Dad - Diamond Mountain

This is taken from a talk Dad gave in 1985 in church...a great story that highlights Dad's typical sense of duty and commitment.

As a teenager, I lived in Vernal and worked for my Uncle and grandfather on the farm.  Along with the farm, they owned a good deal of land on Diamond Mountain which was 30 miles northeast of Vernal.  This land had been plowed and needed to be disced.  It was determined that if the tractor was kept going around the clock day and night for two weeks except Sunday, the project would be completed.

My uncle gave me, age 14 at the time, and another hired hand, Larry - age 15, that responsibility.  We left for Diamond Mountain early the following Monday morning with the tractor and enough provisions to last us until Saturday.

Upon arriving at the property, I began discing the field while Larry and my uncle put our provisions in the cabin.  My uncle said he would pick us up the following Saturday afternoon.  For the next six days and nights we were to run that tractor only stopping long enough for gas.  We took turns four hours on and four hours off around the clock.  During our four hours off we would generally sleep.  Responsibility and commitment, we had to be committed to doing that job because the hours got long and boring.  We did this for two weeks only going home for Sunday.

On about the third day, a u-bolt that attached the disk to the hydraulic system of the tractor broke.  The only way we could notify my uncle was either walk or ride the tractor back to Vernal. On top of that, we didn't know whether he was in Vernal or at his ranch which was north west of Vernal. After thinking about it, we decided that we could lose as much as two days work if we tried to find him.  We found some bailing wire at a nearby corral and discovered that if we looped 30 to 40 strands through the holes where the u-bolt had been, it would last eight to ten hours until the wire would break.  By using all the bailing wire we could find and taking a fence apart and using its wire, we were able to keep going until my uncle picked us up the following Saturday.

That takes commitment, but in those days and the earlier days of our ancestors, that was the thing to do. People were committed and taught their children to be committed to their work and beliefs.  As I recently heard someone say: "If it was time to milk the cow, you milked the cow."  It did't matter whether or not you were sick, you just did it.  It was the same with gospel principles.  Our ancestors lived them fully and we need to do the same.