasion, they gained the parent's consent, then the girls rejoined them. Some time later, after consulting with her parents, Kate changed her mind and never did marry Lon, but Charles and Minnie, happy to be reunited, went on with their plans and a short time afterwards were united in marriage in the Salt Lake Temple, on September 15, 1920. That evening Minnie's parents had a reception for them and they received many presents and well wishes from a houseful of relatives and friends.
Word reached Charles that the boys at the wedding intended to catch him and take him for a ride, so he and Minnie made a hasty exit. In their hurry to get away they forgot to cut the wedding cake or thank their guests for their gifts. They slipped out the back door, Minnie still carrying her bridal bouquet, and ran through back alleys to escape being caught. They made their way to a Mrs. McLaughlin's house where Charles had once roomed. She opened her door wide for them and fixed them up comfortably for the night. She said she had been expecting them.
Charles said he had no money to get married on so his Grandfather Crane loaned him $150, which he paid back with interest a year later. After their marriage they spent a couple of days at the Affleck home, then went on to Grandpa Crane's for a day or two and from there, took a short honeymoon trip to Idaho to visit with Charles' parents and other relatives and friends.
They lived in Ogden for about six months then went back to Salt Lake City to make their home, moving from place to place as they were able to better their living conditions. At one time they had an upstairs apartment in the home of a doctor. Charles and Minnie were to do endowment work in the temple for his wife's ancestors to pay for their rent. However, while doing this work they found that the people they had been doing the work for were relatives of Charles' mother too, so they refused to take the apartment without paying for it.
Charles continued his salesmanship with the brush company after he moved to Salt Lake City, and had several salesmen working under him including his father-in-law at one time. Charles and Minnie were living in the old Affleck home at 316 South 4th East when their first son was born on July 15, 1921. They named him Frederick Affleck Zitting. Those were happy days for Charles and Minnie, and the little one's arrival brought its added share of joy.
Charles' religion always held a very sacred spot in his heart. From his earliest days he had lent his support to the different auxiliary organizations of the church, so he and Minnie [22] found a warm welcome in the different wards where they resided. Charles had taught Sunday School part of the time while he was attending the university.
In reading the Scriptures at one time in the early years of his married life, he became very interested in the life and labors of the patriarch Abraham. He marveled at Abraham's faith, courage, and integrity. He thought how wonderful it would be to be like Abraham and he let his thoughts dwell much upo
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