Find results with:

Home Alpine Area Family History Preservation Project Transcript of oral history interview with Hern Wilkins

Reference URL

Rate

To link to the entire object, paste this link in email, IM or document

To embed the entire object, paste this HTML in website

To link to this page, paste this link in email, IM or document

To embed this page, paste this HTML in website

Oral history interview with Hern Wilkins

Transcript of oral history interview with Hern Wilkins

1 of 2

View Description

This page

All

Subset

Link
Text

Text Search...

90.doc [2.32 MB]
Link will provide options to open or save document.

File Format:
Microsoft Word

you wish to report:

Your comment:

Your Name:

Submit

Cancel

...

Rating
TITLE	Oral history interview with Hern Wilkins
INTERVIEWEE	Wilkins, Hern
SUBJECT	Brigham Young; Air Force; Latter-Day Saints
Browse Topic	Agriculture Education Family and community Military and war
DESCRIPTION	Hern Wilkins talks about growing up in Nutrioso, his Mormon ancestors, childhood chores.
INTERVIEWER	Luger, Jay; and Jones, Lenore
TYPE	Sound Text
Material Collection	Oral Histories of Nutrioso, Arizona
RIGHTS MANAGEMENT	Property of Alpine Public Library. For reproduction permissions, contact us at 928-339-4925.
DATE ORIGINAL	2011-05-18
Time Period	1900s (1900-1909) 1930s (1930-1939)
ORIGINAL FORMAT	Oral histories recorded on digital media with transcriptions.
DIGITAL IDENTIFIER	index.cpd
Date Digital	2010-2011
DIGITAL FORMAT	MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) DOC (Microsoft Word)
File Size	407 Bytes
DIGITIZATION SPECIFICATIONS	Oral histories were recorded on an Olympus WS-6005 Digital Voice Recorder.
REPOSITORY	Alpine Public Library. PO Box 528, Alpine, AZ 85920. www.co.apache.AZ.us
Full Text	Hern Wilkins Alpine, AZ Interview: May 18, 2011 I was born in St. Johns but I was raised in Nutrioso. I was born April 12, 1932. My dad was Lloyd Wilkins. He was born in Nutrioso in 1900. Mother was Genevieve Greenwood. She was born in Eagar, Arizona in 1902. My granddad’s name was Lloyd Orson. He and his family came from Beaver, Utah. They were sent here in the Brigham Young pilgrimage to this area. Granddad was ten years old and he walked from Beaver, Utah and drove cattle to Nutrioso, twice. My grandfather and my father raised cattle. Dad probably had a hundred head and my granddad had 150. The lake in Nutrioso was part of our ranch. I don’t know how many acres we had. To sell the cattle they usually drove them to Magdalena. I had three brothers and a sister. I had lots of chores growing up. You name it, I’ve done it. I didn’t have any favorites. We had milk cows, and pigs, and chickens. My mother, my grandmother and my aunt made cheese. I hate milk cows with a purple passion. Oh how I hated those things. Couldn’t go anywhere or do anything until you milked those cows. My mother, grandmother and my aunt made cheese. They all had about ten cows apiece. We had one of those big drums to churn the cheese. They got as much money for cheese then as they do now. She made ten pounds of cheese every day. The customers came to our house to buy it. They’d be standing in line to get it right out of the press. For fun things to do besides chores, we rode horses. My dad had the best saddle- horses in the country. We could ride them as long as we treated them right. I’d hate to think what would have happened to us if we hadn’t treated them right. We went fishing up in Cold Creek. We were up there cultivating corn and my brother said, “Let’s go fishing”. So I tied my horse to the fence and we went fishing. We stayed all day because we knew what was going to happen to us when we got home. I went to school in Nutrioso, Eagar and then Round Valley. I got to school in Nutri on these two legs right here. I have three today. (a cane) I’m crippled. We lived about three miles out of town, up what they call Dry Valley. In the spring and the fall we would walk. We would play all the way up and all the way back. When the winter came my brother and I had little mares that we rode. My mother would bundle us up in a blanket and ship us out and away we’d go. To get to town we had to hill- side it to get around the snow banks because the snow was too deep. It really snowed big time then. There were about 20 kids when I went to school in the building that is there now. All the kids in this area were my friends. There was Eddie Ellis, Billy Simpson (a cousin of mine), and Margaret Martin. None of my friends are here now. They are all gone. I had some good friends too. We came to Alpine all the time. We played basketball right over here at this church house (now the Community Center). Most every night there would be a bunch of us over there playing, including kids from Luna. The three towns did some activities together. We used to have an annual rodeo. All three towns would get together. We had a lot of fun. We knew the guys who worked the rodeo. We knew who they were so we all went. I used to break horses for a living but I never rode them in the rodeo. We didn’t go to Springerville much. I didn’t go to a movie until I was about fifteen years old. There wasn’t any movie, and there wasn’t any money either. I didn’t know I was poor and I really didn’t care because all the kids were just like me. They wore the same kind of clothes. I remember a little of the Depression. I was born in 1932. We didn’t have many clothes but we sure did eat well. We always had somebody at our house to eat with us. We lived on a farm and we raised all our own food. My mother raised a garden every year and I can tell you about it because I had to weed it. We didn’t need many supplies from Springerville. My dad would buy a ton of flour and a ton of sugar in the fall. We traded grain for it to the Beckers. That was pretty much all Mother got for the whole year. Out clothes were store bought. A pair of Levis cost two dollars and forty-five cents. Now they cost you forty-two dollars and forty-five cents. After I graduated from high school in Round Valley, I went into the Air Force. For two years I was stationed in Korea. After I got out of the service I cut logs with my dad for a living. We worked in Nutrioso up on Escadilla Mountain. I’ve lived here most of my life. I drove a truck, had a service station, logged, and cowboyed. Down around the Blue Lookout I chopped wood for a guy by the name of Wade Sharp. My dad always had plenty for us to do. We didn’t sit around the house, I’ll guarantee you. It wasn’t hard but we always had plenty to do. In the summer time I broke horses. My dad always had a couple of horses for me to ride. Then in the spring we had broncs that I had to work. One time when I was younger, we had one down to doctor it and he rolled over and kicked me. I was right up against him so it didn’t hurt me but it left a print where the hooves hit. I just rolled out through there like a bowling ball. My dad got a hold of me and jerked me up and said “Pay attention!” So I did. When my mother was just a girl about sixteen she cooked for all the ranches down on the Blue, such as the Four-drags and on down Hagle Creek. She was working for the Cosper outfit. She said the ranchers all went to Clifton to sell cattle, but this time they didn’t party because the cattle buyer told them, “Just turn them out, we don’t want them.” Thousands of head went unsold.
Sort Order	05020

TITLE	Transcript of oral history interview with Hern Wilkins
INTERVIEWEE	Wilkins, Hern
TYPE	Text
Material Collection	Oral Histories of Nutrioso, Arizona
RIGHTS MANAGEMENT	Property of Alpine Public Library. For reproduction permissions, contact us at 928-339-4925.
ORIGINAL FORMAT	Oral histories recorded on digital media with transcriptions.
DIGITAL IDENTIFIER	Hern Wilkins.doc
Date Digital	2010-2011
DIGITAL FORMAT	DOC (Microsoft Word)
File Size	2429952 Bytes
DIGITIZATION SPECIFICATIONS	Oral histories were recorded on an Olympus WS-6005 Digital Voice Recorder.
REPOSITORY	Alpine Public Library. PO Box 528, Alpine, AZ 85920. www.co.apache.AZ.us

Find results with:

Searching collections:

Home Alpine Area Family History Preservation Project Transcript of oral history interview with Hern Wilkins

Oral history interview with Hern Wilkins

File Format:

Object Description

Description

Oral history interview with Hern Wilkins

Oral history interview with Hern Wilkins

	All
	Pages Enter page numbers or page ranges separated by commas. For example: 1,3,5-12