MEMOIRS PART 14 - SCHOOLYARD MAINTENANCE

After Dad became a member of the school board, he managed to get me a number of jobs associated with the maintenance of the schoolyard. Keep in mind that at the time the "new" high school and the old grade school were on the same lot, with the athletic field behind them. The pay was fifty cents an hour, which to me was munificent.

The one job I remember best is irrigating the athletic field. The school apparently owned a share of the North Willow Irrigation Company, which provided a common irrigation ditch for several users. It was my job to be on the spot when it was the school's turn to have the water flowing in the ditch. This meant I first had to break the dam which was diverting the water from downstream users, including the school, to the land of the share holder just upstream of the school. Next I had to build dams to direct the stream to the school grounds. The school's water allotment was based on a set period of time, so I had to see that the water covered as much of the athletic field as possible in the allotted time.

Speaking of time, it seemed to me that the school's turn to get its allotment was always in the middle of the night, and the upstream user was always on hand to see that I didn't break his dam one minute too early.

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In 1937 I graduated from Grantsville High School and started attending the University of Utah. It soon became apparent that I needed a source of income larger than I had, so in 1938 Dad bought a small combine harvester and I began doing custom harvesting around Grantsville. This meant that I would bring my tractor and combine to a farmer's field and harvest his grain for a fixed price per acre. I think it was about $4.00. Dad was my advance man, negotiator, salesman, and public relations agent. The Higleys got quite upset with us because until then they had a monopoly on custom harvesting around Grantsville with their threshing machine. Our method cost the farmer about half what the Higleys were charging.

This went on through 1938,1939, and 1940. Although I had to pay for the combine, enough was left over to pay most of my university expenses.