BICYCLE RIDES - Thomas M. Rees

BICYCLE RIDES - Thomas M. Rees

            In 1898 I started out on a used bicycle very much used and no money in my pocket to make a trip from Salt Lake to Wayne County, there to Beaver and back to Salt Lake.  There were no roads then, especially for bicycles.  I hope to write what I remember of that trip. 

            The bicycle ride I wish to tell something about occurred two years later in 1900.  I had just graduated from the normal school to teach, and I set out to find a school and through necessity perhaps chose the bicycle as the way to get about.  Sometime I hope to write some of the details about this trip too, but for now I shall tell only some of the things that connected my life with my future wife. 

            By a certain Saturday night late in August or early in September, I stayed over night at Berry's Hotel in Kanarraville some fifteen miles or so south of Cedar City.  The next day was fast day, and the young ladies, having been out the night before, didn't get up very early so I started out for St. George without breakfast.  The first three or four miles out from Kanarraville was heavy sand.  It was impossible to ride a wheel in it and extremely difficult to walk in it.  It was quite a day's work in itself.  The road was down hill quite a grade but up and down rather than uniform slope.  I could ride more easily, but the roads were not smooth as roads now are - boulders, patches of sand, gravel, or dust, and the variety further accentuated by hollows, washes, ridges, and perhaps cross ruts made by the wagon wheels in turning out to pass other wagons.  The Black Ridge was especially difficult being so winding, the road so narrow and filled with boulders not yet taken out, just some of what used to be.  The ridge is of black lava (basalt) formation.  Below the ridge was sand, gravel, wash, boulders, and more of the same things by way of repeating.  Bellview was a beautiful little fruit oasis with a few homes and a camp stable where teams were cared for over night.  Grapes and peaches were the fruit in most abundance.

            Then over this same kind of roads and the sand a streak half to three fourth mile wide of sand so deep that vehicles couldn't go over it so a toll road was built and kept up by a family living on the east edge of the sand who collected toll to pay them for keeping up the road.  They hauled some clay, some rock gravel, but mostly vegetation with which they attempted to surface the sand so wagons, etc., could get over.  The Yuce or Yuca plant was prominent among the vegetation.

            Another mile or so further south was the little town of Leeds, about all that was left of the Silver Reef Mining Camp.  Yet it was built there before silver ore was found at the reef and remained after the boom days of the Reef were over.  Just two or three houses in the Reef a mile and a half N.W. were inhabited.  Most of them had been removed.  The old dance hall was still there with the floor worn away all around the knots which were left sticking up and became dangerous when the floor was slickened up for a dance by whittling tallow candles on it.

            I was tired when I arrived at Leeds but hunted up the school board and had a talk with them before going on to St. George.  The seat of my trousers had worn so I bought a pair of new overalls which I was wearing at the time.  I must have looked rather unbecoming a school teacher, not groomed etc.  When the children heard I was a teacher after the school, they crowded round a little, and Bess was in one of the groups.  She described me as she saw me and as some others described me, and they were impressed with my appearance.  The bell was ringing calling people to church, and the Bishop, being one of the school trustees, had to take charge of the services so I was to talk matters over with them in a day or two on my way back from St. George.

            I was born in St. George, and mother's sister and her family still lived there so I anticipated visiting a few days with them.  It was about eleven or twelve years since I was last in St. George.  On the way from Leeds I passed through Harrisburg, and while crossing the Cottonwood Bench, a thunder shower came up that drenched me to the skin, and it was in that condition I pulled into St. George about the time church was out.  Aunt Mary had me put on some of Uncle Oscar's clothes while mine dried.  He weighed about 190 pounds and I about 140 pounds or less, so imagine how they fit.  However I had a nice visit for a day or two before starting on the return trip for Salt Lake.

            I called at Leeds.  We fixed up a contract, whether in writing or a verbal agreement, I have forgotten.  Most likely there was no writing.  The school was to run five months at fifty dollars per month.  I wonder what teachers would think of that for a starting salary now-a-days or any other workman for that matter.  My future wife saw me again, and where she knew I was to be her teacher she resolved to make me like her.  Of course I was not aware of anything of this nature.  Well, I returned to Salt Lake by wheel and went by train to Lund (30+ miles out from Cedar City) and made my way thence to Leeds early in October when I started school.  I had my ups and downs, my difficulties and pleasant days.  On the whole I enjoyed myself immensely.  I joined the young folks in their serenading which was often and very enjoyable and in these dances and parties we had quite a few of them.  Once we went to Toquerville--once the crowd went to Washington on Friday night, and I had a lot of fun next day teasing the young ladies who had been up all night to the dance.  Washington was about 12 miles away, and the roads were none too good, and traveling with horses and wagon was slow, so while the dance let out any time after two or three a.m., it was a three hour drive or more to get home.  Our fun led to water fights and other things and became one of those memorable days in young people's lives.

            All this time Bess and I were becoming more attracted to each other.  It must not be too quickly nor too open--she was my student.  She was also too young to go out with the older people.  I found (or made) occasions to call at her home and spend some time, and I am afraid I kept her in after school a few times on purpose to have occasion to be with her.  She talked and laughed a lot and said "oh shucks" as nobody else ever did.  While she really liked to be with me, she didn't always think I should have kept her in.

            During those five months our friendship grew into love.  I gave her extra work to keep her out of mischief as the regular school work was so easy for her.  She studied American History and Algebra.  She did so well so independently that it was a pleasure to teach her added to the pleasure of being with her.

            As a result of that bicycle ride many and unexpected consequences have followed.  I found many friends.  Two families in Leeds, Olsons and Nicholls, were friends of my father and mother.  When father worked at the Babylon Mill 16 years or so before, these people were my friends old and young alike ever afterwards.  The older ones as long as they lived, and the younger ones are growing old now for it is 46 years next October since I went to Leeds to teach my first school.  My money compensation was very little, but money then was worth several times what it is now, perhaps at least four or five times as much measured in terms of what it would buy and what could be done with it.  My board and room cost me $12 per month.  It would cost $40 to $50 now, perhaps more.  My most important compensation I received was my wife, one of God's noblest daughters and one of the state's most remarkable women.

            When I brought her to Salt Lake, other members of the family followed until at times they all are living here or have lived here.  Then when Bess became a teacher, she took her sister Jenny to Enoch with her.  Jenny died that winter.  When Bess went home to teach and again to Rockville, she took Georgiana (her sister) with her to tend the babies.  There Georgiana met her future husband whom she married later and raised a very large family.  Also when I taught in Montpelier, Idaho, Georgiana went with us and attended high school there.  When we both taught in Randolph, her sister, Valla, came and lived with us one year or a large part of it.  Charles and Truman came up and helped me build my house.  They have for years now made their living in the building "game" business.  Charles met my sister, Ellen, and they have raised a large family of fine children, but Charles has not turned out so well due to drink and tobacco.  Because his father became mean due to drink, he had to stay home to protect his mother, and in hanging around Leeds, he picked up with cigarettes and wine which have got the best of him and changed a fine, intelligent, likable fellow into one far different.  Another bad thing was the taking up with Christian Science by Truman, Charles, Ellen, Virginia and Jack.  It is serious even though silly on their part.  Then Ross met his wife in Rockville to Salt Lake and So. California.  Ross didn't do very well in his marriage.  Wayne came up here and got married while Victor took up with a girl from Dixie, in fact two of them, and came up here when he married the last one.  Then my wife and I taught school in Clifton, Idaho.  Two of our school girls got acquainted with some more distant relatives whom they married, and moved to Dixie (Leeds and Hurricane).  One of these has since moved north to Lewiston not far south of Clifton, her old home. (Sadie in Clifton now, Winnona in Hurricane).  All this, not counting our family and what they have done so far and much more can be traced in some way to that bicycle ride and resulted because of it.  There are other incidents and consequences but not connected with my wife and my associations in Leeds.

            I have often marveled at so many things of more or less serious concern all coming because I rode to Dixie on a wheel in 1900.  All of my wife's parents' large family moved to Salt Lake and for a time or permanently made their homes here.  Some of them have moved elsewhere, and some returned here for a time at least.  Two of her sisters and two of her brothers married people in Rockville.  They became acquainted with directly or indirectly because my wife went there to teach school, and two Clifton, Idaho sisters married two of my wife's relatives from Dixie because we taught school in Clifton together two years and I three years longer.  My wife's brother married my youngest sister.  They have a large family of 10 children but are separated.  All this and more happened to her family and relatives and mine.

            Besides this, I was part of the cause at least of inspiring other Leeds young people to go away to school mostly to Cedar City to the Branch Normal School, and there they formed associations that affected their lives.  Bess formed many friendships in Cedar City, and some of these and I became friends because of it, and thus our circle of friends and acquaintances were widened.  Our daughter, Maevonne, married the son of one of the girls who went to school with Bess in Cedar, and her two brothers thought a lot of Bess and tried to keep company with her.

            I could go on with results of this bicycle ride and perhaps shall someday do so.  Here I shall mention my very close friendships with the Nicholls and Olsen families who years earlier were friends of my parents when they all worked at the Babylon Mill on the Virgin.  This mill concentrated Silver Reef ore.  We became very friendly while I was in Leeds and the Olsen girls, Mame "Lyle" and Maggie and I became very close friends.  I flatter myself that either one of them would have married me if I had so chosen.  I won't deny that I liked them quite well, and I was so well treated by their parents.  They took me on several trips to St. George in the "white top" when they were going over and to Cedar and from Cedar to Leeds.  Of course during most of the year I was heart free to choose whom I would.

            Other girls in Leeds were very friendly and kind to me, and I formed acquaintances in St. George through my trips over there and my cousins who lived there.  I quite liked a few of the girls I met there too.  I have left out the boys, but must state that I made many friends among the boys of Leeds not counting those I had in school, and practically all of them were my friends and have continued to be.  Among the "old folks" married people I was treated wonderfully well, and we were very friendly.  I often called on them and chatted a short time as I found myself with a little time on my hands.  In fact I was taken into the town  almost as a member of the town as one big family.  My stay there was about the most pleasant of my life, a winter fondly to be remembered and one that caused longings to return.  I was always treated well whenever I returned and am sorry it hasn't been more often.

            Probably I most admired the little woman who was my wife's mother.  She was mother of a very large family of fine looking children and under very great difficulties reared all those children with unfavorable environment and influences to battle with.  She was a very beautiful woman and is still living there alone except for two grandchildren.  I am longing to go to see her and have tried to get to go for a year or more.  I almost fell in love with her--of course not in any serious way, but I thought so much of her.  I hope I can go down to Dixie before Matt goes away to school.

            I should like to say things about many of the people of Leeds as I knew them.  I wish I had the gift of a writer and could set them down in a book true to character so I could visit with them now and again.  I must mention how much I thought of Lou Harris.  I consider him one of the sweet and fine young men of my life's acquaintance, and I met two others like him as employees in the legislature.  My memory is crowded with the people young and old, single, married, and middle-ages, and the experiences of those five short months I spent in Leeds.  Some day Maybe I can write some details of the people of Leeds.

            As the town--one street--doesn't run north and south or east and west but somewhere in between, I never felt just right all the time I was there.  I wasn't square with the world.  But the feeling of Dixie towns was then unlike any others I have ever known.  The setting in the midst of sandstone cliffs with the trees and vegetation, the old adobe houses and others, of course, and the cottonwood trees--not very good specimens of trees however, all together produced an atmosphere never to be forgotten and unique in my experiences.

            The greeting of the people as I met them, the friendliness, and well, just the humaness of them.  So many of them have gone during these forty-seven years.  Some moved away, and others whose lives were knit into the history of the little town have passed on and live only in memory.