My History

My History

MY HISTORY

By William Long Brisbin

My name is W. L. Brisbin; I was born September 22, 1917. My father’s name is Milton Smith Brisbin; my mother’s name is Ruth Long Brisbin. I have a brother two years older than I, Rex Milton Brisbin; born September 29, 1915, have a sister three and a half years older than I, Mary Pearl Brisbin born,

May 20, 1914.

(Baby Bill) (Rex & Mary)

My father was a strong hard working man that had a farm and ranch and raised cattle. My mother was a short heavyset woman. She was a very hard working lady and had a great love for children.

(Grandma Brisbin and Billie Jean, Judy, Linda)

Father had dreams of better things and better places; he was always on the move looking.

We moved to California when I was very young, and he farmed out there. About the first thing I can remember is us kids in the hay loft out there and the older kids built a fire, they were pulling hay down to put the fire out, and the whole barn caught on fire. The horses ran into the barn, got burned up and the cows ran and knocked the fence down and ran out in the field. The old Model T we had in there caught on fire. The seat was on fire and the gas tank was under the seat, my dad said he would try it one more time, so he gave it a crank and started it up and backed it out, but everything else was lost.

(Bill, Mary & Rex) (Mabel & baby Ruth)

I had a sister born in California, her name is Mabel Brisbin, she was born September 20, 1919, Bakersfield, Kern County. We moved to Collbran, Colorado, where I had a brother born December 8, 1923, named Robert “Bob” Lee Brisbin.

That was the year I started to school. We went to school in a one-room schoolroom, with eight grades in it, called Eaglelite School.

(Mary, Bill & Rex) (Bill about 10 yr. Old)

We walked a mile and a half to school, until dad bought us a horse, then all three of us, my older brother and sister and I rode this horse, but he bucked us off every time we went to school, going and coming. Dad being a horse trader traded her off for a little black mare which was a dandy. We really loved this horse. We rode it to school for that whole winter. The next summer it got its leg broke and dad had to shoot it. I felt real bad about this.

(Ruth, Mabel, Bill, Rex, and Mary)

My dads’ foot started itching, so we moved back to California. He worked on a, what they called a pipeline where they pumped oil to the coast. It was in the desert and the rattlesnakes were real bad there. I remember there would be rattlesnakes out in the rest room, that was one of those rest rooms that had a two holler, back behind the schoolhouse. One day there was a rattlesnake on the front porch when we went to school. Another time my mother baked us a pie, and us boys went for a picnic and on the rocks there was a rattle snake, and the boy packing the pie jumped, lost the pie, and we had no picnic.

From there into Oregon, which is a beautiful country. My dad bought a ranch there and raised wheat. I went to school there and I had problems with the teacher. It was a crowded school and the only seat they had was a piano stool. It made me mad; the teacher was going to make me study and I wasn’t going to study. I think I got a whipping about six times a week there in a row. I feel like I won out but I lost one grade there, so maybe I didn’t win out.

We moved back to Collbran, Colorado. I had a sister born, with the name of Ruth Marie Brisbin, on October 5,1926.

(Rex, Bill, Mabel, Mary & Bob) (Baby Ruth and Mabel)

My dad had a ranch there and raised cattle. We lived there until I was a freshman in high school. Dad figured if a boy was old enough to go to school, he was old enough to milk cows. He kept about 8 head of cows. When a boy was 12 years old he should take a man’s job in the field. Between my dad and us boys, we put up the hay; we had about 80 acres of alpha hay to put up twice a year. Between the cuttings of hay he’d let us take our horses and go up on Grand Mesa. This is beautiful country, lots of lakes; we could stay up there for a week and go fishing. We really enjoyed it.

(Grandpa Milton and Bill Brisbin)

I had another sister born at this place on May 9, 1929, named Harriet Louise Brisbin. This was an enjoyable time of our lives and mother, she spoiled us. Our dad he was strict, but with seven kids at the table he had to be strict. No playing at the table and he only told us once. We knew what time the chores had to be done and we better be doing them when he came around. He loved us and he liked to take us fishing. Whenever we went to town he always found a dime or a nickel for each one of us to buy some candy or something. A dime at that time was a lot of money, a man worked all day for a dollar. It was long days fourteen to sixteen hours. Dad would always like to take us to the show once in a while, when he had the money and it was one of those old show, no talkies, and once in a while we’d have a talkie and he would always take us to see them. But those were depression times and all the kids grew up just like we did, without any money. I heard my grandpa say one time, if things stayed like this, we’d have the fattest, nackists kids in the country. We always had lots to eat anything we wanted to eat but not a lot of money for clothes.

(Grandma & Grandpa Brisbin)

In the fall of 1932, my dad bought a place in Fruita, Colorado, which was about 40 miles from where we lived. My brother and I took the team and wagon and put all the machinery we could put on the wagon, and drove it to Fruita, which took us two days. We stopped at Palisade at the livery stable and put our horses there, we slept up in the hayloft that night. On the trip we broke two wheels on the wagon. We’d had some extra wheels with us and we replaced the first one, the second one was about five miles from where we were going to live so we unhooked the horses and left the wagon by the side of the road that night and went on down home.

Got to Fruita high school and made new friends, we’d had practice, we’d moved so much we could make friends pretty easy. We lived there approximately three years. Dad built a little store there by the side of the road, sold gas and a few groceries, we raised and grew crops. Sugar beets, tomatoes and what have ya.

From there we moved to Mack, Colorado. There we grew mostly pinto beans, some corn, of coarse a few watermelons to eat all the time.

Spring, my dad and the rest of the family, all but my older brother and I went to California.

Rex and I stayed and ran the farm that year. We had lots of fun, lots of work also. If we had a chance one of us would work for the neighbors, maybe we’d only get a couple of dollars a week but we could take that and buy gasoline and go to the dance on Saturday night and dance till two in the morning.

We lived about a half a mile from the elementary school. In the spring they would occasionally close the school, the community would get together and go down there for a day of enjoyment. Whenever us boys would get together we’d have some boxing gloves and do some boxing. There were a couple of girls there. One of them crawled up on the ladder and had the other push the ladder over, she said she was trying to get my attention, she did. That Saturday night I found out what her name was, I ask her for a date. She wasn’t home so I had to go to the neighbors. At the neighbors it was kind of dark in their house, and I just about ask the wrong girl out. Her being the most beautiful girl in the valley, I tried to find enough money each week so we could go dancin’ and to the show every Saturday night from then on. Her name was Mildred Jean Turner and she had a friend by the name of Lephia Foss, and my best friend was Marshall Garlitz. Marshall started taking Lephia out. I and Jean, and Marshall and Lephia went together to the dances and to the shows and really enjoyed it. That was the summer I fell in love with Jean. I couldn’t think of anything but her. The following year her folks moved to Salt Lake City.

(Mildred Jean Turner)

The following fall my older brother Rex and I went to Los Angeles to engineering school, when we graduated from school our folks picked us up, they were headed for Imperial Valley, California. Dad had leased this place and was headed down there to work in the lettuce field. He’d built a camp trailer and we all lived in that.

(The Brisbin Family)

From there we moved to McFarland, up there I went to work for one of my uncles, as a carpenter, that was where I first did any carpenter work of any kind.

From there we came back home to Mack, Colorado. We stayed there that summer. Rex and I wanted to find some work so we went to California. I found a job on a dry wheat ranch, not far from Bakersfield.

During this time Jean and I wrote letters back and forth to each other, I was falling more in love all the time.

In the spring when our job ran out at the wheat ranch, we had all the wheat planted. On the way home I stopped in Salt Lake City and Jean and I decided to get married. A Mormon bishop married us in her folks home, on June 27, 1938.

From there we came back to Mack, Colorado where my folks lived, and built a trailer house and we lived in that through the summer. I picked spuds and put up hay for the neighbors, whatever I could do to make a few dollars to keep living. Grandma Long needed some help in one of her upper places up at the meadows. Where, they have since built the dam for the Vega Reservoir. Up there we worked in the fall. Then my sister and her husband were going to California for work and we went with them. We started out for Los Angeles, clear up into Sacramento looking for work, we didn’t find any. We were getting low on money so Jean and I decided we would hitch hike back to Salt Lake City. At that time everybody who didn’t have a car would hitch hike, it was safe and everybody picked each other up, there was never any trouble on the road. We really enjoyed the trip back. We met a lot of people and got to know a lot of people. One of the fun times in our lives.

(Bill and Jean Brisbin)

We got back to Salt Lake about Thanksgiving time at her folks’ place. We then went to my folk’s place in Mack. My grandmother Long needed some help, feeding cattle at one of her upper ranches. We called it the tick farm. We went up there and fed the cattle that winter, and spring. Our first child was born there, she was a beautiful baby girl. She was born May 22, 1939, we called Billie Jean, she was born in our home with a nurse, the Dr. came about the time the baby was born.

We stayed there and worked that summer and moved down to the home place to a small home there. We lived there through out that winter, stayed and worked for my grandmother that summer. In the fall my folks moved to Cortez, Colorado. We went down to see them, and that is where our second child was born, it was another beautiful baby girl. We named her Judith Arlene, born November 24, 1940. She arrived before the Dr. got there.

About Christmas time we went from there up to Cisco, Utah. That is where Jeans’ folks were living. That is about the time they were getting prepared for the war, the Second World War. They were paying high prices for the uranium and Jeans dad was prospecting for Eddie Moore down in Dewey, it’s along the Colorado River up from Moab, Utah. We stayed there and spent the winter prospecting. We lived in a tent, and getting wet, getting rough and getting lonely, but it was fun. It was a different kind of a life than we were use to.

Mostly getting poorer and more broke all the time. In the spring we heard of a job up in Grand Junction, a man needed a man to run his ranch for him. He'’ pay $35 dollars a month and furnish the house, we worked there a month, then we heard they were paying good money out in California in the defense plant. We decided to go out there and try our luck.

After arriving in California we found out that I couldn’t get a job unless I belonged to a union. I couldn’t belong to a union unless I had a job. That is in the shipyard and places. I finally found a job roughing in houses, and I worked there and kept going to the union hall. But I couldn’t get a job unless I stayed there. Jean decided she would get a job working in a café. She worked at night and my mother would take care of the children. (Mom and Dad were living with us at that time). I would stay down at the union hall all day and night. I stayed there for a week finally one Saturday they had a call for help on some jobs. They had no union hands there so I got a job and I could join the union. I went to work on a Saturday night midnight shift, and I remember I made $57 dollars for one nights work, more money than I had ever made in a month. I worked there for two years. Marshall and Lephia moved out there also.

We had money and we finally found us a decent home to live in, there was so many people living there, houses were very short at that time. We had enough money that we could do things, and enjoy life for a while.

(Bill, Jean, Billie Jean & Judy & Linda)

I wanted to farm, I always kept thinking about farming. So after about two years we moved back to Cortez, Colorado. We rented a small place, had an apple orchard on it and some grain. Lived there the first year than the second year we rented a farm from a man down below Cortez, that had two or three big ranches and farmed it on a share. He furnished all of the machine and stuff, and we farmed it that year. It was a pretty good sized place, we raised quite a lot of potatoes and beans, and we bought a bunch of pigs to fatten up, and I and another guy went together and bought a car load of wheat, to fatten them with. Then the government came along and put a ceiling price on them. We got less for them after we fattened them than we paid for them to start with. We didn’t make much money on that deal.

That fall in 1944, we left there and moved up by Dolores, a place called Summit Ridge. That fall we had another baby born, and what do you know, it was another beautiful baby girl. We named her Linda Kay Brisbin, born November 28, 1944, in the Cortez hospital. The reason we named her Linda Kay because we were figuring on a boy this time and the only name we had was Robert Ray and we couldn’t name her Robert Ray, so we changed it to Linda Kay.

(Bill, Jean, Billie Jean, Judy & Linda) (Billie Jean, Judy & Linda)

This place was a nice home, had a big apple orchard on it. The owner reserved the apple orchard, it was about one hundred acres we grew pinto beans on this place. I had my own machine and I bought a combine and after I got my beans combined in the fall I would go around the neighbors and do custom work. We lived there the fall of 1947. We had good times there. The fishing was real good there and when we had a chance we’d go up to Ground Hog and go fishing.

After we got the crops in, in the fall, sometimes we’d go work in the wintertime. One winter we went up to Klamath Falls, Oregon, where Jeans’ folks lived. Her dad was working in a place where they had the Japanese, during the wartime, they had them in a camp. We worked up there till the end of the war, then they shipped them back to their farms. We worked there and helped load them up. Then we went back in the spring and farmed again.

(Bill, Jean, Billie Jean, Judy, & Linda)

(Linda & Grandma Brisbin in Roosevelt)

(Bill & Jean in Roosevelt)

In the fall of ’47, we had an auction and sold our machinery and stuff. We were going to go to Oregon. When we got to Salt Lake City, where her folks lived. We hadn’t seen much of them for years, so we thought we would stay there that winter.

(Grandma Rhoda Matilda Wilson) (Grandpa Bert Brown Turner)

I got a job working in the chicken ranch there. We stayed there all winter and in the spring, one of her brothers, Albert wanted to come to the Uintah Basin, to look at some ground. We went out and looked around and finally found a piece of ground we could buy. I went back to Salt Lake and we loaded up. My folks happened to come by to visit, just as we were loading up. They helped us move out to Roosevelt. When Jean saw the old house, it wasn’t much of a house. She said, “Don’t need to unpack because I’m only going to stay over night”. That was thirty two years ago. We moved their May 1948.

Here we bought some milk cows, and farmed. I always said that I’d never milk cows again after I was raised up a little kid and had to milk cows every morning and night. But we tried it again and kept them a while. I milked enough cows to buy some groceries. Then we got us some sheep and ran them for a while.

Along in 1951 we had another baby and what do you know, another beautiful baby girl. We named her Christine Ruth Brisbin, she was born October 29, 1951 in the Roosevelt hospital.

(Bill, Jean, Billie Jean, Judy, Linda & Chris)

(By Jean), We lived on the farm until 1963, 15 years, we then moved to the old Clark ranch, 80 acres, with a house and buildings. There we raised cows and horses. We lived there for 30 years. On September 09, 1993 we moved to St. George, Utah. We lived in our trailer house behind Kalynns’, Billie Jeans daughters’ home in Winchester Hills, Utah. Until we bought our lovely home in Bloomington Hills. We signed the sales papers 9-19-93. Moved in just before Thanksgiving.

(By Judy), I am writing this the 15 of May 2001, I typed this from a tape that dad recorded when he was recuperating from his heart attack, August 7, 1973.

Our beloved father passed away April 06, 2001, in the St. George Hospital complications from surgery to repair an artery in his neck. He was 83 years old. He contracted pneumonia in the hospital after surgery, his kidneys were worn out, his body just didn’t have enough strength to get better. He fought a good fight, he tried for 3 weeks, but his heart just gave out.

He lived such a wonderful life and was such a wonderful example to all that knew him. He never complained or let anyone know how sick he was. He is greatly missed by all that knew him and loved him.

In his lifetime he suffered a severe heart attack, later had bypass surgery, had an aneurysm repaired and suffered with congestive heart failure.

Dad was 6 ft. tall and was never over weight. Had dark brown hair, his hair was still mostly brown at the age of 83, brown eyes and a great big smile. He was a very hard worker, always found a way to support his family. To him, family was the most important thing in his life. He lived to give 15 grandchildren or 52 great grandchildren or his 1 great grandson a hug or a kiss.

His last few years had seen him slow down a little. He still went for his mile walk when he could (sometimes it was only ½ mile,) around the neighborhood in St. George. He loved to stop and have a cheerful talk to everyone he met. He was continually making someone else’s day happier, with his smile.