I am the youngest son of Lucy Elizabeth Carroll and Jonathan Heaton. There were eleven children in the family: Charles C., Esther, Kezia, Christopher C., Edward C., Lucy, Ella, Sterling, Myself, and Amy.
I can remember going to school in the old home, in the home Aunt May now lives in, and in the home of my brother Charles. I also went to school in the old school house across the road from the old home.
When the school house was built, Father and some of the boys went out at night and laid it off north to south by the North Star, so it would be facing north.
This building also served for parties, gatherings, court hearings, and church. One of those gatherings the cattle men held to see what could be done about people stealing cattle by working over brands to make them their own. One fellow in particular was a problem. Some wanted to be a little easy on him. Others wanted to give him the works. After some discussion, Lehi Jones of Cedar City, Utah got up and during his remarks said that "life is what you make it". I have always remembered this.
I learned, as I grew older, that Father and Mother made life good. Father was always planting a tree or making a fence, or making a better road that would do some good and make life easier, Mother was always working and giving instructions to us kids so that our part of the work would be easier. She was always ready to help someone else. Even the Indians came to her in sickness and hunger.
Mother was never idle. When she was not working, she would be knitting or darning stockings, making quilts and many other things. She was always making up beds for travelers that came and went from Moccasin. There were many cattlemen, sheep men, travelers, and also Church people. It was when one such group was going from Kanab and Orderville to the Dixie Settlement that Francis M. Lyman blessed me and gave me my name.
With all this traveling of guests, Father and Mother never failed to have morning and evening prayer and would invite the traveling public to pray with us. Only once can I remember of one fellow who went outside while the prayer was being said. We always turned the backs of the chairs to the table to have prayer.
Talk about home evening - we had it every night. In the summer it would be eating melons. In the fall and winter it was eating pine nuts and roasting quail on a thread hanging from the mantle in front of the fire place. Those were what we call "the good old days".
Father had cattle and sheep when I was a boy, and I can still see the big herd of cattle at Pipe Springs, and see the older fellows bring large herds of cattle off the Moccasin Mountain, by the Sand Springs. You could see them all up and down the trail. This would be done when the snow got too deep on the mountain. Also, I can remember when they used to bring the sheep herd off the mountain at the same place.
In the fall and winter, we would make traps to catch quail. We would make a place over at the cow stable in the barn to keep them in. At one time, Father screened off the north end of the ground and, it seemed to me, we had hundreds of quail in the place. This is where we would get them for roasting in front of the fire and for Sunday dinners. Mother used to always have lots of chicken too.
Living in those days, Father taught us to save and be prepared for tomorrow - something they are trying to get us to do now by having a year or two of food and clothing on hand, Father used to grind corn and have his wheat made into flour every fall so we would have a year supply, or more on hand all the time. He also raised hogs, and at Thanksgiving and Christmas time we'd kill enough to last. We cured the hams and bacon in a salt brine. Also, he used to smoke a lot of meat. After it was cured, he would kill a beef or two and make corned beef by curing it in a fifty gallon barrel. I wish I knew how to do it like they did. When I was a kid it tasted mighty good.
Father always liked to keep things picked up and everything in its place. Each team of horses had its stall and the saddle horses had theirs. The harnesses and saddles had their place in the shed. If someone had to go out in the dark of the night, they would know which harness went with which horse.
Father did a lot of freighting and, at times, would have four horses, and sometimes six, to a wagon. As a boy, I thought I was quite big when he would let me drive the teams, whether they were hitched to the wagon, the plow, or cutting grain.
Just another thought or two on saving and preparing for the tomorrow. We used to raise a lot of fruit and garden stuff. Father made long wooden dryers and they would dry apples, plums, and the like, as well as bottling some. They also raised a lot of cane and made molasses, which was put in barrels and cans. Every fall Father would make a batch of peach preserves by putting peaches in the molasses. He stored it in a large oak barrel - that and his honey. Father always had bees, This is about all the sweets we would get, I can remember when Father would get a pack of sugar, He would take half of it and leave with Aunt Amy's family, and half would be brought out to Moccasin. We never went hungry. That kind of life made healthy kids, and healthy grownups too.
As a boy of five or six years old, I would have to get up early in the morning and get out to the barn to tend to the calves and do the chores. It was one of these cold mornings in the winter that I heard Charl say he was 40 years old that morning. I thought that was sure old for anyone to be.
Another time, we were milking cows and Ed would milk a spotted cow that was mean to kick. She used to give a lot of milk, and Ed had the bucket full and running over with milk foam when the old cow up and kicked the bucket of milk all over Ed. I can hear him saying, "Watch out, you're kicking milk all over the devil."
I used to have a nick name that was given to me from the old horse named Tob. One morning Old Tob was dead in his stable with legs stiff. When they tried to pull him out, his stiff legs made it hard to do. One morning when I went out to the barn to help with the chores, I said I was just as stiff as Old Tob was when he died. I carried the nickname "Stiffy" with me for a long time. One of my old Indian friends, Georgie Georgie, saw me a while back and called me "Stiffy",
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