INTERVIEWEE: Jay Spencer

Sevier County Oral History Project

INTERVIEWEE: Jay Spencer
INTERVIEWER: Tina Spencer*
DATE: December 7, 1997
PLACE: Aurora, Utah
SUBJECT: The Great Depression

*Also present in the room was Larry Spencer

Tina Spencer: This is Tina Spencer, and I am interviewing Jay Spencer, my grandpa, on his remembrances on the Great Depression. The date is December 7, and the place is Aurora, UT.

Where and when were you born?

Jay Spencer: Born on June 25, 1910.

Tina Spencer: And where?

Jay Spencer: In Dublan, Old Mexico

Tina Spencer: What kind of house did you live in?

Jay Spencer: We lived in an adobe building.

Larry Spencer: Was it two-story? One-story?

Jay Spencer: One-story

Larry Spencer: Do you remember anything about the house at all?

Jay Spencer: Well, I don't, but I did have pictures. But I don't know where they are right now.

Tina Spencer: What was your family life like when you were young?

Jay Spencer: Well, how do I describe that?

Larry Spencer: How long did you live in Mexico?

Jay Spencer: Poncho Villa chased us out in 1912.

Larry Spencer: So, you were two then.

Jay Spencer: Yes, I was two when we left.

Larry Spencer: Where did you go from there?

Jay Spencer: Moved into Provo. My dad worked in a cafe as a waitress (laughs), a waiter to start with.

Larry Spencer: What else do you remember about that? Moving to Provo? When did you move back down to here?

Jay Spencer: Well, it was about ten years later we moved over in Lost Creek. That's over toward the hills over here (points) where those trees are. And there's three or four houses. We lived in one of those. Dad was the foreman for the Anderson farms. It was that whole area over there. The Lost Creek area.

Larry Spencer: So that would have been about 1922-23?

Jay Spencer: I don't remember the dates, no.

Larry Spencer: But, that would have made you about 12 then when you moved down here?

Jay Spencer: Yes, pretty close. No, I was younger than that when we moved down here. We moved in this house over here (points) where Al Peterson and his wife lived when I was 10 years old. I can remember that. I had a birthday party on my tenth birthday, and I had one pal that I wanted to be sure and be to the party. So, I stayed and helped him do his chores so he could get to the party, and I was late to my own birthday party. (Laughs.)

Larry Spencer: So how many brothers and sisters did you have then?

Jay Spencer: I think two sisters, and two brothers

Larry Spencer: So, there was five of you then

Jay Spencer: Yeah, the way I remember it, which my memory is not too good on those things 'cause I haven't even thought about them for so long.

Larry Spencer: Your dad was a foreman for a cattle company, a ranch, farm?

Jay Spencer: Well, it was a ranch where they raise lots of crops and lots of cattle, yes

Larry Spencer: What else did he do? Do you remember anything else?

Jay Spencer: Well, he used to hunt a lot. Bring in deer and wild turkeys for part of our meals and so forth, and sometime we had to go out with a shot gun and shoot into a herd of or into a flock of blackbirds and have blackbird pie, if you can imagine that!

Larry Spencer: So, you were about ten then when you moved down here, you had two sisters and two brothers so there were five of you, and then how many more brothers and sisters did you have?

Jay Spencer: Well, we've got 11 kids all together

Tina Spencer: Did you hear about the stock market crashing?

Jay Spencer: Well, I didn't hear it crash, but . . . .

Tina Spencer: How would you describe your economic situation?

Jay Spencer: Well, when I got old enough to work, a dollar a day was big money. At one time, after I was married, I got paid a silver dollar for a day's work that I did. I was showing it to my wife Emma, and dropped it on the porch. There was a crack in the porch and it went through underneath, so we tore the whole porch down to get to that dollar. (Laughs.) That's how rough things got.

Tina Spencer: How was your community affected?

Jay Spencer: By that dollar?

Tina Spencer: No, by the depression.

Jay Spencer: Seemed everybody was poor, and a few people, I think there was one telephone in town. Two or three people had cars; everybody else gets horses, buggies, and wagons as their transportation, or you walked.

Larry Spencer: That was here in Aurora?

Jay Spencer: Yes.

Tina Spencer: What did your parents do for a living?

Jay Spencer: Farming mostly, and then in the wintertime when the kids were going to school after I got old enough, I'd go with my dad to work on construction jobs. This is quite a bit later when I got older. I helped build that tunnel through Zion's Canyon in 1928.

Larry Spencer: That was about the depression time. About 1928-29.

Jay Spencer: Yes, and a little before that.

Larry Spencer: What was a day's work like? What hours? I mean was it an eight hour day we're talking?

Jay Spencer: No, we worked eight, nine hours most of the time. We'd get big money, lot bigger than we'd get here at home, on the farms. Which you'd get three-fifty a day.

Larry Spencer: What about room and board when you were out, away from home?

Jay Spencer: When we were out away from home, usually only construction jobs, they had their own quarters. They'd take pay out for it. I don't remember the price for a meal or for your keep, but they held that out of your pay.

Larry Spencer: Out of your three-fifty a day?

Jay Spencer: Yes.

Tina Spencer: When did you get married?

Jay Spencer: September 16, 1927, I believe.

Tina Spencer: So, did the depression affect that?

Jay Spencer: Well, we didn't have much of a honeymoon.

Tina Spencer: Where did you go?

Jay Spencer: We didn't go anywhere. We went home.

Tina Spencer: Did you ever drop out of school to help your parents or family?

Jay Spencer: Every fall we had to stay out and top sugar beets.

Tina Spencer: Did you ever go to college?

Jay Spencer: I went to, well, what would you call it? Four years of high school. I didn't go to college, but I had four years of . . . the first six-weeks of the season when you'd start school, we had to stay out and top sugar beets to make enough money to get us through the school year.

Larry Spencer: So, you'd just start six weeks late every year?

Jay Spencer: Yes, yes.

Larry Spencer: What about your diesel school? When was that?

Jay Spencer: Diesel school was . . . I worked with a team of horses and a big scraper for six months on a road that goes from here to Fish Lake. Stayed in a tent in the dead of winter. Nearly froze to death. Making enough money to go get my diesel training. Is that what you're talking about?

Larry Spencer: Yes.

Jay Spencer: I made it to a diesel engineer school in Los Angeles. And I taught them more than I learned. (Laughs.) That's no kidding. When I was 14 years old, I overhauled the tractor for W. R. Johnson. He used to be the mayor for this town. That's before they ever put tires on tractors. It was these big steel lugs and steel wheels on the front. That was my first mechanic's experience.

Larry Spencer: Did you have a nice shop to do that in?

Jay Spencer: I did it on the lawn. (Laughs.) Up in the far end corner of Aurora, out on the lawn; that's why they term me a shade tree mechanic. It worked! It did a good job. That started me on my mechanical engineering.

Tina Spencer: So did your dad do some of that? And taught you as you were growing up?

Jay Spencer: Well, he wasn't that mechanical. It just all come in up here. (Points to his head.) I had training after that when we was down in Tucson, Arizona. I went to school down there. I learned to do lathe work and all kinds of mechanical work like that. And we went down in two outfits. We had an old touring Chevrolet. It didn't have any curtains or anything in, and an old Model-T Ford with a flat bed in the back that we had all of our supplies and bedding and everything on. We stayed over there. That was in 1927. That's where I took schooling, and I overhauled both the outfits while we was down there. We came back on thirty-eight dollars less than it took us to drive down, so I know we made some improvement on it. Thirty-eight dollars we saved coming home. They ran better, gave better mileage, and

Tina Spencer: Who went with you?

Jay Spencer: The whole troop. And it is a troop. Eleven kids, a mom, and dad. They came in the old Chevrolet, and Harold, I, and Rosalie most of the time rode in the Model-T Ford.

Larry Spencer: With all your stuff in.

Jay Spencer: With all the stuff hauled in.

Larry Spencer: So, why was everyone going to Tucson?

Jay Spencer: Well, we was going down there for a winter vacation. My dad worked on a farm down there. An experimental farm, to improve farming. He worked on that farm all the while we was down there. The family lived in Binghampton. That's five miles out of Tucson. Now, it's one big city, but at that time the sagebrush, and old rocks in between. My sister Rosalie and I lived in town on 50 Driscal Street with some of mother's folks' kids. Levare Price and Edna Price that was two of mother's sisters and one brother. I lived in with Levare Price. They wondered where his twin brother had been all these years, you know up until 1927. We had a good time. Went to school down there, and that's where I learned my trade as a—what should we call me—machinist. Yes, I was a machinist.

Tina Spencer: So, was that where you met Emma?

Jay Spencer: No. I met her here in Aurora. She was my girlfriend for about five years. And after I went down to Zions Canyon to help build that tunnel through, I met a little gal down there that I went with for a year as a sweetheart. That was my last wife that was here, Florence. I married her 62 years later.

Tina Spencer: How did you build your first home?

Jay Spencer: By hand. I had one of dad's brothers, and my dad, and I, and some of my brothers helped part of the time, but we went up to a place call Neoch. There was a lot of dried timber, dried trees. We didn't have chain saws then, but we did it with one man on each end of the saw, and sawed them down like so. We had two teams of horses, and we loaded a half a load of logs on the wagon. Rolled them up rails up onto the wagon. A half a load, and it was so steep up out of the canyon where we was getting the trees up out of the road that we'd have to hook both teams on the one half a load and go up out of the Neoch Canyon up onto the main road. Roll the logs off on the upper side of the road up the hill, then go back and get another half a load, and come up and put the rails out on that half a load, and put this other half a load on the top of the other one. Then we'd bring them home.

Larry Spencer: So, where's Neoche?

Jay Spencer: Right over there. (Points)

Larry Spencer: Clear up Gooseberry then?

Jay Spencer: Yes. You go up the road that goes to Fishlake. Up in that area. Then I built the little sawmill that sawed out the logs. Four inches thick we'd saw them and eight inches wide. And built our first home with that.

Larry Spencer: Where was it?

Jay Spencer: It was in Aurora. Right out there. (Points.) In the northwest corner of Aurora.

Larry Spencer: Did your folks have a home up there?

Jay Spencer: Yes. They had one, and it was built by Tineas Andersen. That's many years ago. When we moved from here, from this place up here Aften Petersen, then we built the new home. I built my home, well, mine and Emma's, this side of theirs about a hundred feet. We even sawed the lath, and then nailed them up, and had it plastered inside. We had some of the boards run through a planer. I didn't have a planer then, but we run them through a planer. To make the window frames, we bought the windows, and then we'd put this spray mark around them with the lumber we had planed. The logs were just left rough, and screwed together with big, long screws, and nails.

Larry Spencer: So your walls were four inches thick?

Jay Spencer: Well, they was thicker than that really. They was solid wood four inches thick, then a little gap, then the lath, then the plaster over that. So there's about five and a half to six inches. Lath, you know are only three-eighths of an inch thick. So, that was quite an undertaking.

Larry Spencer: So, you hauled all the logs?

Jay Spencer: Hauled all the logs.

Larry Spencer: Sawed all the lumber together.

Jay Spencer: I made the sawmill out of two old Model-T Ford front axles and I knocked the wooden spokes out so these steel hubs run on regular railroad rails. Took a Buick engine, and made a shaft come out the back. There was no belts to drive the saw and to put the saw on the straight out the back end of the engine. The engine was taken out of the car. I made a mounting for it. Then that shaft run out to the saw. We hooked the gas feed to the emergency brake, and Emma ran the gas feed for the speed; we didn't have a governor on it, so that . . . to make this carriage that had the log on it go down the track, I had my brother down there with a crank and a big long rope. He'd wind that crank, and as soon as the log come up and started into the saw, your grandmother would throw the throttle wide open. Harold would have to gage it by how fast he pulled it through. Rather it could pull it so it wouldn't slow it down too much. Then, he and another guy would get on there and push it back. I had a piece of an old carpenter's square nailed onto this carriage that I built with a little pointer so I knew just right how far it was from the standard, that's the part that the log lays against, was from there to the saw. It was one foot, then I'd move up 1 1/4 inch, I'd pull this lever, and pull it ahead. Pull it sideways, I mean, the log sideways to cut the next board off. I'd have to come 1 1/4 inches because the saw takes 1/4 out, so we have to come an extra 1/4 to get an inch board. But, if I was sawing this board by eighths, then I had to put a16 inch log on there. I'd have to saw down the middle to get two 4 inch pieces. You'd have to take a slab off the outside, and turn it and be sure that was 16 1/4 inches because the saw would take 1/4 out of the middle. Then we'd shovel the saw-dust out, and haul it over with a wheel barrow over by a lean-to we built on the granary. We'd store ice in that for the summer to make ice cream. We'd sell a little. It'd take you 30 minutes to an hour to get in there and shovel the saw dust back so you could find the ice to sell somebody, for 15 cents . . . would buy enough to make a batch of ice cream. You'd spend 30 minutes at least. That should tell you something about it.

Larry Spencer: Where did you get the ice?

Jay Spencer: Well, we went up to Koosharem Reservoir with a team of horses for several days during the fall. We'd put on our skates, and skate way out in the lake and saw a hole or chop a hole, then we had this saw, it was about like you'd saw the trees down with. Saw into the water, and saw big square blocks out. We had grippers that would take a hold of that block of ice, and lift it out on. Then you'd skid it out across the lake on the ice over to the wagon. They was so heavy that we had to have a big pole upright and another log, or tree, about yeah big, with a long end and a short end with these grabber hooks to grab hold of that piece of ice, pull down on this end, the block of ice would go up, and then you'd swing it around over the wagon and let this end up and it would unhook it and then swing it back around to get another block. We'd fill this lean-to on the granary full of ice and then pile sawdust all around it, and it'd keep all summer. All that we didn't sell or use ourselves.

Larry Spencer: So, what were you doing for employment during this time while you was building your home?

Jay Spencer: Well, we was farming and in the wintertime we'd go on construction jobs. I helped build that road up through Strawberry Canyon up to Duchesne. Look on your map, when you get a map, you'll see where Duchesne is. That was one project.

Larry Spencer: From Price up to Duchesne?

Jay Spencer: Well, I don't know. It wasn't from Price.

Larry Spencer: Was the one that goes over from Heber over to Duchesne?

Jay Spencer: Well, I don't remember just some of the other towns in there. But, I drove a four-up Fresno they call it. It's a big scraper that takes four horses on to pull it. It had runners so when you tip it out, it runs on these runners and dumps the load out. This was for some construction company. Ogden. Ogden Construction Company. Part of the time I run a jackhammer to drill the holes to blast the rocks and that. The rest of the time I was driving this scraper with four horses on it.

Tina Spencer: Do you feel the Great Depression affected your attitudes and the way you live?

Jay Spencer: Well, it made me thankful for every little thing we had. Yes. Everything!

Tina Spencer: It taught you how to fix everything to.

Jay Spencer: We had to fix it or it wouldn't get fixed.

Tina Spencer: Do you think there might be another depression?

Jay Spencer: I hope not. That's how it affected me. There could be. But, I don't know how. People are millionaires now. I'm not. But I've done pretty well, didn't I, son?

Larry Spencer: You did really well.

Jay Spencer: (Tells about fixing a refrigerator)

Larry Spencer: What other kinds of jobs did you go on to help make money? Well, first of all, what kind of stuff did you grow? What kind of crops did you have?

Jay Spencer: Well, the one that caused the most working was the only cash crop that I can remember. Sugar beets. This was a sugar beet country. Dad used to raise 78 acres of sugar beets. You have to manure the ground. We used to go out and shovel it out with pitchforks into a wagon. We didn't have manure spreaders. We didn't have tractors. You shoveled it in, and you shoveled it out. You spread it with your fork, and you'd go up this, and back this. Up that, and back this, and up that, and back this until you get the ground covered. Now, they take a tractor with four or five plows on the back, and plowed it ten miles an hour. At that time, you would have one plow to lay the ground over and plow it. It took three horses. You'd make two rounds and then rest the horses for five minutes. Then you'd make two more rounds. That would only move you over about ten inches each round. Now, they do 20 acres in a day, easy. It's a different world.

Larry Spencer: What's a sugar beet?

Jay Spencer: They use it and take it to a sugar beet factory, and grind them up, and squeeze the juice out of them, and boil it down, and make sugar. The part that is ground up and left over after you make sugar was the syrup they used to mix with straw to feed to the cows. They didn't have enough hay, so they'd dump this sugar beet syrup on the straw so the cattle would eat that to save feed. Then they'd give them a little hay to go with it, you know. Then, the pulp that would come with it was the ground up sugar beet. I don't know how to compare it. Ground up turnips maybe is about what it looked like. That's what a lot of them fed their cattle to help fatten them up for market. People that was raising cattle.

Larry Spencer: What other jobs do you remember doing? Besides maybe the tunnel, you've said a little about it. Fishlake Road?

Jay Spencer: Yes, I was driving a scraper on the Fishlake Road, and the Zions tunnel down there, my first job, I was a water boy for the whole lower end below the tunnel. I'd take four big 2 1/2 gallon water bags and criss-cross them. They had ropes on around my neck. Then they was made out of canvas. Two on each hip, and I watered them, all the working men going down the hill, and at the little spring at the bottom of the canyon I'd fill my bags, and water them as I went back up. That was a day's work, and it was a day's work. Then after I got along so good doing that, at noontime, halfway down, I'd make the coffee for the workers that was sloping the banks and moving the rocks and doing all the hard work. I didn't know anything about making coffee, so I'd just take this big five gallon can, and build a fire under it, put five gallons of water in it, dump in a full pound of coffee. I had no idea. But, they bragged on that coffee. I was the best coffee maker in the state. (Laughs.) It was so funny. I didn't have the first idea how to make coffee. On a real good day they promoted me to a candy boy. I was supposed to drive what they called a candy wagon. It was a little old Chevrolet. We didn't have pickups like they do now, but they'd taken the back seat off, and sawed the frame off and built a flat thing on the back. That was the candy wagon. I drove that up and down the road while they was building the road and the tunnel. There was always a trail to drive up and back. Taking whatever supplies they needed up and down. Giant powder, chains, shovels, whatever they needed while I was hauling that up and down the hill. After I got along with that real good, then they promoted me to an air-compressor operator. I pumped air for seven jackhammers. The jackhammer is what drills the hole in the rock so they could put giant powder in there, and blow the rocks apart. My dad was a powder monkey they call them. They are the ones that drill the holes. They used to drill holes 20 feet down in the ground. Twenty feet deep with the air from this air compressor I'm telling you about. He was one of them driving it. When you'd drill a while, it'd chip the rocks all up in fine dust. Then, they pull a trigger and it blows the dust up out of the hole. Then you drill a while longer, and push a button and it blows the dust out of the hole. By the time they get down 20 feet and it's time to reload, they've got all the holes drilled they need to blow this big place apart. They'd put 15 sticks of dynamite in the bottom of that and blast it. That'd just swell a pothole in the bottom. Then they'd put four or five full cases of dynamite down in it. Then they wired them all together with electric wires. They had electric blasting caps. Then you'd get 300 or 400 yards away from it, and they had a battery that you'd run this plunger down. That would cause the spark to go through these wires and set them all off at once. That would just move the whole mountain. I was drilling for that. I mean, I was pumping the air to drill the holes. That was my last job down there.

Larry Spencer: So, did any of your brothers go with you? You said your dad was there, but it was just you and your dad mostly, huh?

Jay Spencer: It was just me and dad.

Larry Spencer: What did your brothers do for jobs?

Jay Spencer: Gosh, I don't know.

Larry Spencer: Are you the oldest?

Jay Spencer: Yes. Rosalie's older than I am, but she's a girl, of course.

Larry Spencer: So, you and your dad basically provided for the family.

Jay Spencer: That's right.

Tina Spencer: They were still in school weren't they?

Jay Spencer: Well, yes.

Tina Spencer: 'Cause what year did you say it was? 1928?

Jay Spencer: 1928.

Tina Spencer: So, you were only 18.

Jay Spencer: Yes.

Tina Spencer: So, if they were all younger, they were probably going to school.

Jay Spencer: Yes.

Tina Spencer: Anything else?

Jay Spencer: Lots more. Ask a few questions. I don't think of it fast enough. I used to could rattle it off.

Larry Spencer: Said you got married in 1929?

Jay Spencer: Yes.

Larry Spencer: Then you were still working with your dad building your home here for the summer?

Jay Spencer: Yes.

Larry Spencer: Then, when did you work on the Fishlake road to get money to go to school? Was that before or after that?

Jay Spencer: That was in 1936.

Larry Spencer: Oh gosh, that's way past when we're talking then, huh?

Jay Spencer: Yes.

Larry Spencer: You were rich by then! (Laughs.)

Jay Spencer: I did find that dollar that I dropped through the porch!

Tina Spencer: Now, when you lived in Nevada was way after that then, huh?

Jay Spencer: Yes, that was clear back 22 years later. I got to where I couldn't find a job around here to make money, so I moved to Sparks, Nevada.

Larry Spencer: That was the first place after you left here, huh?

Jay Spencer: Yes.

Larry Spencer: So, you'd farmed, basically, and done odd jobs up until then?

Jay Spencer: Right.

Larry Spencer: When did you go 60 miles an hour first?

Jay Spencer: Well, let's see . . . we spent about 10 years in Sparks, Nevada. I worked at a garage at night, and the railroad in the daytime.

Larry Spencer: How much were you making there? Do you remember?

Jay Spencer: Wasn't very much, but it was a lot better than we was making. I can't think of any figures to go by how much a check would be. We started in 1936 paying into Social Security. They would hold out so much of your check so we'd have it now. Now they're stealing it from us.

Larry Spencer: I think it's been stolen. Sixty miles an hour. When was that do you think?

Jay Spencer: Well, we was in Holster, California. I was working on a natural gas line for the PG&E. Pacific Gas & Electric Company. I learned to be a welder there. That's where I did my first welding. I was a welder helper for a long time, and then I got using the torch a little more and learning more about it. A guy helped teach me on it, but all that area in there was given the opportunity to use natural gas, but hell we had pipes this big around. Every fifth length of pipe, we'd have to put in what's called a wrinklebelly. It was a pipe that'd been compressed so it was wrinkly like so. Because they was all hooked solid and anytime metal is heated it expands, and when it cools it compresses again. Those wrinklebellies would absorb that expansion and contraction. Every fifth length we had to put one of those. It was just like the other pipe only it had those wrinklebellies in the middle of them. Clear around the pipe you know? There was one guy that was single, and he saved all his money. He bought a Model-A Ford. One of the first Model-A Fords that come out, built by the Ford motor company. It would do 60 miles an hour! It was unheard of. Everybody was aghast. Each one of that whole crew, there was about 30 of us in the crew that put those pipelines through there, paid this guy a dollar a piece to get to ride in his Model-A Ford up to 60 miles an hour. He'd get it up to 60 miles an hour, and the telephone poles looked like a picket fence. It seemed like, you know? It was awful fast compared to what you was used to riding. That was quite a thrill. We helped pay his car off that way! (Laughs.)

Tina Spencer: Did you ever go to bed hungry?

Jay Spencer: Many times. I've got up hungry too. (Laughs.)

Larry Spencer: What kind of things did you have to eat then? Did you have a lot of shipped-in stuff?

Jay Spencer: Well, mostly what you raise yourself. Apples. We always had bacon, ham, apples, potatoes, and lots of beans. Mother always made good bread. We didn't really get awful hungry. I mean we got by pretty well. I made one little machine and put it on the back of an old Star 4-cylinder car. I took the body off the back part, and built a little flat rack on it. Mounted a grain grounding machine on it, run a belt down through the floorboards, around the drive shaft, put a pulley on the drive shaft, so we'd drive to where we was going to chop grain, and back it up against the granary, jack up the right rear wheel. One wheel could go, and the other not. That's the way a car's built in the differential of the back end. You jack up the rear wheel, and then we had a tightener on the belt that would tighten the belt up around the driveline. It was open. It wasn't like these closed drive shafts. It would revolve. That would run the chopper. You'd have one guy dumping the grain in, and we made a square box of wood across the back with a slide in the top of one hole in this square hole. Then you'd hang one bag here, and one bag here, and as long as you were grinding, you'd have this slot pulled this way, filling this sack, and the other guy would be with a six gallon can carrying the grain out, and mixing it. One of oats, one of wheat, two of barley, whatever mixture the farmer wanted. We'd drive around chopping grain. When this sack got full, you'd push that thing over, and it would feed the next sack while you unhooked this bag, and took it in and dumped it in the bin and come back and hook it back on, and the other one would be full, and you'd shove the gadget back over to fill this sack, and you'd grab that one, and go up the steps and dump it in the bin. Do you know what we charged? Eight cents for 100 pounds. You'd just work your tail off. We chopped several ton that way. When we got done, we'd just loosen the belt, let that right rear wheel down, jump in the car, and drive to someone else's place.

Tina Spencer: Is that when you had your wood splitting machine that you're always talking about?

Jay Spencer: Well, you mean the wood saw? Well, that was built on a Model-T Ford. We run the shaft straight out the back to the saw, and made a table that would go criss-cross the back of the pick-up, not a pick-up really. It didn't have any walls on the sides or anything. It was just a flatbed. But, it would slide back and forth, and one guy up there would grab the end of the log as you went through sawing, then he'd throw the block over into the pile. You'd pull the table back, and move the log out another length, and go through; we'd have two guys hand it up to you. We could just saw like mad. It took two guys to keep up with that. To keep the wood on the table you know. That was done with a straight shaft to the saw. No belts.

Larry Spencer: Did you ever have anybody bet you they could out-saw you?

Jay Spencer: Never had anybody out saw us, but the next year after we built that, and went around to all these wood piles sawing them up, we'd saw them for six dollars a cord. That's a lot of wood. Six dollars was big pay! There was two handing up the wood, one working the table, one taking blocks off. Six dollars a cord.

Larry Spencer: How much is a cord?

Jay Spencer: It's a pile 4 feet wide, 4 feet high, and 8 feet long. We'd stack them. The next year, after we did that, and had so much fun, and we was making a little money, and nobody else was, there was 21 in these 3 towns, Redmond, Salina, and Aurora, 21 outfits. We could out-saw any of them. That's no kidding.

Tina Spencer: They saw it worked really well for you, so they wanted to do it too, huh?

Jay Spencer: Yes. They either didn't know how to sharpen their saws or something, but we could just saw circles around any of them. We got most of the work. What other machines did I make? They used to chop corn, and put it in silo, you know. You raise the corn. Then you chop it up and blow it in, and pack it tight, and it cures like tobacco shall we say? It does turn brown, and cures it. Well, I built the first ones for Orvil Andrews. They lived here in town, and had a big farm, a lot of cattle. This machine that I'm telling you about, they'd go out in the field, and this machine has nothing to do with out in the field, but they had to bind it. It'd bind it in bundles about that big around. That's heavy, because they are 8-10 feet tall you know. They are green. They'd pile it on wagons like you haul hay, and haul it into the pit. You always had a big deep pit to cure it in. To make this silage for cattle. I made this machine on the edge of this pit. With a car engine, we didn't have tractors then, they could bring that corn in on these wagons, and shove it in this machine a bundle at a time, and it'd chop it up in pieces, and blow it over in that pit. Just blow it, blow it. They had horses in there leading them back and forth tromping that to compress it while it was blowing it in there. I made the first one in this valley. For Orvil Andrews. He's the one that asked for it. I don't know why they come to me to build it, but they did.

Larry Spencer: How old were you then? Do you remember?

Jay Spencer: It was after I was married. I was 22-23

Larry Spencer: So, about 1930-32.

Jay Spencer: Along in that area. Yes. Then, I had an adventure with the power company. Telluride Power Company. Don Cooper used to work for them. See he was the electrician who handled a lot of this area around here. Repairs, and whatever. They hate to have to walk up and down these poles to do their work. He come to me, and wanted to know if I couldn't invent him some kind of machine to get up there to do the work on the power lines without having to climb up and down those poles. So, I did. I made him one that's a big ladder about 18 inches wide with rounds all the way up. I hinged it to lay out on the cab of the truck. They did start having pick-ups then. You turn a crank down here, like yo yo yo yo yo. The cable would pull that thing, and then you straighten it up like that, then you could lock it and he could just go up that ladder and do his work, and come back down, and uncrank it, and it would lay out over the pick- up. Next thing you know, they come out with all these hole digging outfits, and baskets to get up there and all these fancy things. But, I build the first one. I'm not kidding. I'm not bragging. We Spencer's we never brag.

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