Written by LaMar W. Skeen, Grandson – January, 1999
Grandfather had a keen mind, is vocabulary was exceptionally good and he expressed himself well. He was very religious and went on a mission for the Church one week after he married grandmother. She insisted he fill a mission or she would not marry him. On his mission he became president over the North Alabama Conference.
When Grandfather returned from his mission he and Grandmother moved to Oregon. Then they moved to Blackfoot, Idaho. Next they moved to Plain City, Utah. In about 1903 grandfather bought ground in Warren, Utah from his father Lyman Skeen. There he built a house and lived in it the remainder of his life. The house was locate about 100 feet south of Byron Thompson’s house, which Evan Skeen built. The address of Grandfather’s house was about 5900 W. 1825 North, Warren, Utah
Grandfather was a member of the Warren Irrigation Company. He was elected President of the Company on February 9, 1909.
My parents, J. Maurice and Ethel Wheeler Skeen, built a house about 150 yards north of Grandfather’s home. While I was growing up I was able to spend a lot of time with Grandfather and Grandmother. One of my favorite activities when I was about 3 to 10 years old, this was from 1933 to 1940, was going through the field to their house and eating the gooseberries that grew in their yard and their strawberry apples which ripened in the late spring. I also liked to eat the green apples with salt. My grandparents thought I ate too many gooseberries; they wanted some left over for their own use. Grandmother made delicious gooseberry pies with them. However, they were very patient with me. They also had Jonathan apples and Roman red apples, which ripened in the fall. The orchard was located east of their house.
Grandfather had a long high hay barn about 150 feet northeast of their home. They hay barn was about 150 feet long and about 30 feet high. It extended north and south. It had sheds along the full length of the west and east sides of it. I played in the hay barn often. I especially enjoyed climbing up into the hayloft on the west side of the barn and walking or running from one end to the other. The hayloft had hay covering the floorboards which furnished insulation for the horses and cows that were kept below. It was hazardous to walk in the loft because a few of the boards were missing and a person’s feet and legs could fall through the openings in the loft at those places. The cows were milked on the north end of a shed on the west side of the barn, and much of the time the horses were kept in the south end of the same shed.
Farmers did things that hard way when Grandfather farmed, not because they chose to, but because that is the only way they know. Modern methods had not been developed at that time. They put hay up by hauling it on wagons. They used pitch forks to pitch hay on the wagons and did it by hand. Someone drove the horses that were hooked to the wagon and the same person tromped the hay as it was loaded on the wagon and kept the load straight and square. The hay was pitched off wagons onto haystacks by hand. Then later Grandfather built a hay derrick which had a hay forked with a cable attached to the fork. A horse was hooked to the cable and pulled the hay loads in the air and the pole, the fork and cable were attached to it would swing and take the hay up above the haystack, the hay would then be dumped on the stack by pulling a rope which tripped the fork to release it. Grandfather also built a hay barn with a track in the top of it. The hay fork would deliver a workload of hay into the barn. It was pulled by a cable hooked to a horse and the cable ran through several pulleys. Grandfather did the stacking along with others who helped him. He was exposed to dust and heat and had many loads of hay land on him. My father, Joseph Maurice Skeen (called Maurice), ran the hayfork most of the time. Grandfather would yell, “Let it go!” and through misjudgment, some loads landed on him. The south half of the hay barn was filled from the south end and the north end was filled from the north end Hay wagons loaded with hay were parked near the end of the barn, they had to change the hay fork, the cable attached to it, and the rope that tripped the hay fork. The rope attached to the hay fork had to be threaded through a pulley at the very top of the barn and within inches of the end of the barn. When they made the change, a person would ride up on the hay fork within about 6 inches of having the hay fork mechanism engage in the carrier which took the hay fork into the barn. If the horse pulling the cable went six inches too farm, the fork would engage with the carrier and take there person in to the band at a rapid speed. This was a scary operation. My Uncle Evan Skeen had this happen to him. The fork disengaged from the carrier and he fell with the fork 3/4 of the distance from the top of the barn to the ground inside the barn. He landed on about 5 feet of hay and escaped without injury. Hie barely missed a pole inside the barn as he fell.
Threshing was a big job. Neighbors helped each other. I remember Frank Stewart’s sons, Junior and Lynn helping Grandfather. Dan Stewart’s family helped as did Merwin Thompson and Uncle Harold Thompson along with hired men such as William Hill, Leonard Hill, Donald East, Raymond East, Evan Skeen, myself, Talmage Skeen (my brother), Walter Hansen, Earl East, Alvin Hill and others. The years Ronald Peterson worked for Grandfather he helped at threshing time also. They had a least three wagons with horses hooked to them going from to and from the fields. There was one wagon being unloaded into the thresher all the time. There were two or more men pitching bundles of grain onto each of the wagons in the field. One person drove the wagon and stacked the bundles of grain onto each of the wagons in the field. One person drove the wagon and stacked the bundles and unloaded them when he got to the thresher. Sometimes he had someone help him unload the bundles of grain into the thresher. Two or three men hauled the grain from the thresher to the granary and unloaded it by hand. They carried the bags of grain inside the granary and dumped the bags in different bins. The conditions were hot and dusty and it was heavy and hard work.
At dinnertime there were big meals. Grandmother and her daughters, Naomi, May, Melba, Elda and my mother Ethel Skeen were involved cooking and serving the meals at different times. One of their menus was roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, vegetables, home-made break and butter, drinks and desserts fixed to perfection. Grandmother Skeen made great pies. There was always plenty of food. After the meal the men retired to the lawn under the shade trees and rested and drank ice water. They worked 8 to 10 hours each day, except Sunday. Grandfather kept this schedule most of the time though spring, summer and fall.
The men who owned and operated the threshing machines were particular and wanted to stay busy. When someone did something they didn’t approve of they soon let the person know about it. Jim Marriott, Elwin Taylor and Ernest Cardn were some of the owner-operators who threads for grandfather and my father.
Grandmother Skeen was a great cook. She was kind, patient and spiritual. She loved flowers. When I was around 5 years old I was infected with the red measles. In most instances this was a very severe disease. I had a high fever and was extremely sick. Mother sent me to Grandmother’s during the time of my illness so I wouldn’t infect others in the daily with the disease. Grandmother took good care of me and helped me with my prayers each day, kneeling by a couch in the room just west of her and grandfather’s bedroom, her and grandfather’s was located in the southeast corner of the house. I slept on that couch while I was ill.
When I was in my early teens, Grandfather had been getting some pressure from Grandmother to get the weeds out of the iris garden. It had some other flowers in it besides the iris. The garden was located on the north side of their house. She could look out of the kitchen window as she worked and see the condition of the flowers. There were many weeds among the flowers and it upset her to see them. Grandfather had devised a plan to get rid of the weeds without the tedious ordeal of hoeing them by hand. Grandfather said to me, “LaMar will you ride the horse hooked to the one row cultivator, and I will guide it through the flowers?” I climbed on the horse and grandfather guided the cultivator. We went east and west through the flower garden several times. Then grandfather said that we had probably done enough to satisfy grandmother and indicated we were through cultivating. Many flowers were killed along with the weeds and Grandmother didn’t approve of what we had done. We were never asked to weed the flower garden again.
Talmage and I helped Grandfather often. He would call for us and we would respond. We helped him move cattle and put horn weights on his bulls when they were the right size and age. We raked hay, hauled hay helped him cultivate crops, thresh grain, irrigate and many other tasks. He raised registered hereford cattle and he was very proud of them. They were descendants of cattle he bought from Uncle Rulon Peterson. Grandfather sold the bulls and cull cows. On one occasion we roped a hereford cow and in the process of securing a lariat rope around a post to hole the cow, grandfather got one of his fingers under the rope which was wrapped around the post two or three time. As the cow tried to get away by jerking on the rope grandfather’s finger was severed near the first knuckle of his finger. He took his glove off and shook the end of his finger out of the glove. In those days it couldn’t be sewn back on again.
We helped Grandfather grind grain for his cattle on several occasions. During the summer it was a hot and dusty job. The grinder was located inside the granary door and we had to keep the bin on the grinder full of grain to supply the grinder. A belt was hooked to a pulley on the grinder and then to a tractor and pulley to turn the grinder. The dust was dense. Talmage and I would fill the bin and run outside to get out of the heat and dust, but Grandfather stayed right in there. He would get covered with dust, sometimes a half an inch thick, and he wouldn’t waver. It didn’t seem to bother him like it did us.
There was a cellar located east of their house, an orchard a little southeast of their house, a coal shed north of the house, a red brick garage east of the coal sheet and a stream of water running past the north end of the coal shed and garage. The water came from a large well east of the garage and coal shed. It flowed year-round and furnished a cool stream of water to put the milk cans in to cool them. There was a granary across the road in the yard north of the coal shed, and yard light east of the granary in an open area. The repair sheds were on each side and corrals on the east and west sides of it.
During his early years of farming up until about 1940 Grandfather used horses to do much of the farm work. Horses pulled the hay mowers, cultivators, planters, plows, harrows, hay rakes, ditchers, grain binders, wagons, disks, hay forks. levelers, scrapers, and sugar beet wagons. The sugar beet wagons had removable boards in the bottom to dump the beets at the collection point. Grandfather enjoyed doing work with work horses He also had riding horses and rode until he was around 80 years old.
In 1961, when my wife Carolyn and I were having our house built, grandfather irrigated ground east of our new home and didn’t turn the water off soon enough. The result was a flooded basement. The water was almost 6 feet deep. I was upset with grandfather and yelled at him for flooding it. This was about the only time I acted this way with him.
East of Grandfather’s house there were nine fields which he farmed. When my father and I took over this ground, we had them scraped and leveled. They were made into three fields. There are 40 acres in those three fields. We farm other fields out north and six acres east of Jimmy Wayment’s home, two houses south of us. George Cook (his mother was a Skeen) now owns the ground out north, west of the road where grandfather’s pasture was located. There is some farming ground with it. There are about 70 acres of land there. Aunt Elda Thompson owned it before George bought it. George has a hay derrick and shed or barn that he built on that property. Grandfather owned ground north and south of the old railroad tracks going as far south on the east side of the road as where the creed meets the road. There are approximately 50 acres in that area.
Grandfather gave many years of devoted service to the Church. He was the bishop for 16 years and served on the High Council for 36 years. He was bishop in 1941 when they built the onto the old church in Warren. President George Albert Smith dedicated it. I took Grandfather to High Council meeting about two weeks before he died. He was irrigating ground just north of the canal ten days before he died.
I can remember some special quotes from Grandfather. President Thomas O. Smith told me they were discussing a problem in High Council, going to great lengths and detail to resolve it and Grandfather said, “You don’t have to use a 16-pound sledge hammer to crack a peanut.” I complained about our 860 Ford Tractor. Grandfather said, “Don’t mess with the bridge that carried you across.” When Melba was on her mission she became ill and had to come home temporarily. She didn’t want to go back. Grandfather said, “Melba, I always thought you were made of steel, but if you don’t go back you will be just plain pig iron to me.” She returned to her mission.
If you judge Grandfather and Grandmother by their posterity and those they married, they should receive high marks. I counted at least one general authority, 7 stake presidents, 14 bishops, 8 relief society presidents, and their descendants held many other positions in the Church. There are also attorneys, CPA’s, one University President, engineers and many teachers. Missionaries were counted at the August 1998 Skeen Reunion. There were 86 who came from the descendants of Grandmother and Grandfather or those they married. There are many more outstanding individuals and I am sure I have missed some.
Grandfather and Grandmother set a fine example for their descendants to follow. I am sure I speak for everyone in saying, “We are proud to have them for our Grandparents.”