The General in the Orchard: Samuel E. Hartzell

I know I promised that I would be posting soon about George Washington.  Well, that story is going to be a little work to condense and I will get to it eventually.  In the meantime, I stumbled across another account that might surprise you.  With another famous General.

Robert E. Lee.

The Heagy/Hartzell/Giffin side of the family centers in Adams (formerly York) county Pennsylvania.
County seat:  Gettysburg.  (In Cumberland township--the blue section on the following map.)

Last year I found a lovely 1858 map of Adams County Pennsylvania that labeled the actual homes of landowner ancestors Samuel Hartzell and David Heagy Sr. (Samuel Hartzell and David Heagy Sr. are the fathers of Ann Hartzell and David A. Heagy (Jr.) who married before the war began.  David and Ann Hartzell Heagy are the great-grandparents of my grandpa, Ebert Heagy.) They are located  northwest and north of town as "S. Hartzell" and "D. Hagey."   Well, of course I immediately checked the Gettysburg National Park maps to see how their home locations compared with the battlefield.  They don't really match up; the battle being more southwest of town.  So, I didn't think much more about it and moved on to other projects.

However, just recently while researching someone else, I did come across some amazing info on Samuel Hartzell and the two Heagy Davids, records that shed a pretty bright light on this infamous place and time in history and how our family was affected.  (The Heagy account will be covered in a companion article someday soon.)

Note:  I'm tickled that this is also my second story for Storyapples that takes place in an apple orchard!

 This picture shows a replanted apple orchard in 2010 that, according to the blog GettysburgDaily.com,  "in July of 1863 was owned by a farmer named Samuel Hartzell."  If their claim is true, the orchard did not immediately border Samuel's home (at least, if he stayed in the same home as in 1858).  Instead, this orchard is just south of the Chambersburg Pike, one of the main roads into Gettysburg.  (on the map, it's to the west of town, just under the dotted line railroad.  The orchard would have lain somewhere just south of the Thompson homes, if I'm understanding the story correctly). 

This picture, also from GettysburgDaily.com, was taken July 6th--one of the days of the Battle of Gettysburg--so the apple crop would have looked about like this (but the trees were probably more mature).

 So, what's so interesting about this particular orchard, owned by Samuel Hartzell (age about 49) in 1863?  Well, if you were to visit this orchard today (and man, do I wish I could go someday), this is what you would see.

Disclaimer:  The GettysburgDaily.com article says that this quote by Robert E. Lee may be bogus, but historians are pretty sure that the location is right, anyway.  Also, remember, this is and was an apple orchard, not the famous "Peach Orchard" battle site.  There were several orchards in the area.

The brick building in the background is the seminary building belonging to "Seminary Ridge."  This picture is facing south.

This is the Thompson house just north and of and across the road from the orchard.  (The tree in the foreground is part of the orchard).  This picture was taken sometime around the battle, July 1863, by famous Civil War photographer Matthew Brady.  This house is still standing and serves as a museum/bed and breakfast as "Lee's Headquarters" since Lee purportedly slept and ate here.  Notice those knocked down fences?  We're getting to that.

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought the first few days of July 1863.  About 165,000 soldiers had converged around this little town, with about 50,000 casualties, the highest number of casualties for a single battle in the war.  (Luckily for my family, there was only a single civilian casualty).  It was also a major turning point for the Union.  The war moved on, and the poor townsfolk were left with the destruction, a really big cemetery, and a visit from Pres. Lincoln.  Recovery must have been a huge endeavor.  No FEMA to call in 1863!

Or was there?


Not in 1863.  And definitely not from the extremely busy Federal Government.  But it turns out, in1868,(three years after the war was over and five years after the Battle of Gettysburg) the great State of Pennsylvania began to pass a series of acts designed to recompense civilians who sustained damages to property and goods during the war.  In other words, some help came in the form of dollar signs, even if it was slightly delayed.

Nothing improves people's memory like a promise of some cold hard cash!  Claimants could come to court, tell a bit of their story, leave an inventory of damages and their best estimate of how much they thought they should get.  They also brought witnesses to sign affadavits, etc.  Lucky for us, Ancestry.com has digitized these court records and we can find out what happened to Samuel Hartzell during the Battle of Gettysburg.

The petition of Samuel Hartzell, declares that he was a resident of Cumberland Township (includes Gettysburg) in 1863 and that "he sustained loss and damage in his property...the amount of damage sustained...which he prays may be allowed to him as follows, viz:"  then Samuel gives his statement.

"That the Rebel Army occupied my farm for two or three days, that during that time they took from me the following property, viz:
One wagon & bed worth $70

A Skep of Bees

13 Sheep " 45.50
3 Heiffers " 54
1 Scap of Bees " 10 [a "skep" of bees is a traditional straw beehive, as pictured.]
3 Hogs " 24
2 Scythes & Cradles " 8
3 Tern(?) of Hay " 30
4 Sett Horse Gears " 30
Corn & Oats in Barn " 14
829 Rails " 66.32
2 Colts 16 months old " 100
35 Acres grass destroyed " 150
2 Shovels and Mattock " 3.24

Mattock

also his meadows and fields were damaged to the amount of $25.00
 
Samuel was awarded $605.10, not quite the full $630 because the court ruled "The damage to meadows and fields as claimed ...is disallowed."

I wish that Samuel would have told a little more of what he was doing on those days, but he did have two witnesses give depositions to support his claim, and from there the picture becomes a little livelier.  One witness was next door neighbor David Schriver.  Mr. Schriver is on our map, so I am sure that Samuel was in fact living in the same house in 1863 as in 1858.  Mr. Schriver stated to the court that: "he lives on the adjoining farm to Samuel Hartzell, that about the beginning of July part of the rebel Army occupied the farm of Samuel Hartzell.  I was acquainted with the property mentioned in the appraisement and know that it was on the farm before the Rebels came and that it was not there after they left.  I saw the Rebels on his farm and know that his Rails were destroyed & the grass of his meadows destroyed.  I saw them burn the Rails.  I put out the fire near the Barn, and that the appraisement made of the property destroyed & taken is not too much."
22 Oct 1868
David Schriver

I thought the "is not too much" was kind of a thoughtful phrase.  I also wondered about the money for the fences.  Did the fence belong solely to Samuel?  Or would he have split the cost with his neighbors?  Apparently not.  I would assume that the rails were burned for firewood, but the fact that the neighbor had to put out a fire near the barn makes me wonder if the soldiers were just being destructive.  Did you notice those rails removed and scattered on the ground in the picture of the stone house?  Those would have been across the road from his orchard, but I'm assuming the soldiers did the same thing to his property.  Here is another picture by Matthew Brady of that same property.  This time, taken from deeper inside Samuel's orchard.  Notice, these were probably some of the missing rails that he counted in his inventory.  I think it's interesting that the soldiers left the posts.  They must have been buried well.

Another view of the Thompson house, taken from Samuel Hartzell's orchard (Lee's headquarters).

This picture, also by Matthew Brady, is one of the most famous shots of the Gettysburg aftermath--I actually have seen this one before, probably in textbooks or on Ken Burns' The Civil War.  The subjects are three Rebel prisoners.  Notice what the ramparts they are sitting on are made of?  Logs and fence rails!  Guess where this picture is taken.  Yup.  Right outside of Grandpa Hartzell's orchard, overlooking Seminary Ridge.

According to the list of damages, the fence rails weren't worth all that much, but for some reason they seem like the heart of this story.  Think of all that work!  As a farmer's daughter, I can picture the farmer going out to assess the damage after a bad hailstorm, estimating acres destroyed and dollars lost.  Samuel did just that.  His friend William Allison also swore before the court "That [Samuel] & John Hamilton shortly after the battle examined the farm & made an appraisement of the Damages.  That they found the Rails destroyed & 35 acres of grass destroyed and the fields injured as above mentioned".  I imagine Samuel walking his fenceline with his friend and counting the missing rails, one by one.

Portrait of Samuel and either his second wife Eliza or his 3rd wife Elizabeth.

All things considered, the battle could have been much worse for him.  His family was safe.  His house was still standing (and his neighbor saved his barn from burning, although it sounds like there wasn't much left to put in it!).  His son-in-law David Heagy was soldiering elsewhere and probably saw less actual warfare than Samuel did.  His eldest daughter Ann, although extremely pregnant during the battle with Samuel's first grandson and living without her husband but with one small daughter, was able to take refuge with friends of the family and safely deliver my great-great grandfather a couple of weeks later.

Samuel did lose a son, Elias Hartzell, age 23, in 1865, nearly two years after the Battle of Gettysburg, but I haven't yet researched if Elias was a casualty of war.
 
I also double checked my battle info on Wikipedia and found this battle map that explains why even though most of the well-known sites of the Gettysburg battle were south of town, as is the State Park, in real life, the enemy soldiers completely surrounded the Hartzell and Heagy properties northwest of town (as well as the apple orchard), and that there was actual fighting in that area the first day of the battle.  That surprised me.  I guess I always pictured the Southern forces attacking from, I don't know, the South?  Rebels shown here in red, Union in blue.

I noticed that there was no mention of destruction to the apple trees on Samuel's claim, and the trees in the photographs looked fine.  It's too bad--I was hoping someone down South owed me a pie.

If you would like to read the two articles about Lee's headquarters by GettysburgDaily.com, they are found here.
part one
part two

It All Adds Up: Harry Raymond Haynes

Looking over some family pictures with Happy Jack Haynes last week, I heard a new story/character trait about his dad, Harry Raymond (Roy) Haynes.  Jack said that his dad loved math and was talented at figuring in his head.  (I wonder if he would have been a math major if he had gone to college?  Maybe not, maybe business...  Jack has also said that Harry loved selling.)  Anyway, every time Harry went to the grocery store he liked to keep an exact running total in his head of everything they were buying.  This blows my mind!  It was a little game of his to see if he had made an accurate count when the clerk rang everything up.  I wonder how he would do with my full cart of groceries, including price-matched items at WalMart?  Jack said that one time Harry took my Dad, Scott, shopping with him when Scott was a schoolboy.  Harry challenged Scott to keep track of the total.  He did it!  (Maybe there weren't many things in the cart, Dad?...just kidding.)  Perhaps we don't push our own children enough with real life math skills.

Jack also said (years ago on a video) that Harry would always carry around a little "indelible pencil".  I imagine this was his math accessory.

They that be with Us are More...

They that be with Us are More...

In our old house we had a vivid red hallway that I filled up with black and white portraits.  Beneath the picture frames, in black script lettering, read the words "Fear not; for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. 2 Kings 6:16"  If you don't remember that particular Bible story, it was when Elisha the prophet had irritated the king of Syria by warning the king of Israel about Syria's battle tactics.  The Syrian king was angry and sent a host of soldiers to encompass Elisha's city, intending to hunt him down and kill him.  In the morning, when Elisha's servant went out early, he saw the terrible army and cried, "Alas, my master! how shall we do?"

Elisha reassured him.  "Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them."  Then Elisha prayed for the Lord to open his servant's eyes, and the young man saw the reality of the situation.

The two men of God were not alone on their mountain.

"Behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."  He was not afraid because he knew that he was watched over and loved by those on the other side of the veil.  And because there were more of them than of the adversary.

Bess Kale

I chose that quote because the portraits on that very red wall were some of our ancestors, including my mom and dad's newspaper wedding announcement (back when my Dad had a seventies 'stache and some great sideburns), a cute picture of my father-in-law as a child hiding inside his dad's mailbag, and a shy profile of my great-grandma Bess, who, according to my Dad's cousin Sheila, was a crier just like me.  Of course, Bess lost her teenage twin sister to leukemia, two babies to disease, and a toddler in a horrible accident, so I don't know what my excuse is.

I also had a no-nonsense picture of Mark's namesake Grandpa Newel Day, but I later learned that I had used the "wrong" one.  More on that in a minute.

The whole idea for putting the portraits on the wall with that scripture was to remind our family that there are people cheering for them, both here and on the other side.  Turns out I was one step ahead of the national media.  Recently (February?) USA Today published a study that proved that the number one influence for successful, resilient teenagers was not the number of books in the home, or the education level of the parents.  Surprisingly, the magic ingredient was that the teens had a strong sense of family identity and heritage.  If they knew who they were, and that their family could "do hard things" and still make it through, they tended to thrive even in difficult circumstances.  In this scary-wicked world, I want my kids to know what is expected of them, but also that they are loved and that they can make it, too.

It's not only teenagers that can gain this kind of strength from those that have gone before... I noticed that with our experiences over the past year with having a high-risk heart baby, and having him go through some life threatening (and life giving) surgeries, I've been thinking/reading/understanding more about death and such serious topics than I usually would.  Like thinking about how everyday it used to be for women to die in childbirth or babies to not live to their first birthday.  How did my Grandmothers do it?--those poor women.  Many of these thoughts culminated while I taught a class for the ladies at church the Sunday before Luke's scary surgery.  It was Mother's day, and I should have been an emotional worried mess, but instead, teaching about some of this deep stuff calmed me and helped me focus on reality.  The lesson was about eternal family relationships, of all things.  I told the ladies about my Grandpa Happy Jack.

My Grandpa Happy Jack likes to write cowboy poetry.  Really awful stuff.  Once in a while, though, he has some really great lines.  My personal favorite (I'm not biased or anything) was a poem he wrote when Mark came up to Montana over Christmas break to meet my parents for the first time.  I think it was called, "The Sodbuster's Daughter", and the best line he ever wrote was "What makes a man go North in Winter?"  Just last month he shared another zinger that was read at Duke and Natalie's wedding dinner, it was "The Duke and Duchess of Green River."  Everyone laughed.  So what makes great poetry, then?

I still remember at my Grandma LaVonne's funeral, my Uncle Gib was delivering the eulogy (because he was probably the only one who could do it without crying).  He did a great job, but he made everyone else cry.  He read a poem that Grandpa had written in his anguish.  I only heard it once.  The beginning line nearly made everyone gasp.

"Who turned out the lights?"

As tears rolled down our cheeks, we listened to how Grandpa, in this poem and in his sorrow, was able to make it.  Even though he wasn't the one reading the poem, in my mind's eye he says this very deliberately, even pointing his finger.

"You made me a promise at that altar, Lord." 

I don't remember the rest, but all these years, that one line, one truth, is what I took away.  Now, isn't that what makes a poet great?

Grandpa Jack got his strength to go forward from his covenants with God.  So do I.


I love that our church teaches that our souls are eternal.  We lived with our Heavenly Father in heaven before we came to earth.  He loved us so much that to help us learn and have a chance to feel a fraction of HIS love, he placed us here in families, intentionally.  "And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them" --Deuteronomy 4:37.  After the resurrection we can be with our families again, forever.  That was the promise that Jack and LaVonne received at the altar of the temple--that they would be married for time AND all eternity.  Life's a three-act play, you know?  And we can only see the middle.  And the middle is extremely short compared to the rest!

I once heard at a wedding, somewhat shockingly, that our life here is like the width of a piece of paper.  (The bishop marrying the couple actually held up a blank sheet of paper and showed us the edge.)  He taught, correctly, that marriages that are "til death do you part" really are only for that long.  Don't you want to be with your loved ones for the eternities? (The bishop described an invisible thread wrapping around the earth more times than you could ever count, as opposed to that skinny piece of paper.)

Take a tour of a newly built or renovated temple sometime if you can, before it is dedicated.  They are an "architectural realization of the Sinai experience."  The marriage rooms are beautiful, especially their opposite-wall mirrors that show you what it might be like to be never-ending.  The covenants we make there are "for time and all Eternity" and include binding our children to us for that long as well.  Remembering my covenants was a huge, huge strength and comfort to me as we considered the possibility of losing our Luke.  It makes me so sad to think of all those mamas throughout the centuries that were told that their babies were going to hell.  Nonsense, cruel nonsense.  It also makes me sad to think of all the mamas (and often Dads) in our secular culture who deep down in their souls yearn for that eternal connection but don't know how to get it, so they make some outward demonstration like tattooing the names of their children into their very skin.

Last night as we were drifting off to sleep I asked Mark what he thought of first, when he thought about the people that had already died that were waiting to greet us on the other side.  I expected him to say something about his Mom, who passed away when Leslie was a baby.  He remembers her often and feels her influence. However, after he thought about my question for a minute, his response was not what I was expecting.

He said, "Isn't it great that there is a push and a pull?"  Huh?  He explained that our children push us.  They look to our example and help us remember that they will be like us someday.  They aren't easy--they push us to be better than we normally would, through serving and loving them.  The pull comes from those that have gone on before.  They want us to honor their names and live the kind of lives that will make us happy and that will help us be with them again someday.  We are the binding link of the chain of hearts of fathers and children (Malachi 4:6).

Mark is reminded of the push and pull every time he signs his name.  He is named after his paternal grandfather, Newel Day.  Grandpa Day always used to ask him, "What are you doing with my name?"  We named Luke after this same grandpa and hope he will feel that pull someday, both from Grandpa Newel and from Mark.  Remember how I said I had used the wrong picture of Grandpa Newel on my wall?  I liked the one I used just fine, but I later found out that Grandpa preferred a different picture of himself during his lifetime.  A picture exists where he is standing among palm trees, his arms outstretched, young and smiling.
"Take a good look." he used to tell his children and grandchildren "This is the way I will look when you see me in heaven."

They that be with us are more.

Kiss-Up Ann Saves the Day...

It's exciting to "meet" new ancestors, especially ones that have left some clues about what they were like. In trying to discover the parents of my GGGGrandmother Ann Giffin Heagy from Gettysburg, I came across two Giffin wills in her hometown, newly digitized and available on familysearch.org. These wills enabled some large growth in our known family tree.

The first will, dated 1794 was by a Stephen Giffin, Sr., and he mentions mentions a wife and daughter, both named Ann. Hooray!  Until I realized that the daughter would have been way too old to be my Ann.  Also, the daughter Ann never married or had children.   The will also included a Stephen Giffin (Jr.), and his son, Andrew.  Andrew is a buzzword here, since our Ann named her son David Andrew, and the David part would have been after her husband David Sr.  Are you confused yet?

To clarify, we now have three Anns near Gettysburg, where before we only had one.
1.  Matriarch Ann (insert maiden name) Giffin, wife of the will writing Stephen Sr.
2.  Ann the "Maiden Aunt" Giffin, daughter of #1.

3.  Annie Giffin Heagy, who until now was the end of the line.  Now all I had to do was connect her to the others.
For my own brain, I've had to assign these Anns some nicknames because, I didn't mention before, I keep getting Annie Giffin Heagy mixed up with:
4.  Hoopskirt Ann:  Ann E. Hartzel Heagy, who married Annie Giffin's son David Andrew.
5.  Second Wife Ann:  Annie Meritt Heagy, who married David Andrew after #4 passed away.
 I'll tell you about Ann #3's nickname in a minute.

Hoopskirt Ann

Second Wife Ann, not blood related

David Andrew Heagy, son of Ann Giffin Heagy, husband to Ann Hartzel and Ann Meritt. And very handsome.

The second will turned out to be by that unmarried, maiden aunt Ann, who lived to a ripe old age.  (Maiden Aunt is the polite way to say Old Maid).  In the will she leaves several items to one Ann Giffin, daughter of Andrew Giffin of Gettysburg "for her services and attention to me and my sister Elizabeth".  She also left young Ann the house, with a gentle condition "I do hereby desire the said the same Ann Giffin continuing to take care of me and my sister Elizabeth during our lives."  Bam!  This caretaker Ann Giffin is the right age, in the right place at the right time to be our Ann Giffin (as supported by the 1810, 1820, 1830 Census).  She would have been the great niece of Auntie Ann, and also the great granddaughter of Stephen Sr. who wrote the will.  In my mind I have been irreverently calling my Ann Kiss-Up Ann, because she was taking care of her rich Auntie.  I don't know, if I were her, I might have played up the fact that I was Auntie's sweet and dutiful namesake.

The whole situation reminds me of Jo in Little Women reading to her cranky old Aunt Josephine, hoping for some financial support and perhaps an inheritance.  In any case, her descendants are very lucky that Kiss Up Ann did her duty, because it prompted Auntie Ann to record the relationship in her will and gave me a boost up over that research brick wall.

So, to guide you up the tree, we are related as follows:
Me>Mom>Grandpa Heagy>Charles Aaron Samuel Heagy>Charles Heagy>David Andrew Heagy>Ann Giffin>Andrew Giffin>Stephen Giffin, Jr.>Stephen Giffin, Sr.

More on this new branch later...George Washington will be making an appearance.

What do you do with a Fast Mormon?

My Dad's cousin Glenna has been helping me acquire pictures of the Haynes family, so I thought I'd share a little story for her about her Dad, my great uncle Glen Haynes.

The Haynes Boys:  Glen, Verl, Seth, and Jack.  They also have a middle sister Mary, who was probably (wisely) avoiding these hooligans at the time this picture was taken.

This story is from my Grandpa Happy Jack Haynes, Glen's little brother.

"We were only on the [Campbell] Ranch a year or two, then moved to Fort Shaw, Montana.  We lived about a mile south of town.  On the 4th of July, there was a picnic at the Fort.  Glen won a foot race, first prize was 25 cents.  The community still didn't trust Mormons, so they decided to run the race again!  Glen won again!  They were still upset about the outcome, so they split the prize money!  Each kid only got 5 cents!"

Astounding.

Jack would have been about 4 when this happened, in the early 30s, so Glen would have been about, say, 13?  I could see something like that contributing to a major chip on the shoulder, but as far as I know, Glen didn't carry one. The family moved again about a year later 10 miles west to Simms, Montana.  Hopefully community sentiment was better there!

With ordinary small town folk being so ignorant not even a lifetime ago, I guess I shouldn't be so caught off guard when I frequently notice prejudice toward Mormons in mainstream media (even in the well-meaning ones) today.  Like Glen, I guess we can just take our nickel and trust that people have great capacity for change.

Drummerboy Dreams: Harry Henry Harrison Haynes

FamilySearch has a new service that allows you to store photos and stories/bios about the people in your family tree, so I am going through my things again to see what I have to contribute.  A phone call to Grandpa Happy Jack was in order since I know very little about the Haynes side of the family, not even having a picture of Jack's Haynes grandparents, even though they lived well into the 1930's (Grandpa says he thinks he has seen one before, hopefully whoever has one will contribute soon.)

I was right.  Here is one a distant relative came up with of Henry.

(Me>Dad>Happy Jack Haynes>Harry Raymond (Roy) Haynes>Harry Henry Haynes)
Here is what little I know about this immigrant patriarch of my family.

One of the reasons Henry Haynes and his wife Charlotte (who went by Lottie) are so unfamiliar is because they only met my Grandpa Happy Jack once, at a train station in Ogden when Jack was a tiny boy, sometime between 1927-1930.  He said that they were very nice.  They were on their way to Lane, Eugene, Oregon, to retire.  By the 1930 census they were living with Lottie's sister Maude, who worked in some woolen mills in Lane  Happy Jack says one reason they left Minnesota was because of the severe Midwest winters.

We're not even very clear on what his actual name was--maybe someday we'll find the christening record.  It may have been as long as Harry Henry Harrison Haynes or as short as Henry.  In the 1880, 1920 census he went by Harry, in 1900 by Henry.  My guess is that they called him Harry, short for Henry, at home because Happy Jack's dad Harry Raymond (HHH's son), went by "Roy" at home, maybe to differentiate the two?  We'll call him Harry, Sr., here.

We know he was born in 1851 in Brentford, Middlesex, England.  This area borders London on the west.  His parents immigrated ?, possibly first to Canada--Happy Jack says this was because it was easier to immigrate from England to Canada.  On the 1920 Federal Census Harry Sr. says that he was naturalized in 1870, but the 1900 Census says they immigrated in 1865.  This may mean that they moved from Canada in 1865, not England, because on the 1930 census he says he immigrated in 1852.  Someday I'll find the immigration records and we'll know for sure.  In any case, we know the family was living in America before the Civil War because Grandpa Happy Jack just shared this charming story with me.

Apparently, young Harry, Sr., declared that he was "gonna be a drummer boy" for the Union Army.  He would have been between 10-15, probably close to 15 if they really came from Canada in 1865, toward the end of the war.  They were living in Iowa at the time.  When his parents told him no, he ran away to find the army and join it. 

He didn't make it far, they caught up with him at the next town or river over, and his dreams of glory were dashed forever.

Well, Harry Sr. grew up and married Charlotte Waddington, also an immigrant from Canada, and they raised a family in Iowa, later moving to Minnesota and then Oregon.  His son Harry Raymond Haynes, "Roy", mentioned a little about his dad in an interview, probably around 1980, mostly that he had been crippled and got a pension from the railroad in Iowa, then turned to farming.  I'm guessing he was a railroad employee; his sons also worked for the railroad.

One Mad Cow: H. Scott Haynes, roughneck

Cooper was sick today, and Dad is recovering from ankle surgery, so I thought it would be fun for them to entertain each other a little.  I've figured out how to use the voice recorder on my iPod, so watch out world.  I've transcribed it, but it is probably more fun to listen to:  click the link and turn on your speakers..

Scott's cow story

“Okay Grandpa, tell us the story about the cow.”

“Okay, children…  This happened to me back in 1977-78, the winter of 77-78.  I took a part-time job at the Western Livestock Auction …. where lots of cattle come to town!  And I was the sorter, out in the backyard sorting cows for size, and sexing them for steers and heifers, cows and bulls, ‘cause they had to be sold separate in the pen. 

So I was sorting one day, these BIG, white Charolais cows that weighed 1600 pounds plus.  They were wiiiild and spooky.  And I was holding the gate, and we were letting some go by the gate, and some go by the pen of the gate I was holding. And so we cut several of them out, and several of them were behind me, and this one cow was running as fast as she could, and I was standing on the end of the gate and against the fence; I thought she was gonna go in the pen with the other cows, but she decided to go right through me into the other cows.  And I didn’t move fast enough and she BANG knocked me over, down on the ground and she run and she stepped on my chest and put all her weight on my chest, and I staggered up and could hardly stand up.  I stood up and I could feel my shoulder slumped to the side, and I couldn’t hardly walk.  And they called an ambulance, but the ambulance didn’t get there so the people took me in the car to the hospital.  I knew something bad was wrong, and I got to the hospital and they discovered my collarbone had pulled away from the breastbone.  So they performed a big surgery, and took the tendon out of my left arm, and cut my chest open and tied the collarbone back to the breastbone with the tendon out of my left arm.  And there I was in the hospital and had a long recovery.”

“How long were you in the hospital?”

“I don’t remember how long exactly I was in the hospital, but quite a while.  And I finally got to come home, and the surgeon did such an excellent joy that it never ever hurt again, and that’s been thirty some years ago.  He did an excellent job.  That’s what happened.  I got trampled by a coooow, and she was BIG and white, with pink eyes that were on fiiire.”

I remarked that I didn’t realize that he’d been working at the livestock auction, I always thought it had happened at home.  He said no, he and Jim Hadley took the job there to earn some extra money.  This was the winter after he and mom had gotten married, (so luckily, mom didn’t have any babies to worry about.)

He said that mom stayed in a little apartment there in Great Falls while he was recovering, he thinks it was one of the Heagy aunt’s.

He said [laughing] he got worker’s comp for it, something like 12-20 dollars a week for a while.