Parley Hughes Neeley
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"My father was born July 14, 1879 in Salt Lake City. He married mother on May 21, 1903. He died May 21, 1959."
"Dad was never one to take advantage of anybody. He could have become very, very wealthy in that area had he taken advantage of people, but he generally worked out a compromise with people -- he didn't want to hurt anyone and most of the time the compromise was to his detriment. He'd often take his fee in cattle or hay or some other means of paying the bill.
"I've heard him tell mother many times that so and so was in and he was going to sue so and so and instead of doing that I called them in together and we spent all day in the office talking it out. But we finally got it straightened out and you know when they left they didn't offer to pay me one dime when I could have had a big lawsuit from either one of them and taken a lot of property and money from them."
Digging holes and filling them up again . . .
"Dad was very desirous of getting an education and it was hard to do in those days. The schools weren't the best and Dad learned to read at home with grandma helping him. Dad stayed on the farm and about the age of 20, grandpa sent him to the Agricultural College in Logan. There he had a Great Uncle -- Uncle Josh. Uncle Josh Paul was president of the college at Logan and he agreed to board him and help him through school. He did it in a very peculiar way. He would have him dig holes out in the garden as deep as he could dig it and still throw the dirt out. Then he'd have him fill it up and pound the dirt in. Uncle Josh said every person had to work for his living and inasmuch as he didn't have work that he could pay Dad for, he wanted him to learn to work anyway. So Dad would dig holes and fill them up all during the school year."
Note: Grandpa, Parley R. Neeley, son of Parley Hughes, had Uncle Josh as a professor (teaching the engineers English at the U. of U.). He wrote the following funny story:
"He had a toupee and he would just slap it on and it was our hobby as a class to guess how he was going to have his toupee each day, and we'd get together and the ones who lost had to treat the winners to ice cream"
"Dad was a husky young man and was wanted for a football team in College. He played for the football team about 1898 or 1899. There's a photograph in the albums that show Dad there on a football team, Dad's wearing a cowboy hat and the others are wearing all kinds of hats -- I guess they didn't have anything in the way of uniforms. It was a rugged game because they didn't have pads for shoulders -- no protection at all really. They'd go out there an bang into each other and if they came out it was alright and if they didn't it was alright."
Herding sheep as a young boy . . .
"As a young boy, before his teens, Dad had to herd sheep. Every spring he'd be taken up with the sheep to to head of the Provo river, which at that time passed Trial Lake and Washington Lake (they were small lakes, not man-made at that time) and on over into Mirror Lake area. There he would be left with the sheep. He had his dog and his gun -- an old 45-70 single shot, a very heavy old gun. He often told about going around with the sheep and keeping coyotes and bears away. Can you imagine a boy 10 or 11 in this day and age out there herding sheep, alone, away up in the mountains all summer long? That's where he learned how to run -- he'd run to catch the sheep. He was quite a runner in his day."
He just broke down and cried from loneliness.
"When Dad, around 10 or 11, herded sheep all alone in the mountains(see story above), of course there was a place designated down on the river which was the cache and they would come up there and bring supplies and meet him every two weeks or so. One time he was late getting down to the cache and they'd just left the supplies. He just broke down and cried and cried because he'd missed them. But then he had to just gather up the supplies and get back to the sheep. In later years Dad would show us the spot where he killed a cougar, or a bobcat, or a bear, while protecting the sheep."
"As I stated before, Dad learned how to run by running sheep down and so he became quite a sprinter. In those days it was pretty good to run the hundred yard dash in ten seconds -- which he could do. He said he used to practice by going around during the track season with two pounds of shot tied to each leg. That's buck shot like you have in a shotgun shell. Then just before a race why he would take this buckshot off his legs and it made his feet feel like he was flying."
"In 1901 grandpa placed dad's name on the Democratic ticket to run for County Clerk in Summit. Dad was in school and he didn't know anything about it but when he came home he'd been elected County Clerk. He was County Clerk from 190 to 1904. He'd really gone to school to learn to be an Engineer but being County Clerk showed him how much Summit County need a lawyer. So he decided to go back to Anarbor Michigan to the law school there.
Back to law school in Michigan.
"As I stated before (see above) Dad decided to go to law school and take up law. This was after he'd served as County Clerk -- which was until January of 1905. I may not have been quite three years old when we went to Michigan but I can certainly remember when we went to Echo to catch the train there. It as a cold winter and we'd gone by sleigh and we were all covered over with canvases and quilts and we had heaters in the bottom of the sleigh. It was also winter when we came back from Michigan after graduation. He had gone year-round to school for three years in order to graduate. He didn't have much money -- he didn't have sufficient funds to get a cap and gown so the Dean of the Law School loaned him his cap and gown for the graduation. Upon returning to Coalville he worked for Johnny Samon loading brick pugmills where the bricks were made. He loaded those pugmills at night so they could make brick the next day. Dad was working hard and apparently losing his health because he was working so hard at night loading these pugmills and then trying to work up a law practice in the daytime. It was then, like I mentioned in grandpa's history (see 'A trip to Yellowstone by wagon' in the Parley Hughes Neeley section), that grandpa came down from the Kamas area with teams of horses and wagons and buggies and we took off to Yellowstone Park in the summer of 1909.
"We used to gather walnuts in the Fall so that we could feed the squirrels during the winter time. By the way, that old trunk in the attic is the one that we took back to Anarbor and where we used to put the walnuts in. 'Course that would take us up to the year of about 1909 when we came back from Anarbor to Coalville.
"I remember in Anarbor about Lou and I getting into the sewer trenches that they were digging in front of the house. We went for a long ways and couldn't get out and finally someone spotted us. The trenches were 8 to 10 feet deep and we'd happened to walk down to a place that they'd backfilled and we'd gotten lost just like being in one of those mazes."
"I was six years old when we came back from Anarbor. I remember it very well. It was a cold, cold morning and they met us at Echo, The Echo Junction, and we came home in sleighs and we were bundled up to come for the 5 miles from Echo to Coalville."
Here are two songs Dad used to like to sing:
There was an old women tossed up in a blanket, Ninety times as high as the moon And where she was goin' I couldn't but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom Old women, old women, old women, say I, Whither, Oh wither, Oh wither so high To sweep the cobwebs off of the sky, I'll be with you by and by Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man, He washed his face in a frying pan Combed his hair with a wagon wheel, And died with a toothache in his heel Get out the way for Old Dan Tucker, He's too late to git his supper Supper's over and a breakfast a cookin', Old Dan Tucker just stands there a lookin'
(Note: 'Mutual' is short for 'Young Men's and Women's Mutual Improvement Association', which is a church organization for young people. They would have had regular meetings and activities and being in the presidency meant that you had to attend at preside at these sorts of things.)
"I heard Dad tell of then he and Uncle Jim Rhead, who lived on his ranch in the South Fork of Chalk Creek, were in the mutual for the whole of Summit County -- the Summit County Stake, which included Park City and Kamas and down through Coalville and Henefer. They'd leave Coalville in the early afternoon by horseback and then they'd go over the mountain, which would drop them over into Oakley and there they would go to the meeting, or they'd go to Kamas, or the Parley's Park for the meeting. Then, after the meeting, they would come back home, way after dark, early in the morning really, over the divide and down to Jim's ranch and into Coalville."
"We'd go camping up Chalk Creek during the Sage Hen hunting season -- there weren't any pheasants around at that time. Dad had a little light wagon made and we called it the 'Rickity Jin' . It had the running gear of a light buggy, and a buck board placed on it with a high spring seat. In the morning we kids would ride that up there and then Dad would bring the women up later in the old EMF. We'd probably stay a night or two and load gunnysacks full of chickens and bring them back and distribute them around town. There used to be a lot of chickens in the Chalk Creek Basin."
"Old Pete Jacobson lived up towards the Wyoming border. He said "I can tell when P.H. Neeley's coming. First I'll see a chicken go by and then two chickens and then a whole herd of chickens go by and then the coyotes start running and then the badgers start running and then I know that Neeley's 'comin up this way. ;-)"
"The country was pretty open in those days. It didn't matter if you hunted in Wyoming or Utah or where you hunted. There were no fences -- there were a lot of sheep in the area, of course, but that didn't matter. Nobody worried about people coming up and hunting and fishing and enjoying themselves like they do now. They just don't want anyone in the area and they fence it off."
"Our favorite spot was that monument which shows the corner of Utah and Wyoming. It dips down there and we always hunted up to and around that monument. Some of the sage brush was pretty high and I remember it being over my head at times. Lou and I would run through it and by the time we got to the other end we'd look around and we'd see Dad going in the opposite direction and we'd have to get on a dead run to catch him."
"I have the old shot gun here that Dad used to use -- it says 1880, D.W. Pope on it. They made them in those days out of spring steel. They made a long spring and then they welded it together. Then they drilled it out to make a shotgun."
"We didn't start deer hunting until 1928. Dad and I made that first deer hunt alone and we didn't get one. We saw plenty but came up empty handed. In 1929 we got our first deer. We hunted deer every year since then up in the Chalk Creek area and up on the 'Old Porcupine'. We used to have to walk up to the top of Porcupine, take our lunches out in the morning, get up real early in the dark, and walk up to the top and stay out all day and never get back to the car until night time."
"We'd go fishing and hiking and dad would show us the Old Neeley Mill where grandpa and he used to be and where they made shingles -- Shingle creek is named that because grandpa had a mill there. The flowers were beautiful and Dad loved flowers -- wild flowers -- and we'd always make trips up the Weber Canyon and on up over the lakes and across the divide above Trial Lake and Washington Lake. Then we'd hike to the top of Baldy and several other peaks around the area and walk over to the heads of the Weber River, Bear River, the Duchesne River, and the Provo River. We'd go fishing. At that time fishing was good in the little meadows there. The streams were deep but they weren't very wide, maybe three to four feet wide, maybe four or five feet deep, and with overhanging banks. The fish would be up under those overhangs and you could sneak up and drop your line over where they couldn't see you and pick up quite a lot of fish that way."