Born September 23, 1915 Mesquite, Nevada #8 of “The Original 13” Baptized: November 4, 1923 Married to Verde December 22, 1942 Death: October 22, 1997

In his own words, "I, Eldon Wesley Hughes, Eighth child in a family of thirteen, was born 23 September, 1915, in Mesquite, Clark County, Nevada. My father is Charles Arthur Hughes and my mother is Orilla Luella Leavitt. My mother said I was born in a one-room lumber house on the old Hughes homestead. I was blessed at home by my Father when I was eight days old - this was the custom in our family - and then later was blessed at church.

I had responsibilities at home, feeding chickens and pigs and gathering eggs. We were always expected to go to church. The only time we wore shoes was when we tromped hay and then there were always a lot of grassburs. We'd have to soak our shoes in the ditch so we could pull them on. Our whole family, with friends, would go in a wagon to Cabin or some place on the mountain for a vacation, for a couple of weeks in late summer. One of the highlights of the trip was the dutch-oven biscuits Dad would make and we'd eat them with fresh meat.

At home I had the pigs to tend, and had to water the cows and horses and help feed them. The later part of April when the alfalfa would get high enough we'd pull big burlap sacks full of the green alfalfa for the pigs, calves, and chickens. We never worried about raising rabbits. If we wanted rabbit meat we't take a gun and slip out along the fence lines of the field and along the river and soon get all we could use.

In the early spring with the first couple of cuttings of hay cut and dried and stacked, we'd take a quilt and sleep on the hay stack. It was cool and I always liked the smell of new hay. The fresh stacked hay was loosely packed so by morning we'd be sunk down into a bumpy bed.

In the spring when the grain was ready to shock it would make our arms sore and itchy and we would be hot and sweaty with chaff down our backs as we picked the bundles up in our arms to stand them in shocks. The only good thig we had to look forward to was to run and dive into the "big ditch." We swam naked at "Charlo Hole" or the sandgate, it's one of the happiest memories of my childhood.

Alvin Hughes baptized Nina Hughes and me in a big hole in the ditch by Esmond's place. The water was out of the ditch and that was the only place we could find. I was confirmed by my uncle, Walter Warren Hughes. It was a cold day, being 4 November 1923.

When I was eight years old I went with my Dad through Key West to Nichol Creek to get pine logs for derrick poles. This trip seemed to me to be a very exciting, dangerous trip. We traveled with many of our good friends. We went out on just the running-gear of the wagon and then with big chains we tied the three or four logs onto the front wheel assembly so they acted as a reach, on back we chained the reach up to the logs so the weight would be even and not so much overhang. We had to jump the logs off the high cliffs to get them down to the wagons. I enjoyed going on this trip.

After we got our derrick we made big stacks of loose hay back of the house. I was small but I handled the horse that pulled the fork up. It was hard work because you had to back the horse and drag the single tree back. It made me feel like I was dragging the horse back myself. Later we used a little Case tractor to pull the fork up.

Another milestone was when they let me ride one of the saddle horses to the mountain and carry a 22 rifle to shoot rabbits. I was really grown when I could leave the wagons.

One day I was riding our pony down town. I was standing along the side of the street talking to some kids. The pony nuzzled up to me and I tried to push him away and he took a step right onto my big toe. When I jerked the bridle he just slid off and it took the toenail off. I have suffered from that all my life.

As a young man I grew up with the idea of working with a hoe, shovel and axe. The tools were just more or less accepted tools of the trade in farming, and many, many hours were spent by each of us in the family using them. My earliest recollection as far as the work was concerned was hoeing in the garden, hoeing the summer crop, trying to clean out the weeds so that the crops would grow. I remember as a small boy when it would come summer, after the grain was harvested in the fields and they had to be plowed and planted, it was we younger children who had the responsibility to follow behind the plow and drop the corn and the pumpkin seeds in the the furrows. I remember we would miss about three rows and about every fourth row we would follow behind the plow and drop the seeds. Sometimes this was a continuous process when we had three or four teams in the field plowing, one following right behind the other; but this was the way plowing was done. Then we'd go in with a light spike tooth harrow and harrow the ground over and smooth it up so when the crop came up it would have a smooth surface and then when the plants grew up and got large enough and was ready for the first watering, we'd take the horse and the cultivator. It became one of my jobs to ride the horse pulling the cultivator to furrow out the summer crop and put the water furrows between the two rows of plants. Quite a bit of the time after each irrigation we'd go in with a little old spread cultivator with a single horse on it. It would have one shovel along with the cutters that would cut the weeds and that's the way we'd cultivate. We'd do this with the corn until it got up almost to start tasseling out. Also with the pumpkins until they started to run so much we couldn't get the horse and the cultivator between them without disturbing the plant in it's growth.

In the fall of the year when we were ready to harvest the summer crop, we'd take a wagon and go down through the cornpatch and pull the ears of corn and throw them into the wagon box and the same with the pumpkins. We'd just drive down and pick the pumpkins and take them in our arms and load them into the wagon, take them to the yard and unload them into big piles to have to feed the livestock, especially the pigs, during the winter. We alos grew a lot of corn to eat. The main squash we grew that everybody liked so well to eat at home for the meals was called Tom Abbott squash. It was a big base and sometimes it would get over a foot on the base and then it would have a long crooked neck. Mother always cooked it real delicious and good and I enjoyed eating it.

When the corn was harvested, we'd stack it up in a special place or just put it in a box and we'd always have the corn husking bees. Sometimes we'd have the groups in Mutual, young groups and old groups, that would come and we'd have our husking bees. We'd husk the corn and throw the husks in one place and put the corn in another. The corn we would use to feed the pigs and some to the chickens and of course we always got our share because it was the type of corn that was very delicious for parching. We always had this corn that we could parch and lots of it and we'd have it for the whole year. It was like having all the candy we could eat, it was even better than candy sometimes. We'd parch a big batch of corn and we always had a lot of raisins that we had dried from our own vineyard and we'd take these raisins and mix with the corn and it would make a very delicious treat. The corn shucks would be piled up and used for different things. I remember we used to sleep on corn husk ticks on our beds for a mattress. A lot of the husks were used for bedding for the animals, a place where the calves and pigs could be out of the wet and mud, and use it as a litter bedding right around the corrals. The straw stack would come up and out over the edge of the pig pen and they could get out of the weather there.

I remember at home when we used to go down in the "jungle" as we called it. It was a row of currant bushes and two or three big fig trees. Along by the currant bushes we had some kind of an English artichoke. It was a kind of root product that grew under the ground. We used to dig these up if we needed something or just wanted something to much on. We'd go down and dig one or two of these and lots of times we wouldn't even wait to clean the dirt off. We'd just kind of rub the dirt off and go muching on them and they were really very delicious for a root. I guess that is why the pioneers lived on roots a lot because some of them are very delicious to use.

As far as tourists are concerned, I guess trying to sell to and waiting on tourists came about a long time ago in the valley. I remember as a small boy we had our field up along what is known as the "Town Lane". The main highway came down along there and at the edge of the fields were rows of big cottonwood trees. Because the tourists would pass along the lane, we'd set up a little stand and sell figs, pomegranites, grapes, melons, and about anthing we had that we could sell. We became quite the merchants. The kids would get setup along that shady lane and would stay there all day long just to sell the goods they had to the people that were coming through that would stop to buy them. Of course as far as the melons were concerned it was very handy because we had them right there in the field. A lot of times we'd keep only one or two melons there by the stand but we'd take orders on the size of melon they wanted, then we'd run out in the patch and get it fresh to sell to them. These were the first fresh fruit markets in the whole valley. It was interesting meeting the people and how they were able to meet you, and the things you would learn. I guess that is the way we learn, by these experiences that we have all the time.

I remember, even as a young boy, we had the responsibility in the fall when we were harvesting our crops, of picking the pomegranites. Nearly always we would get a whole wagon load. We would use buckets to pick them in. After they were picked we would sort them. The nice solid ones we'd pack in the wagon and then we would travel to Enterprise, Utah to trade them for potatoes, cabbage, carrots and other things we didn't raise. We'd visit with my aunt's family, the Trumans, while we were there. The pomegranites that weren't very big or were cracked are the ones we would put away to dry or harden the shell, which would help to keep them through the winter. We had wooden trays that we used to dry the grapes for raisins, and since the grapes were all over with, we would use these trays to dry the pomegranites. We would store them in the attic of the house or wherever we had a dry place that would keep them out of the weather and keep them away from the rats and the varmints and even the kids. Sometimes we would be able to keep the pomegranites all through the winter and in the spring when we'd go the break one, it would pop when we'd crak it open because the shell was so hard, but the seeds would be nice and soft and moist. They were really sweet and good and tasted so delicous to us in the late winter.

One of the good things of my life was working with my father andy my brothers in the hay fields. It was really something to go into the hay field with all these brothers of mine. After the hay had been mowed and raked and partially dried, or sometimes right behind the rake we would pile it up. I remember that Dad used to be very particular in how his hay fields looked. If you happened to get a little sleepy, as you easily could on the horse drawn mower creeping along at a slow pace, and if you dozed and the horse moved out of position or would move into the hay or something, and you would leave a little bit of hay, a few strands standing, it used to irritate him quite a bit because when he went in to cut hay he wanted the hay cut. He wanted a clean field when it was all over. It was the same with piling. He showed us exactly how it was to be piled so that with one jab of the pitchfork you would lift the cock up and put it onto the wagon, with just no cleaning up. There was really an art to it, and it saved a lot of time. Many times as a family we have been in the hay fields early in the morning with three or four wagons at a time to load hay. Of course when I was younger, it was always my responsibility to work as a hay tromper, to get up on the wagon and as they would throw a cock of hay up on the wagon, it was my job to tromp it down and make it so they could get a lot of hay loaded. I'll never forget the experience of driving along on a load of hay and if it happened to be stacked a little heavy on one side and you happened to hit a chuck hole or something, the wagon would tip so the hay would slip off the wagon and you sitting on top of it. I can just feel how you would go way out in the air as the hay would fall and then you'd come down and land and here would come the hay right down on top of you. I've had to really be on my toes and scoot just to keep from being buried in hay when it all came off the wagon. When I was tromping and they had finished loading the wagon they would just hand the lines to me and it was my job to drive the team from the top of the load back to the yard to unload and the same for each wagon and the kids that were tromping.

At first we just had to throw the hay off the wagon with pitch forks and there would be two of us on the wagon and two on the stack to place the hay as fast as the others could throw it up. Then after that trip to the mountain to get the big pine poles we made some derricks. These derricks had a big metal fork attached to cables that run through pulleys. The horse would pull the fork loaded with hay up where it would swing free back and forth, and when it got right where they wanted the hay they would holler "trip". The man on the wagon would jerk on the rope he had been holding and it would dump the hay. Then we'd have the pull the fork and the single tree and the rope back down on the wagon. Sometimes we'd have to make eight or ten trips with the big fork to unload the wagon, but this was a lot better than having to throw it off with the pitch fork like we did

before.We could really stack up some big stacks. I remember we didn't have ladders tall enough to reach the top of the stacks and a lot of times when I was a little older and was working up on the stack helping to place the hay and we were just topping off the stack, it would be so high that we had to get on the fork and they would let us down to the

gorund. We had a hay knife, something similiar to a scythe that had a big zig-zag blade on it that was sharp. In the winter when we got ready to start feeding the hay off the stack, instead of uncovering the whole stack, we'd just take this hay knife and start a section, using it like a saw to cut the hay. When we had used the hay almost to the ground we'd start another section, almost like cutting slices of bread off a loaf. There were a lot of tricks that helped us to do the work that had to be done."

Verlee
Arthur Lavell
Dixie Gae
James Wesley
Thomas Eldon
Orilla Ann
Susan Amelia
Hali Ruth
Verde Marie
David Patton
Gregory Keith
Dorothy Jean