Yesterday we took my grandpa and spent the day up in Malad, Idaho. Some people would look at these pictures and just think they were old crappy buildings, but to me they are so amazing because this is my grandpa's childhood. I have never heard my grandpa talk so much as I did yesterday. The stories he told us were so interesting and I want to journal them so I can always remember them. I love my grandpa so much and can't believe how spoiled we are today to live in the luxuries of this world.
This building was my grandpa's school house and church house. He said they hung a wire from to split it off into four rooms and it made the school house into a four room school. There was one teacher that would go from room to room and teach the students. On Saturday nights they would have dances here and then on Sunday they would come here for church.
This is Percey Williams old house. Grandpa said Percey would load up his horses and come up the road and pick grandpa up and they would go on horse rides all over. Percey was a really good family friend for my grandpa's family.
This little house behind us is where my grandpa grew up. It was a two room house. On the right side there was a bedroom where his parents and all three boys slept and on the left side was his kitchen and family room. It was all dirt floor. There was a well in the back of it where they would get all of their water and there was an outhouse in the backyard as well. He said when they would come in at night they would pull all the wood ticks off of themselves and throw them in the hot stove to watch and hear them pot. He said they would stick up the whole house and he got kicked out more than once for doing that. He said, "we didn't have trucks and cars to play with we just had to make our own fun"
Where this house is located they get about eight to nine feet of snow so for the winters they would have to board of the windows and head into Malad and live for the winter.
My grandpa told us that he would have to round up cows and take them into Malad, in a car it took us about 20 to 30 minutes to drive out there at least, it was so far!! He said they would get up and leave about five in the morning and they wouldn't get into the city of Malad until sundown. They would sleep there and head back home the next day. I couldn't even imagine, when you talk about pioneers, my grandpa truly is one of them. He was telling us that in order to plow the fields they only had a horse and plow, they didn't have tractors to do all their work. He said he hardly ever saw his dad because his dad would be out working from sun up to sun down everyday. These were amazingly strong people and I look up to our elders so much for the strength they had to survive back in those days.
This house was across the street from Grandpa's house. Grandpa wanted us to see in this house but it was fenced off with barbwire. Grandpa said, "oh lets go see if we can get over this gate over here" the next thing I knew my 82 year old grandpa was climbing over the barbwire. He got a little stuck on the top and I just helped him get his feet all the way over, but he did it. When Zac came to see what was going on Zac said,"grandpa you aren't 14 anymore remember" but he did it. We got over the fence, but then there was about a five foot creek that we had to jump over and grandpa didn't dare to that so Zac just went across and took pictures for us.
This pumas mine is on all of my grandpa's family's old property. After the war broke out and they sold all their land, the man that bought it discovered all this pumas and now it is a huge mine and industry up in Malad.
This house belonged to grandpa's uncle (his dad's brother). He said it was such a nice house at the time and even now, it looked pretty big. This house has a cool story to it as well. One night it was snowing really bad and multiple people were trying to get back to town before winter but multiple people stopped to get warm and spend the night here. My grandpa's uncle went outside for something and saw these three men riding up on nice horses with nice clothing on. They approached him and asked if they could spend the night. He told them that the house was full and there was not room for more people. After he turned them away he thought, shoot I could have them stand in a corner or something so he ran outside to tell them to come on in and he followed the foot prints and they went to the fence and disappeared. It is believe that these three men were the three Nephites. It's known that if you turn away the three Nephites you will never be prosperous again and from that day on, his uncle could not grow anything on his land and he was never able to provide like he did in the past.
This was just another old house up there that we went and walked through.
