Melvin was the
oldest child in his farming family and “quite large” in height as a boy (2 [refers to page number; see below for source]).
Though born in Manti, Utah, he and his family moved away when he was four, only
to return as Melvin entered his teens. They returned to Manti from a town
called Koosharem—over fifty miles to the south. While Melvin was charged with
herding the “cows and horses back to Manti on the … ordinary wagon roads” (1),
his father (Gardner), and mother (Sophie), along with two siblings, bustled
ahead in a horse-drawn wagon and a team of horses. What took the majority of
the family a single day to travel, took Melvin three. Among the mixed herd he
led north were “two of the milking cows and whenever it would come night, [he]
had to milk the cows on the road, [and] just put on the ground what [he] didn’t
want” (1). Both cows and horses grazed on the road side at night when Melvin
curled up and went “to sleep with a blanket over [him]” (1). By mid-afternoon
on the third day, the tired boy and animals were still some distance from
Manti; his “mother got worried about [him],” brought sandwiches, and, Melvin
recalled, “she walked along … for quite a little ways” (2). Later, she hurried on
ahead to care for the rest of the children and prepare supper. The weary
Melvin, who remembered that he “walked the soles off my shoes” on that trip,
arrived after dark with the herd (2). Though he does not remember why his dad
did not greet him like his mother, this was not the last time his father
volunteered the young Melvin for a herding position. |
| Melvin (in front of the doorway) and others on a sheep sheering day |
Before arriving at the age of sixteen, Melvin remembered, “My dad hired me out to go herd sheep one time” (11). Melvin and his father regularly sheered sheep for a resident in Ephraim—a town less than ten miles from Manti. After the sheering was done, the resident “fellow wanted me to go out on the lambing ground” (11). Melvin protested, “Dad, I can’t go out there, I don’t know anything about herding sheep” (11). Gardner dismissed his son’s inexperience: “All you have to do is drive them [and] go around them just like everybody else. He will be with you” (11).
Soon, with
Melvin on a horse, and the experienced sheep herder driving a wagon, they drove
the flock from Ephraim to the grazing/lambing ground, which was somewhere
between a three to four day ride. Each day started and end the same: drive the
herd three to five miles a day, camp, eat and sleep. Once they arrived at their
destination, which included a cabin, the man from Ephraim surprised Melvin with
these instructions: “I have got to go home now. You stay here and just go
around these sheep twice a day. You get up in the morning and go around them,
about five o’clock, or just as soon as it comes daylight. You set your clock to
get up. Go clear down around the sheep and herd them all back in the middle.
Then go back to camp and eat your [lunch]. Then start out again and go clear
around them” (11). With that, the sheep herder left. Melvin arose the next day
and sought to be obedient to the directions. He found that he traveled about
six to seven miles in the morning and then another six or seven in the
afternoon. This monotonous schedule continued for ten days.
For a week and a
half Melvin was all alone with his horse and the flock of sheep. He found
himself afraid and unable to sleep with the sound of howling coyotes. Toward
the end of the ten days foodstuff began to run short. He ate everything that
was in the cabin: a little bread, pieces of mutton, peas, and a few canned
goods—he was willing to kill one of the sheep to survive but he had no idea how
to gut and quarter a lamb. Finally, when he was down to “one can of tomatoes
left and nobody was there … he came in” (11).
The man laughed and blurted, “I didn’t mean to leave you that long. I
got on a big drunk, and I forgot to come” (12). Though the man offered Melvin
an evening meal, the boy just wanted to go him. The man counseled Melvin to
wait until morning, but the boy “was so homesick that [he] was just about
crazy” (12).
Astride a horse,
Melvin guided the animal in the direction he thought was south, toward Manti.
At one point he was so sleepy that he dismounted and “sat down by a tree and
went to sleep” (12). In the morning, Melvin was surprised to see that he was
not very far from the lambing ground. The sheep herder observed, “If you had
have let that horse go, he would have gone right home” (12). “But I wouldn’t,”
Melvin lamented. “I guided him and I just went around in a great big circle”
(12). After eating breakfast the herder again instructed, “Just let the horse
go and he will take you home” (12). Doing as instructed, Melvin soon arrived in
Ephraim at the man’s house—the wife “hooked another horse up to a buckboard and
took [Melvin] home” (12). Following this experience Melvin quipped, “That was
the experience I had herding sheep. That is all I wanted” (12).
(Source: M.G. Crawford Interview, MSS OH 138, L. Tom Perry Special Collections,
Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, paginated
typescript of oral interview.)
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