German Apostolic Cemetery and Bothwell History
Interview with Floyd and Beatrice Eggli
By Tamera Newman
8 March 2002
Personal Interview with Floyd (F), Beatrice Lott Eggli (B) by Tamera (T) Newman, 8
March 2002.
(F) My parents’ funerals were in Bothwell, in the old church house before this one was
built. We had a preacher come out, Noah Shrock. I think Noah came out both times.
They had their own Christian Apostalic Church come out and they used the Mormon
church house in Bothwell.
There was a Cook over in Tremonton. I don’t know whether it was an Apostalic
Church or what it was. I think it was a branch of them. Cook was over the church just
off Main Street by Fronk’s right now. I think it was Rev. Cook. There was a big
stairway going up into it and it was a big white church, white frame. And they moved it
out to Cook’s farm or something, but I don’t know where it ever went. I’d say it was the
same Cook from out to Bothwell. Maybe I’m mistaken, Al L. Cook was the one that had
the farm out here. His dad was probably the preacher, but we didn’t go to that church at
that time because I don’t think Mother and Dad was baptized by that time. They was
nothing till later on then they had Noah Shrock come out and baptized them, Dad and
Mother, right up here in the canal. That was in the Christian Apostolic Church. Back in
Illinois, that’s where Noah Shrock was the preacher. I don’t know if he come out for
both of them’s baptism out here. They was baptized in the canal, but it was different
times. Mother joined the Apostolic Christian Church first, then Dad later.
Mother was a Kupfer, they were the ones who came from Germany. My
Grandparents were the German immigrants, my mother was born in Germany in
Stuttgart, and Dad’s parents were from Switzerland. Dad was born in Illinois. We have
quite a history of the Eggli’s there. The old man Eggli, he was buried right next to the
bank in Illinois.
The Keystone Wire Factory came out here and built right along the side of Salt
Creek. John Sommers, I don’t know if Dad worked for him or not. I don’t remember. I
know he started to farm and he was a butcher in the valley, butchering animals for
people. Seems like that’s all. All we had to eat in the line of meat was the tongues and
liver and stuff from the kill of the animals. Course, folks, most of them, didn’t want that.
We had a great big old kettle, and we’d build a fire under it, I still have the block
and tackle of my Dad’s out here, that he’d lift the beef up. Henry’s got the one. He just
come borrowed it. The little one is the one that lifted the pigs up, the big one was to lift
beef up into the tree. I remember us eating cracklin’s and Dad cut our own pig up I
know. Cracklin’s were when you’d dip em [the pig carcass] into scalding water then
you’d take the hair off. Then you’d skin the pig and that hide was about that thick [one
inch]. You didn’t try to do a good job, you’d just cut them into little hunks, the hide and
that first layer of fat.
We’d put all the fat into this big vat and they’d boil it and get the lard off, then we
would always take some cracklin’s out of there. The cracklin’s were deep fried in this
big old kettle. I’ve got one from my mother’s sister. I don’t know what happened to
ours. We’d built a fire under it and we’d render that fat, but the cracklin’s were left on
top. The cracklin’s were a treat. We had a press and we’d throw the cracklin’s in that
press and we’d squeeze the oil out of them while they was hot. I’ve still got that press.
This would get the cracklin’s dry. We’d eat them after we squoze the fat out, they’d still
be crisp, but really pressed together. We’d press every drop of oil out of them. I used to
put my deer burger in there and wind it down and then we’d do the deer and jerky. That
was the first way I done jerky was through that old cracklin’ press. But then we got
another grinder that we just used for square or round jerky. We’d just press that out, then
we’d dry the jerky.
Mother would scrape the intestines, she would take the intestines out of the pig
and she’d have a board and she’d scrape the stuff with a dull knife. Then she’d turn them
inside out, blow on them, and then she’d scrape them good. Then she’d put them in and
wash them and put them on this sausage press, the one that done the cracklin’s. We
throw the sausage in and press them out into sticks of sausage. It was the same press we
used. I’ve got the sausage maker for that press, I got the screen in there for the grease
from the cracklin’s, the grease to come down. We’d just press them out. I guess we
could have used them intestines for the deer jerky. It would have been good.
I know the food was super when we killed our own pig. Dad took the jowls off
and made sweetbread. That was about the first thing we’d have. Mother’d fry that. I’m
sure it was the jowls. Weisers always took the head. Liverwurst, we made that. It was
pretty good. We’d take the liver and turn it into liverwurst. I think we’d put a little pork
in with that liverwurst—I don’t remember the exact ingredients.
After that, they just took and fried that up. That was always good, that
sweetbread. It’s just pork, but it’s tender. It’s like the tenderloins of the pork. Maybe
that’s the sweetbreads right in there by the kidneys. On deer, that’s the tenderest meat.
I’ll betcha that’s where the sweetbreads come from, right under the kidneys. But may be
it was on the jowls. Weisers always took all the meat off the head and cooked the head, I
think, and that was pretty good. I’ve eat some of that from what they had. It was kind of
greasy, but when I was a kid, I had gall bladder trouble and I went to the doctor to be
checked. Dr. Kawabi, the doctor during the war. He come up, they shipped him out of
California. He lived in Fielding. I had a broken arm and he set it. He was the doctor out
of California, he lived next to the coast. He was a Japanese man in the little store, he
lived in a little house right there beside the Post Office. I remember when I was sixteen
or something, no about twelve. I broke my arm. I was riding a horse out in the field and
the saddle cinch busted. I just went off and popped this arm clear in a 45 {[degree angle].
He put me under ether up there [Fielding] and man, that was a terrible thing to wake up
and see all those Japanese. He was the only one put me under. But then all his sisters
and daughters was there. I saw all them Japanese there. While I was out, it felt like he
took my arm and just whirled it like that to put it back in place. But it was back and had
a cast on it. It felt all right then. I wore that cast for a month or two.
(B)
I remember how bad my folks felt when they returned to California. He took my
tonsils out.
(F)
He diagnosed that I had gall bladder problems. He said now look at your skin.
Your just yellow, like Japanese. Your skin is just about the same color as mine. He said
you shouldn’t have that. You’ve got gall bladder. So I took gallbladder pills he give me
and I felt a lot better. Grease made me sick to even think of when I got older after that.
Them pills worked good. Than I went into the service. I told Dr. Mohr when I went in
for my physical, I needed these gall bladder pills. I had my prescriptions. He said they
won’t take you in the army if you’ve got gall bladder problems. So I went down and they
gave me the physical and I was going to be in the army the next day. Boyd’s dad, the
bishop, he wrote a letter and they postponed it for six months to get out of the army
because I was the only child left at home and mother needed the help here around the
farm, but then they passed something that said, “Nope, it don’t matter what you are, if
you’re taking care of your mother, or you own sheep, they’re still going to take you.” So
I was leaving and I didn’t know how mother was going to raise the sheep. I guess they
could do what they want with them. They said I was going to be the army. I went down
there and told them I had gall bladder problems. Dr. Mohr said they would probably
keep me out. I you are taking these pills, they don’t want you. I was all passed. The
physical was past. I was 1A. Then I told them that I had gall bladder trouble. So they
took X-rays and they couldn’t see nothing wrong with my gall bladder. It looked pretty
good, but I was still taking them pills and so they said they wouldn’t take me. They gave
me a 4F and sent me home which a good deal.
When I was sixteen, Dad went to Provo, to the mental hospital. He wasn’t bad,
but he wanted to sell everything. He figured it was the end of the world. That was all he
had in mind. He knew the dogs, he knew everybody, but he thought the world was
coming to an end. I remember on Easter, he said, “Nope, you’re not going up there on
the hill on Easter weekend.” We always went up there with my cousins and that and he
says, “Nope you’re not going up. The world’s coming to an end today. So I say, “Dad,
your closer to the Lord if the world comes to an end up on the mountain. You feel closer
to the Lord when you’re in the mountains anyway.” He said, “OK, go ahead.”
When Dad died we brought him out to Bothwell. I think Shrock came out again.
I’m not positive. I know he was out on one of them [Mom or Dad]. He was the preacher
and he didn’t like to go to the Mormon church, but he said he was going to take the whole
thing [funeral services]. He was going to do the preaching and everything. The bishop
said he could step out of it, but the family wanted the bishop to say a few closing words,
so he did. Eleda Vee [Stokes] wrote for my mother. I don’t remember too much about
my Dad’s [funeral], I was sixteen when he went to Provo. I’d drive down there and see
him and then Blaine Reeves, he went down with us. That was Coven then. His mother
was in the hospital. That was Blaine Reeves, the one I ran the mile with in high school.
We went down and seen his mother. But his mother was fine. Then they took her out of
the hospital and Dad, all he had was just the world was coming to an end. He got over
there [Provo] with Jakie [Jacob] Woerner. He down there [the cemetery]. He was in the
good place in the hospital. You could see shows and all that. And that’s where Dad was.
But Dad got in a fight with Jake. Jake told him the world wasn’t coming to an end and
Dad says it is and they got into a fight. Once you fight in that building, then you get put
into another building and that place was pretty bad.
We had to get the car signed over in Mother’s name. It was still Dad’s. We took
the form down to have it signed in front of a notary. We took Dad into the notary. He
done fine. He signed it and everything. Then the car was in Mother’s name, that ’35
Chev. Then he started telling that guy that witnessed it, “The world’s coming to an end”
He said, “Come on. We don’t need to talk to him.” Out the door we went.
I think Dad was down there three years. He died down there [Provo]. He got in
this bad building. Dad’s mind was sharp and everything. The ones up above filled a
dummy down there and it really scared him. That dummy coming down there. They just
lowered it on a rope in front of his window. That was bad. Dad had a stroke down there.
We went to see him and he asked how the dog was. He knew everything. He was fine—
he didn’t even talk that day about the world coming to an end or nothing. And he always
had to talk that. That was all that was wrong with him, but it was hard to put up with him
on the farm. He wanted to go to Illinois. He wanted to go back there and I know he went
back on the train. He got messed up there. Bill picked him up and he stayed up there.
I wonder if the Apostolic have a title to the cemetery. I know when my dad was
alive it was the German cemetery. That’s all I knew.
(B)
Floyd and I plan on being buried in the German cemetery. When I first went down
there. I remember the little cemetery where my Dad is buried. Nothing growing, nothing
green. My maiden name is Lott, I was born in Fielding. My father had lived the first half
of his life down in Joseph in Sevier County.
(F)
The Germans didn’t believe in flowers. We requested no flowers for Dad and
Mother’s funerals. No flowers. They had one for the casket and that was all. When Dad
was buried, they put him in the ground just in the casket. They put him there for fifteen
years and the dirt sunk down about that far [two feet] and they had to haul dirt in. But
Mother was buried in a vault, but Dad never was. It sunk down, and the headstone
turned, and we had to build it all up and get it so it looked decent. That cemetery I
remember as the German Apostolic Cemetery but I remember when I was eighteen or so,
Emil and I went down and we build that fence up. All the posts were falling down and all
the horses were coming in and tromping around. Maybe they turned them in to eat the
grass, I don’t know. That would been in about ’45 or ’47. The war was over and Emil
come home and we decided to fix the cemetery. Emil and I got the posts stood back up
and drove the steel posts behind them and stretched the wires down and we fixed it pretty
good so livestock couldn’t get in. It was back to the original. Then about three years
ago, the Christian Apostolic Church in California and even Illinois came out and put a
new fence around it and tore this old rock fence down. That rock fence was built by
Benny Baer. When he died, he left $10,000 to set aside to fix up the cemetery down
there. Rueben took the $10,000 and built that fence along there. The Apostolic Church
added on to that cinderblock fence—they built it out front, clear across the front. He built
a section, Rueben did, with $10,000 and spent $5,000 on the fence.
(B)
Three years ago the apostolic church was down there.
(F)
I know they put a fence around it with steel posts. I don’t know if it is chain link
or what it is. I know they had workers from Illinois and California. They had twenty
guys fixing that fence around there.
(B)
I know when Craig [Eggli] went to build the sign for his Eagle project, he had to
write a letter to the Apostolic Church in California to get permission.
(F)
Craig’s name is on the back of that sign and I helped Craig with it. When he said
sign, they said, “Yeah, it won’t hurt nothing.” They sent us a letter back and it said you
can built it. We had to ask them and I didn’t know if I would like that situation, but they
wanted Apostolic Christian Church on it. I just thought it was the German Cemetery. At
that time, I didn’t realize it was the Apostolic Christian Church.
(G)
The mortician was Rogers, the old man Rogers. An old black hears brought him
Out. I remember the old black hears. We had mother’s viewing right here in the old part
of the house. We says we wouldn’t do that no more because they went through the front
door then they went through that one on the south. I just felt bad about the kitchen floor.
It was the old linoleum in there. Them high heels the women had in those days was those
small ones. There was just holes all other, just pressed all over. They just ruined it [the
linoleum] and we said no more of that. The viewings we had here at the house. At the
cemetery, they did open the casket and show my brother Henry. He’s come from the
service and he was slow. The Red Cross had brought him over and they was slow. He
didn’t make it for the funeral. He didn’t get to the funeral, but he got down to the
cemetery. They asked him if he wanted to look at his mother. They opened the casket at
the cemetery and let him look at her. We planted two trees down there. We planted to
pine trees, but they didn’t do well down in that soil. The one went bad so they cut that
out when the apostolic church was here. They took it out and the other one could come
out too. The ground down there just don’t grow good trees. There was a straggly old one
just that way of ours and we’d take water down every week and that straggly old tree
over there, I hoped it’d die. It was spread out a lot and I said, “That big thing will be clear
out over us.” I wished it would have died, but that thing took off and I think its still
going good. It was an ugly thing, bent over, kind of crooked. It took off and done good.
After the funeral, the family went to the cemetery for the burial. The Deininger family
was there. They had a little stuff at the church after, sandwiches and stuff.
The Deininger’s lived in LeRoy Firth’s house. Herman Eberhard, John
Eberhard’s dad, lived in that bit house that Beverly [Laws Jenkins] lives in. Herman, I
always opped beets for him when I was little. I know the saying, he always said, “By
golly, anyhow.” That was his saying. “By golly, anyhow.” Him and his boy, not John,
Herman died when he was young. The old man was irrigating in this canal. This canal
was dirty. We’d always go down there and swim. The turkeys would be floating by and
dead fish, they was always something. This is the truth what he said. He was drinking
water there and he said, “How comes you drank that old canal water.”
He said, “Oh, I got this mustache and it strains all the bugs out.”
We used to have water from the little canal and we ran it over cinders and that
was what we used for water for many years.
(T)
I heard you guys were one of the lucky ones who got Bill Johnson’s water from
Point Lookout.
(F)
Yeah, it was Foxley’s Spring.
(B)
No, she’s not talking about that one, is she?
(T)
No, by Point Lookout, Bill Johnson’s.
(F)
He was the one that when they drove up through with the wagon, he’d let them go
up in there and they’d get sagebrush on their wagons, then he’d come out with a gun and
say, “Unload it there, right there.” Then he’d burn all that sage. He’d scare a lot of
people out, that old Johnson.
(T)
I heard that you folks were one of the lucky ones who got his water. Before
culinary water came to Bothwell, there were about seven families on the Bill Johnson
spring. The Eggli’s were one of them.
(B)
I’ve never heard it called the Johnson one. The one I know was the one they
called Foxley and Stokes, and Aunt Nora, and Holdaways, and Ray Anderson and us—all
of those were on it.
(F)
It was the Foxley Spring after that, but it was Bill Johnson’s right before. We’re
talking about the same one. We hauled the water in a big tank and dropped it right in the
cistern. The cistern’s still out here. Then we’d pump it out with a Fitzer pump and then
we’d use the water in here. But then Clarence Anderson says, “Oh, put this tank in, 1,000
gallons, ahead of this cistern because he was not getting the water like he’d like and he
had first rights, he said. We only got one share, seven shares were taken out of that
spring. We got one share. When Clarence wanted to have the water run into his and give
us seven hours of water. Anyway, he talked them into putting a cistern out in front and
Clarence was hooked onto it down there. Dad, says no, that ain’t right. I’m voting
against it. We’ve got to build another cistern there. Fred, he says, you’re crazy to talk
like that. So they put the cistern in. He says, “You’re crazy. That will hold more water,
we’ll have more in the spring. It will be double the space. We had a big cistern, about
half as big as this room. And he put another one out in front and that was Clarence’s
water. So, the water should have been divided so many hours here and so many there,
but then Clarence got a big dairy down there and used all the water and we was all dry.
All of us.
There’s steel pipes up on that hill where that water was running around up there in
that feed yard. We rented that farm where Clarence was at one time for one year. Barley
was $0.15 a hundred and it took $0.12 to combine it, so it wasn’t worth it. Dad just left
the barley, he didn’t even combine it. It wasn’t worth it. Luke was the doctor. He come
out over Salt Creek, he wrecked his car, and it killed him. It was a Model A. He turned
the Model A out over by Salt Creek and killed the doctor. That was before I was born I
believe or maybe it was Dr. Luke that delivered me. All the kids were delivered in this
house.
Actually, this house was the first house in Bothwell other than the store right
there. This was one of the first is what Keith [Anderson] has been telling me. Eli
Anderson, this Eli’s grandpa, owned this place. Dad bought it. Dad had bought
Deininger Dad had a lot of different acreage here in Bothwell. Dad wanted to buy this
place. He didn’t even see the ground. It was in the winter. It had a lot of snow on it. Eli
said, “Oh, the water just trickles down. It waters beautiful.” When that snow went off,
we had gullies and that’s how I watered it. I had a shovel. This was the worst place that
ever was to try to water. Rocks.
B:
You turn the water at the top and it beats you to the bottom.
F:
So I sort of level them and filled the gullies in, don’t water too bad now. But it’s
still so steep, if you don’t watch it, it washes.
Odell’s dad lived where Lee’s dad lives now. That house burned down. I
remember Dad going to down to fight the fire. He says they were carrying the stuff out
and there was a beautiful piano. They just couldn’t get it out. It was too late. The fire
just consumed it.
Maynard Summers lived where Paul Newman lives now. Kent [Newman] tore it
down; he gave me some of the floor out of it. That’s the back of my barn. I took the
floor.
Kupfer’s original home place, Henry Kupfer, came in and built that little house
where Knell’s live. That’s the same house as Henry had.
George Payne and their daughter named Gladys and John Payne too lived down
the road from Eleda Vee’s [Stokes]. They was a Mormons. Dad told me the story that the
flu come around. When the flu hit, she was sick. The doctor says, “Drink whiskey.” She
wouldn’t drink whiskey. She says, “I’d rather die than drink whiskey.” And Dad said
she died. That was in Payne’s house, old Mrs. Payne.
Nelson, Mont’s mother, she was our cook in the school there. That was a German
home down there right across from Tuny [Crozier], that Blair and Linda used to live in,
but he didn’t have no children or anything. Gabby Martin lived diagonally where Allen
lives now.
B:
You know Allen’s been fixing his front room and making it bigger on the front.
When they tore off some boards, there was a lot of writing from Gabby.
F:
Dad borrowed money from his [Gabby] I know. Gabby was getting old; I don’t
know if he was going to move, but I know he told Dad, if you’ll just pay half of the
money that you owe me, that will be fine. So Dad borrowed money on this house and
paid him off.
There was an old Co-op right there on the corner too.
The Highline Canal, the guy that put this big one through was named Bothwell.
That little one I just think some of the farmers done most of the work on it. I don’t think
they hired anybody on that. They had a surveyor, they dug it out with horse and scraper I
know that.
All the springs coming out of Salt Creek, the temperature seems to be about 72
degrees. You can jump right into the water right now [March] and it will feel warm.
Jump in the summer and you will about freeze to death. You can go down now and it’s
warm! But it 72 degrees, it don’t change at all. In my lifetime it’s always been the same.
It’s coming about ten different places. Eli [the first Eli] trapped one off, it’s good, sweet
water and that’s what they used. There is some sweet water coming out. I drank some.
You can see the water coming out. It was mostly good, sweet water. But, boy, there was
one that come out and it was salty. Minerals in it or something. I’d take a cup and do
that and, oh, it was terrible water. Down in Salt Creek there’s an underground spring or
something. It used to be more. We could walk over there to go fishing and the ground
would just sway, like that, when you walked. Then there’s water boiling up there and
just sand and water boiling out. You’d throw rocks in it and rocks in it. You’d call it
quicksand, but that finally got filled up with rocks. I guess everybody throwing rocks in
it. So that one quit boiling sand. At least the water still comes out of.
There’s some rocks with Indian writing on them, right on Eli’s down there next to
the Salt Creek. It was very good when I first seen it, but I could never find it again. I
know it’s there. If I could just wander around there. On BY’s [Westmoreland, Point
Lookout] I could show you the Indian writing on them, but it is fading out more.
Archeologists took some pictures, and the pictures showed that Indian writing a little bit
better than what you see with the naked eye, I think. I saw the pictures.
I can tell you about BY’s. My dad told me the story of the water. The water
would fill up and he took it up there to him and give him water. He says, “BY, you can
take this water and fix your mortar.” He built his house with that water of ours which
was Foxley spring water. He built the foundation with that and he paid I think $700 for
that place and that was a lot of money in them days. I know he sold it for better than
$200,000.
He sold it by the acre, there’s 27 acres. It is not farmable land. On the one side,
there’s pretty good dirt over there. You could have farmed a couple acres over there, but
it was still rocky. That’s just mainly all rock.
B:
He was always going to have an air strip right out along the top.
F:
He did have an airstrip. Here come the state road through and he let them have
that state road for $36/acre for the acreage out of that. It cut his house off. I said, “What
did you do that for?“
He said you treat them right and they’ll treat you right. Then they didn’t want to
put in a sewer line in for him. They cut that in two. They didn’t want to do lots of things
for him and he was a little mad about it. I says, “Here you spent $10,000 to level that hill
off the top and then you let the state come through and cut it down and ruin your airport.
And that was his vision, an airport, an airstrip. Then they cut it in two. And he couldn’t
use it as an airstrip any more. Leon Dunn landed his plane there a few times just to try it
out. By never did get it smooth. He could have had the state pay him all that money
back. I says, “You ought to charge the state for ruining your airport.”
“Ah, no, I’m not going to do that.” He didn’t want to. I told him he was entitled
to get all his money back you spent on that airstrip, but you couldn’t tell BY that. He just
wouldn’t listen to it. I was a young kid, I guess.
B: The first road went up around his house and stuff.
F: He had a tavern and a dance hall. He’d laid all them rock and put in there and I think
he drilled a well and had his own water at that time. It was 170 foot deep and the road
went straight through that well. The state road said they’d dig him another well on the
south side, that’s where he wanted it. They built him a well there and it’s pretty good
water.
Then that dump was put up there and that water when BY sent it in for tests, he’d
sent it in for years and years. I don’t know what they’d done, but they said there’s poison
in there. You can’t drink that water. They condemned it. BY had me crawl into that
well and I caught water in there and sent it somewhere and it was good and it came back
good. When they took it, it was there was always arsenic in there.
B:
There was so many rats at the dump, they probably did poison them.
F:
I think that was so deep, I don’t think it got to it. But anyway, they just wanted to
condemn his place and everything. They told him the water was no good, but we sent
this test down. I culled the water and made sure the bottle was clean and got right in the
cistern and caught a quart of it. The windmill was pumping it out. It was good. I don’t
know what was going on. I really think Tremonton City was trying to close him down.
I went up there to the tavern some times. That floor was pretty slick. He had that
slick pretty good. I should tell you, even when that tavern was going, BY had quite a few
silver dollars. People was trying to break in his house and find his silver. He’d show
them off. He showed me a couple hundred silver dollars when we went through one
night. I was trying to get a 1927 one, the year I was born. We went through a couple
hundred dollars, but they must not have made none in 1927. Anyway, he hid his silver
dollars. I know he had them in a chimney at one time in the other room. He pulled the
chimney out, put the money in there and put the dirty old chimney back in. I know he
stored his money in there at one time.
About the time he died, I asked him where he kept his money. He said, “You see
that old tar bucket outside the house?” He says that where I keep all my money. It was
an old tar, the tar was running down, the old lid looked like it was about stuffed with tar
That’s where he put $200-300 worth of silver and all his good stuff—he put in that old tar
bucket.
I just talked to Elva Cox the other day, and told her that story. She said, “Do you
remember seeing that old tar bucket right there by the door? I seen that tar bucket. He
[BY] said they could never find his money when they broke into his house.”
B: I know that before the freeway came through, the road kind of curved up around his
house. The road west. I’d come past there and that parking lot always had a lot of cars
there. It was quite a popular place.
F: He had a juke box there.
B:
The first ones, Carl and Carrie, Floyd would taken them up there once in a while
to see BY and they loved his pickled eggs. He had a pickled egg recipe.
F: He had the house built originally and it was cool. In the summer, the rocks, I guess
the heat never could get into it. That was the coolest place you ever seen in the summer.
On the east side of that house he built a restaurant. He had a restaurant going for awhile,
but it never did pan out because when I went up there a few times to the restaurant it
never did have many people. He might have made a lot, I don’t know. But then he built
the dance hall on the other side. He got these big beams that now sit over on the end of
the hill, then he welded a truss into some of the beams. I got some of the beams laying to
the side of the road up here, and BY says, “That wall’s so heavy, it’s a fortress, that wall.
It’s two feet thick. That’ll hold up.” I went over to get those beams I have. I just took
and hit that with my tractor. The old walls started moving a little, and finally caved in.
The beams would come down, I’d hook one and pull them out. I worked one night
getting all the beams out because the state says, “We’re tearing that thing down
tomorrow. If you want anything, get it.” I worked all night getting them beams out and
knocked that old wall in with the tractor. One beam I didn’t get out. When they set it
afire, they just twisted that beam and stuff. I got a lot of the wood off the old dance hall.
I got that up in a pile.
B:
BY come from South Carolina. He came out here and then his wife died, quite
young I guess. He’d come down here and talk to me and tell me how hard it was to raise
kids with no mother. He never did marry.
F:
The girl was in diapers when her mother died, I think. I remember them coming
down. They would carry the water. Zina was the youngest and then there was James and
Frank and Leroy and Ilan and Florine. Then there was Robert, he was the oldest boy.
Loyle was the one who carried all the water up. He’d come down and carry up two
gallon of water up there for them to drink and use for dishes. That was the Foxley spring
water. He didn’t have a well then.
There’s a lot of graves, Indian graves, out on Point Lookout. A guy dug an Indian
one out, but he got in trouble over it. But he says, you can tell the Indian graves. Turn
them rocks over and they are red underneath. I don’t know if they put stains on them or
what they done, I walked out there with him, and he says, “There’s an Indian grave, and
there’s another one. To me, it was just all rock. The Indians buried them on that hill.
B: I know they said that the Indians would be on Point Lookout and they could see clear
down to the Bear River. They could see where the pioneers would cross the Bear River
and they could see them coming that far. The Oregon Trail went right up through here
somewhere and they would watch.
F: They’d [the Indians] would rob the stagecoaches. BY claims that the money is buried
on his hill. He was always looking for a prospector to find the money. He said there was
money buried on his place.
The Keystone Wire was about where Keith Anderson’s old house was. It was
somewhere right in there. They had some old posts down there, right over there. They
had a dam put in just above where the road goes across. If you walked over there, you
can see the creek coming through some rocks. That’s where they was going to harness
that water for electricity for it, but they never got it done.
Weiser’s had some of that tile that was made at the brick factory by Salt Creek. I
had some of that tile put out here to put in my septic tank, but them was poor tile. I got
some Weiser’s that they’d made. They’d piled up there since I was a little kid and I got
some and used it for my septic tank line, but they was just falling in. There’s some [tiles]
still around from it, but most of them fell in. I had to dig them up and put new ones in.
B: We started putting up trees here and the first trees were not pine trees. They were just
old elm trees. Carl was about eight months old (37 years ago) when we took that up. The
elm was a tree that just volunteered and we just dug it out and took it up there. Some of
those trade trees were the first ones.
F: I got a lot of them over to the CC camp. They used to have the CC in Tremonton.
They had a lot of trees over there and I was so glad, I could get those trees and they
didn’t cost me nothing. I always liked the thornless locusts. I was going to put the whole
hill in that. I paid quite a bit of money for them, but I put in the elms, they all did good.
You see the locusts, some of them died out and I did get a few locusts. Where some pine
trees are now, I took dynamite. Cleon blasted a hole
B: That’s wanting a tree pretty bad if you have to dynamite the hole
F:
He blew a couple holes out
B:
It’s so rocky, but the trees seem to thrive in it. Somebody told Floyd when he
started putting pine trees up there, “You’ll never make a pine tree grow on a south slope.
Pine trees grow on a north slope, but we didn’t have a north slope. They’ve done well.
F:
Lyle [Holdaway?] says you’ll never live long enough to enjoy them trees, but
Lyle was wrong. I’ve enjoyed them trees since when they was little. Every time I’d
come home from Thiokol, every other night, I had a tap put in there with the Bothwell
water. I’d run it up there and fill the holes clear along that whole hill. I had ten hoses
and I’d water the trees then go back and water the next row. I did use Lyle’s tractor with
the bucket on the front and I made the trench for the water to run. I figured some day I’d
pump the water up there and I started them little trees watering them with a hose for two
or three years. Then finally I got the water over there. I watered them with culinary
water for the first two years. Finally I got an old pump and put it behind the tractor and I
got the pipe from John Laws over there, some scrap stuff. I pushed them together with
John’s machine and laid them up the hill. When I’d get to a place where I wanted the
water to go I had to start at the top and pull the pipe off to send it down, I’d pull one pipe
off and the water’d go down that row. When I got it ready, I’d start at the bottom and put
a pipe on and water that row, and put another pipe on and then I’d take them all off again.
I think Dad was interested in bees. He was interested in them at one time. He had
a bee book. I still got that bee book that he had, the ABC Bee book. I think he did. Bea
didn’t want bees; she hated them. I says, “We need one colony to pollinate your stuff.
Or a couple colonies. I started with a couple colonies.
B: Where did you get your start?
F:
The old church house had some bees coming out the back of it. I know I got
some. I just put a funnel over the hole, then they’d go out. They’d light on the building
to get it, but they couldn’t get in. There’s was a big gob of bees there. I had a box and
the bees come in that box. But you got to put some brood in there after all the bees is in
there because the queen will never come out. She’ll stay in stay in there and die. I took
all the bees away from her and finally she’d just die in there. I’d put this stray brood in
there and they’d built their own queen..
B: I know we sent for some queen bees once and they come through the mail. They
package them in these little screen boxes and there’d be six or so worker bees to feed her
[the queen] because she can’t feed herself. I can see why the mailman would be nervous
about that little buzzing box. We did do that.
F:
I could talk an hour on bees. The drones they don’t bring no honey. One drone
mates with the queen in the air and that’s it. The drones—they keep all them drones
around. Every time you keep a batch of drones, they built a little place and maybe have
ten drones or twenty and then finally you’ll get more drones in there and pretty soon
you’ll have too many—they’ll just keep building more drones. In the fall they kill every
drone but just two or three and they keep them. When she [the queen] comes along and
lays an egg, she’ll put an unfertilized egg in these [drones cells]. And when she goes up
to the worker bees, she fertilizes that egg. She’ll lay 1,500 eggs a day from that one
mating. She’ll live seven years. She only mates once in seven years and lays all those
eggs. The fertilized eggs are the worker bees and if she don’t fertilize that egg it’ll be a
drone. It’s amazing, the bee world.
A woman from Tremonton called and said she had a swarm. I believe Keith
Bollingbroke gave me the first start of bees. Larry Woolace, the plant manager of La-ZBoy, I got him a start. My heart doctor. You can take a beehive and you can look in
there and the queen’s hanging down below. They’re feeding maybe ten queens. When
they hatch out, the first queen out will be the strongest. She’ll rip the next apart and sting
the rest or they will fight to death if there’s two of them [queens]. I pull the frames out
and get into another hive with a handful of bees, a half-pound of bees or so and you got
another colony.
B: Floyd’s done the merit badges for scouting for the boys who are working on their
beekeeping and also forestry where he had quite a bit to do with both those things.
F:
I wanted to drop back on the cemetery too. There was a big junkyard, all the
people put their junk in that big wash just south of it. Right below the cemetery. They’d
pile all their junk, right in the cemetery. They had it clear full of old cars, barbed wire
and all kinds of stuff. Then the county come and filled it over. I think what was done
was just put gravel over it and dirt. The culvert just filters down through the old
junkyard. I remember there was a big deep gully right from the fence down. Then the
county come and filled it all up. It was an eyesore around the cemetery. There was old
Model T Fords and crap in there, dead animals. It’d make you mad. It was a bad, bad
deal. I don’t know if the Bothwell people used it for a junkyard or what. It got covered
up. That was a blessing.
I know Mother would go down to Weisers and visit with them. It was more house
visiting, the Germans done. I don’t think they had any dances or anything. I know old
man Kupfer, he lived just south of Nora [Kupfer] there. Emil’s and mother’s dad. She
[his wife] died earlier and he died later. He’s laying down in the cemetery down there.
They named one of their kids John.
I know there was five graves, they knew the Weisers, the Meister, she built that
bench there, she’s got her name wrote on it. My mother used to go visit Holda Meister
and her sister.
B: What about that lady that lived on that street where Art and Elva Eggli, Dockstadder,
was she German? Was she buried out here?
F:
Dockstadder was a German, but I don’t know if his wife was. When it comes to
BY, when his wife died, I’ve got the trailer up there that was the hearse. They just had an
old hearse, they just picked up the coffin and put it in the back of that trailer and took her
over to Tremonton, pulled it in a horse and wagon. She rode in the trailer. I got two old
trailers and one was a hearse. I’m sure it was the one I put the sides on. It was just an
old Model A pickup bed or something. I know Frank told me that was the trailer that
mother was took to the cemetery in. I think it was pulled by a Model A Ford or a Model
T or something.
Jake Woerner was the one that fought with my Dad down there. They lived right
south. They’ve got some family. They had two boys, one was a diabetic. I know he died
when he was young. The other, he married and he died younger.
My grandparents, Kupfer, are buried down there. My grandmother come from
Germany. They come and moved down there below Emil’s. That’s where Mother’s
parents lived. That’s that big headstone.
Dad’s parents are buried in Gridley, Illinois. They never migrated to Utah. My
dad was shining shoes for people. A street kid caused some trouble and got in a fight.
Dad hit him over the head with something. They figured that he was going to die, he had
a skull fracture. His Dad said, “All right. We’re in trouble. You’d better go out to Utah
and live with Deiningers’s. That’s where he met mother, is out here. I don’t remember
Dad ever going back to see them [his family] and they never come out here either. He
was about fifteen when he come out here. He worked for Sommers, Keystone, I think.
Deiningers lived down at LeRoy Firths. When Dad come out, there weren’t no houses
down there. Dad was married when Deininger’s built that [LeRoy’s house], I just don’t
know where he lived.
??? Kupfer went to Oregon because the church was strong up there. He said he
was going to take his kids up there. He didn’t want em marrying Mormons, Swedes. He
was against the Mormon situation.
I don’t imagine my mother would have been happy to see me baptized in the
Mormon church. They [Mormons] tried to talk her into joining the church. They’d come
up and visit us. We had home teachers. We always had missionaries come up. Mother
took some lessons. I think Mother outsmarted them more than they outsmarted her.
That’s all she done is read the Bible nights. She’d sit down and read. She knew the
Bible from one end to the other. She’d get them on something every time they’d come.
They couldn’t get out of it. Mother believed that you’d be as an angel in heaven.
There’d be no marriages, the Bible says there’d be no marriages in heaven the way she
had it figured. You’d [Mormons] go the temple to be baptized for the dead. She’d says
that ain’t going to do any good. I don’t know. Deloris [Stokes] could tell you more. He
did a lot of visiting. She was pretty sharp on her Bible.
The basic part of the apostolic church was the Bible. We didn’t have a church. My sister
joined the Apostolic church back in Illinois. Mother just wanted to join the church so
they sent the minister out, Shrock, and he baptized her. Then she went home and lived
about the same life as she was living before.
B:
Did you tell me once that they didn’t believe in modern things. They wouldn’t
have a radio or a TV.
F:
hey wasn’t supposed to listen to the radio. I know Dad did. We used it all right.
They was against radios, telephones, then the TV came out. The church was against the
TV, but still the minister had a TV in his house or something. I said, “That’s against your
church policy.”
He said, “Oh, yeah.”
I know Dad says the Bible says the word of God will come through the rooftops
or something. Dad says that’s the radio coming through the rooftops. That’s the word of
God.
B:
In the things that I’ve heard, they were very devout in what they did believe in.
F:
My father ran a still. They had the beer. They brewed some beer for themselves
The hole I can still show you where they rolled the beer kegs down. He would have these
kegs, they brought them downstairs. They made the beer in these crocks. They’d hold
twenty five gallon, or ten gallon, or twelve gallon. This was my father, Fred Eggli. They
made beer. I still got the testers. We’d buy the malt and then all they’d do is add the
sugar. When the alcohol content come up high enough, then they’d bottle it. But you
couldn’t bottle it before, it’d blow all the caps off. Quick as the alcohol content got just
right, he had to bottle it all up. That was it. I remember that when I was right young.
The Ellis’s down here turned Dad in for bootleggin and they got a reward. I think
they got a hundred dollars or something for turning him in. Ellis’s lived right there by
Ranae’s [Anderson] place in that big tall house that burned down. O Deen Ellis was the
one that had epileptic fits. It was his Dad. I can’t think of the girls that was an Ellis. She
went to school with me.
Anyway, they turned him in. The cops, the sheriff I guess, come up here and they
went down in the basement and took a crock or two of beer that they was brewing and
they just dumped em down the drain and charged Dad $200 and, boy, that was a lot of
money in them days. He didn’t have to go to jail. He just had to pay that fine then Dad
says, “That’s it. No more.” He was tired of it anyway and when they got turned them in
and it cost them that much every time, he just quit. That’s how he built this house was
the beer he sold. He added this part of the house onto the brick home of Eli’s there. This
house has been built on three times, the second time was built on bootleg. Eli built the
double brick walls. Where the kitchen is and the little middle bedroom and part of the
porch is the first part. Eli had a lean to like on back.
B:
Then Floyd’s dad dug and had a two-room basement and built on what was the
front room then and the bedroom. Then Floyd built on this part [living room].
F:
I was three-years old when they dug that basement. I remember them going in
with scrapers and pulling it out in the yard. I was sitting on the wall that goes down in
the basement and they put a door and them stairs. Anyway, I remember sitting on that
floor. I got a picture of me when I was nine-months old, I walked when I was nine
months old.