TAPE RECORDED MEMORIES OF RAPHAEL CLEMENT—1979
Carroll, to his wife Mary: "You told me about your first impressions about Dad one time. I asked you what your first impressions were when you met my folks, and you said that you fell in love with my dad."
Mary: "He was really nice, I knew him for a year. I met him, but I just really never knew much about him because I only saw him two times - when we got married and when we came back out here a year later."
Charlie: "I have a question I can ask you guys. My main recollection of Dad, is that he didn't pay very much attention to me or anything I ever did. That is, he took me places and things, but I can't ever remember any personal relationship, interest in things that I did. I was thirteen when he died. How did he treat you kids out on the farm? What were your personal relationships with him, did you have any? I've heard too, that Susan and I being the youngest, was the first time Dad started paying attention to children. I can remember being around him a lot, but I can't remember of him ever putting his arm around me, or having a talk or paying attention to things that I did. We never raced a car or whittled a whistle."
Shanna: "Mother has said that Dad's theory was that children belong to their mothers when they're little."
Charlie: "Mother said something that backs that up. She said that he had told her that after they became teenagers, then he could begin to relate a little better."
Shanna: "But we always had a great deal of respect for Dad, none of us felt close to dad, and so the older kids said they were kind of frightened of him and stuff, but we all had that respect for him."
Carroll: "If he threw a singletree at you, you'd be frightened of him too. And I didn't swear anymore either, after that. But the reason I swore, was because I heard him swear. He and Grandpa was working on a singletree tied up to a doubletree, and he was pounding or something, and it slipped and really hurt his hand and he let out one. He says, "That damn thing", or something like that. You asked me what was my earliest recollection, well, that was my earliest recollection - I marched up there and said, "That damn thing."
Barbara: "Dad made things of wood, he made the "Charlie Horse" swing set for Charlie and friends to swing on. Also two wooden giraffes supporting a blackboard between them. The giraffes stood on the floor and were about 4 feet tall].
Charlie: "Oh, that blackboard giraffe. I can remember many trips to the wood bin to get switched, it was down the basement."
Barbara: "During that period of time he made a cradle too, and he took great pride in that. That's the way he showed his love for you, not with words."
Charlie: "Ya, he did. But he didn't drop the discipline part though, because I can remember going down to the coal bin many times."
Shanna: "You really needed it though, because you were a very headstrong child."
Charlie: "Ya, I know. One time I got mad at the lawn mower, and picked it up and threw it down, and he saw me. But in spite of that, I was never afraid of Dad, there wasn't real fear there. But I'd say, "I won't do it anymore", and he'd say, "Darn right you won't", and come anyway. But the lawn mower incident - after it had taken place, you know, when he was giving me the dickens, I was saying to myself, boy I'm going to do it even worse next time, I was so mad. But when I came back in the house, he was waiting for me, later, you know, and beckoned me to come over and sit by him, and sat there and had a little talk. And it just took all the anger, all the fear, all of everything away, and he'd explain why I couldn't do that. Carroll, did you have any kind of close relationship with him?"
Carroll: "No - about the closest relationships I can remember with Dad in the early part of my life is, once in a while, you know, when you're herding cows and things like this, he'd come out on the horse to get you, and bring you to lunch or something like that. Pull you up behind him, and you'd ride in together or something like that. I remember one time when I was herding cows out in the west field. We had a grain field next to the pasture field, where the cows were, and I had strict instructions to keep those cows out of the grain.
In those days, I loved cool ditches. You know, it's hot out there, sitting out there herding cows, and I crawled down in the irrigation ditch, and you know, that was a whole world down there. Spiders and worms and all those things. But anyway, as Mother told me later, I'd be out in the field. She'd know I was out in the field, and she'd see me out there one minute, and the next minute I'm off the face of the earth, she doesn't know where I'm at. I'd be down in one of these irrigation ditches because it was cool under there, because the grass would grow over the ditch. Ya, it was a dry irrigation ditch, and be cool. Well, I got in the irrigation ditch and fell asleep. That happened quite often. You don't know when you fall asleep, you're just laying there, being cool.
And all of a sudden, boy! I hear old Duke roarin' out there, he's one of the work horses, and that woke me up, and I look up and there's Dad. And the cows were all over in the grain, and I remember that day.
But I also remember riding in behind him on the horse. He got the cows and brought 'em in. I can't remember how old I was, I must have been around six or seven, I guess.
Dad left us a lot, but it was because he was off looking for work. That farm wasn't always paying the bills, and he would leave, because he'd be up at the coal mine a lot of the time, and he'd be up timbering. And then he'd go to Salt Lake looking for work, and times were hard! What you mentioned earlier about Dad taking care of the family was absolutely right, because he didn't sit around and wait for somebody to feed him and the family and take care of us."
Charlie: "So you're saying he was gone a lot then, he was just flat not there."
Carroll: "He was flat not there, and Grandpa [Clement] really assumed the role, in our eyes, as a father."
Barbara: "But financially, he took care of his father in return."
Carroll: "Oh, absolutely. You see, he would go off to work to pay the bills, like the hospitals, you know, to get money to buy what groceries that you couldn't grow. Now, we mostly lived and ate off the farm and we'd kill our own meat.
We had a root cellar out there. We had big gardens, and I used to have to weed with DeVon. It was the most hateful job in the world at our age. But anyway, we'd kill the beef or the pigs, and Mother would bottle it. She'd prepare it. You did everything, you made the sausage. But anyway, she would do all this, this was a daily thing, year in and year out. And what fruit we could get, we'd bottle fruit. We didn't have fruit trees on the farm. We would go up to Oak Creek and pick apples.
So he would go off and earn the monies to replace equipment that he couldn't fix, or to buy the groceries that we couldn't grow, or to put shoes on our feet. Some of the clothes we got in those days were [handed down from relatives, then Mother would cut them down and re-sew them to fit us kids]. Sometimes trading was done, I'm sure, for goods off the farm.
There was a time when we even lost the cows, you know, the cows dried up. And a lot of those cows were sold off to pay hospital bills. He was willing to sell off what he had, to meet his money obligation.
And I remember when we got down to just two or three cows. We'd milk, and then they'd dry up. We used to have to buy milk from the Rasmussen's. And I used to have to go carry it home. But I always had a deep respect for Dad, it amounted to a kind of a fear because, you see, he was away a lot, and we'd take advantage of Mother an awful lot, and she'd say, "wait til your Dad comes home." Well, I remember one time when DeVon and I were playing marbles, and our job was to feed the calves, night and morning. And one day we just slacked up, you know. We fed the cows in the morning, and the day goes on, you catch some water snakes and hang them over the clothesline, and all these things.
We got playing marbles, and it got calf-feeding time, we just lost track of time, and there we were out in back, playing marbles. And all of a sudden, there's Dad, you know. And he just looks down at us, and we look up at him, and he says, "Did you feed the calves?" We looked around and we see the sun's almost gone, and "No, we didn't feed the calves." He just reached down and picked up all of our marbles and threw them down in the crick, and got him a switch, and boy, that's the hardest lickin' I think I ever remember getting. Dad's lickins were memorable.
But that's one thing Dad would not tolerate, and that was the abuse of his animals. Those calves had to be fed, and his horses cared for. Those were some of the things you learn, but you see, those are some of the things you kind of feared dad, because you knew that if you got a lickin', brother, you really got one. Now we knew we deserved it, but you really got the lickin. And so when Mother said, "Wait 'til your dad comes home", it was mortal fear.
Dad never was abusive. I can't ever remember him being abusive. And I can't ever remember him teasing you to tears, or anything like this. Correction now and then, you know, in conversation, like when me and DeVon would say, "Well, can you top this?" "Well, that's nothin." I remember one time we got into a "That's nothin" kind of a thing, when DeVon and Dad and I were together, and he let us know that that was something. If it was worth telling, it was something. Get off this "that's nothin" kind of stuff."
Charlie: "He didn't want you to put each other down."
Carroll: "Ya, that's right."
Shanna: "Dad always said, "Now stop this before it gets started. Because when you start tearing each other down in any way, it always ends up with somebody being hurt, it ends up wrong."
Charlie: "Was he interested in your activity in high school, after you were out of the spanking age?"
Norman: "He was from the hard working era. As for learning, he was very interested in that, but I think generally speaking, formal education wasn't very important."
Bart: "He was wary of it."
Norm: "Wary of it - well, I don't know why you'd say that."
Shanna: "He was. Because he said a lot of people go away to school, and they lose their testimony. He said if you can go to school and keep your testimony, fine, but many people lose it and it's better not to go than lose your testimony. Now, other people would say, it's better to go, and keep your testimony and get the learning too."
Carroll: "I don't think Dad ever minded - in fact I think Dad wanted you to go through high school. He thought sports was a big waste of time."
Charlie: "That's what I was wondering."
Norm: "Is that right. That's something I didn't know."
Carroll: "He thought you should be out working, and not playing sports, you see."
Charlie: "I remember sitting at a football game with him, though, in the stadium. Him and Mother and me."
Carroll: "Is that right? I didn't know that he ever watched a single football game that I played in."
Charlie: "Didn't you know that? Maybe that was the only one, but I sure remember it. That's why I asked you the question. I can remember being at that game with him, and yet it didn't jive with these other feelings that we've all expressed."
Carroll: "It was probably the only one that he ever saw, he never went to a basketball game."
Shanna: "He was just like you guys with your children, your teenagers. He didn't want you wasting all your time."
Carroll: "But Mother knew, Mother had a sense about this. Now sports was the only thing that kept me in school, because I was not a good student. And if I hadn't had a real interest in sports, I never would have finished school."
Barbara: "Then you had to keep your grade average up because of sports, or you couldn't be on the team, is that it?"
Carroll: "No. No. I never kept my grade average up really well either. Especially the first years. I got a lot better my junior and senior year, but the sports was the thing that kept me in school. I just really looked forward to playing ball. You know, I didn't know it at the time, but Mother told me since, that she fought that battle with Dad many times."
Barbara: "Charlie quotes Dad as saying, 'First learn to work with your hands, and then your head.' So evidently he thought both was important, but the priority was to work with your hands, to learn a skill."
Charlie: "Ya, he told me that about a year before he died."
Carroll: "Now, that sounds right, you know, that's probably right."
Norm: "I'd like to just add something here. I think what you guys have said here about your dad, you've enlarged my understanding of the man. He's been kind of a mystery to me in some ways, he was always very quiet, retiring, very dignified from the time I first met him. Of course, the first time I met him, he was a Stake Patriarch."
Charlie: "I thought he had always been a Patriarch."
Shanna: "I had so much respect for him, because I remember Mother saying to him one day, 'Raph, we need to gain more dignity now, because of the positions we hold.' And so they started working on correcting their improper grammar - they started to make home a heaven, is what they did. And it was just really a beautiful transition, and I remember as a teenager having so much respect for people who would want to change for the better, and who would actually do it."
Charlie: "I didn't notice, I never was aware of any change at all, I thought it had always been that way, and it wasn't until I was on my mission that I found out different. When I was on my mission, Mother wrote me a letter. I had been having some trouble, and she wrote me this letter, and that was the first I ever knew, and it just sent me sittin'!"
Norm: "What you said about your dad working with his hands. That home that he built in Pasco, was really a beautiful little home. Well built."
Charlie: "I think of that - I can remember I watched that."
Norm: "I really had aspirations that maybe Barbara and I would someday like to buy that home, it was really a beautiful little home."
Charlie: "I was thinking about that just the other day. How could somebody put together something like that. He'd never built homes before."
Norm: "Well, he had the skill. If you go back into his history, maybe he'd done a lot of building, he must have done quite a bit of building."
Bart: "Yes, he did, he built a little home in Pasco or Kennewick."
Charlie: " That's the one I'm talking about.
Bart: "Are you talking about the little one or the big one?"
Norm: "The little one in Pasco. He built a home in Pasco and sold it."
Barbara: "It was a little white house."
Carroll: "I was going to school in Ellensburg when he started that."
Norm: "Did he build that by himself?"
Charlie: "I remember Carroll and DeVon and Dad starting to dig the ditches for the footings."
Carroll: "We dug the holes for the footings in it."
Norm: "He did it for an investment, I know."
Charlie: "Ya. He was in with Glen Moss, I believe, or somebody like that."
Barbara: "He also was a believer of owning land, and he bought other land in Pasco along with building that house."
Norm: "Ya, he speculated a little bit out in east Pasco, thinking that land was going to be worth something."
Charlie: "Uh huh, and later on, it just got surrounded by homes, and today it is worth something."
Carroll: "There's one other thing that needs to be said about Dad. I think, that is, that he had just a profound love and respect for Mother. He would never tolerate any disrespect to her. Did this from day one, that I can ever remember. And that's why she could say, 'wait til your dad gets home.'"
Charlie: "Ya, she had some authority."
Carroll: "You bet she had authority, and if she spanked us and hurt her hand on us, we'd laugh. But he loved that woman greatly and always took care of her, and she was just up here on a pedestal throughout his life."
Charlie: "Oh ya, I knew better than to say things to Mother. I'd do it, but I knew better."
Shanna: "One thing I remember about Dad is that every time Mother got dressed up to go take care of some duty someplace, he'd whistle, you could barely hear it. Oh, she'd just light up."
Charlie: "I can remember that."
Shanna: "Or he'd come up and swat her one, and she'd say, Oh, Raph, you quit that. She'd say, Oh, you'll have to do that on the other side now, to even it out."
Carroll: "You've got to get Mother to tell you about the outhouse. She just kept after him, and after him, and after him, to build an outhouse. And he just couldn't get to it, you know, he had some other things to do. And she just kept nagging him, to get that outhouse built. So finally one day, he grabbed ahold of her and sat her down on a board and traced her out to fit the size for when he built the outhouse. I couldn't tell it like she did."
Charlie: "I think it didn't work though. It was too big or something and he didn't ever get back to it, and she got mad, and finally she ordered one built in town and had it delivered. I think that's what happened."
Shanna: "But Grandpa adored Mother, just like Dad did; anybody that ever was around her. But Grandpa would tell us individually - the daughters - when we'd get ready to go someplace, how beautiful we were. 'You're the most beautiful girl in the world - except, you've got a long ways to go before you get to be as beautiful as your mother.' It was just those added words, you just knew how much they respected and loved mother."
Charlie: "He wouldn't build her any fruit shelves either, Dad put off things like that. And finally she went and tore the boards off of the barn, and built fruit shelves with them. And when he came home and found out what had happened.......
Shanna: "But he got a kick out of those things. He loved her spunk. She went down to C.C. Anderson's in Richland and ordered some beautiful lamps, and she put a dollar down on them. And she said to Dad, 'You know, we really should get those lamps out, so that we don't lose the money that's down on them.' And after awhile, she'd say again, 'Well Raph, we really should get those lamps so that we don't lose that money', and she knew how he didn't like to lose money. And this was something that was cute about him, he decided to surprise her. He went down to C.C.Anderson's to get those lamps, and they said he owed thirty some dollars on them. And he pretended to know he owed the money, rather than do anything that would defame her character. He went ahead and paid the money, and she said he just died laughing when he got home. He thought that was the funniest thing in the world."
Carroll: "I think I remember that."
Shanna: "I don't remember the incident, I remember the lamps."
Barbara: "I remember the lamps with the ceramic birds on them, they're beautiful. Very unique."
Shanna: "He bought her very nice clothes."
Carroll: "You know, he didn't tolerate carelessness, and things like this when we'd been instructed to do things, but other times, when things happened that we had no control over, he was very understanding.
Now, one time we were hauling hay, and the boys were gone, so there was just me and Mother and Dad, and we had to go out in the west pasture and get some hay in. And so he was throwing the hay up, and Mother and I were tromping up above, on the rack, and in those days you know, you'd just holler at the horse, and he'd move the wagon up a little ways, and then stop you know, whoa, and he'd throw some more on.
And I had the pitchfork, moving hay and he had to move the wagon, and started the horses, and I lost my balance. I jammed the pitchfork into the hay to catch myself, and put one of those pitchfork tines right through Mother's foot. It went right through. And when I looked at what I'd done, oh ya, I could just see Dad taking me limb from limb, but you know, he came up, and he looked at that, and of course he wanted to get her some attention right now, but he never said anything to me about that. I could never understand or figure that out. He just probably felt how badly I felt about it, and he never said anything."
Bart: "There's a big difference between disobedience and a mistake."
Barbara: "The same thing happened to me one time when he didn't say a word to me, and Mother didn't either. The time when Mother asked me to undress Shanna for our evening bath [in the round tin tub.] It was all set up in the warmth of the living room in the Fairview house. We were both little, about four and five or six years old I think. While I was undressing Shanna, she suddenly jerked and came right out of her clothes, and fell backwards into the scalding water that was sitting in the round tin tub. Waiting for the cold water to be added, you know. That's how it was done. I felt so bad for her. I vividly remember thinking I'd be punished, but I wasn't.
Shanna: "That was my own fault though. I wanted to undress myself. I didn't want you to help me. You were just trying to help me, and I just said no! and jerked away from you."
Barbara: I expected something then and didn't get it. I saw my parents as kind and understanding.
Carroll: "And there was the time I wrecked the new car, you know that green Plymouth. We were taking these kids over swimming, to Pasco, and this guy was turning left on the road between the Y and Kennewick, and he was making a left turn there on the hill and no tail lights, and cars were coming the other way. I just didn't see him, he wasn't there until I was on him, and I rear-ended him. And you know, Dad came out and he looked the situation over, and he never got angry at me or anything."
Bart: "Did he know the guy didn't have any tail lights?"
Carroll: "Well, I told him that. Nothing ever happened. The investigating officer was a good friend of Dad's, I believe."
Charlie: "Do you remember the white pick-up he used to drive home from out on the job? He used to take me with him when he was on a night shift."
Norm: "One memory I have of your Dad, is the description of Chief Jobe Charlie. That name always brings back memories. He loved those Indian people, he really did."
Charlie: "I used to go with him up there too, to see old Chief Jobe Charlie. I went with him a lot. We ate dinner with one of their families, and Dad gave me a lecture before we went in there - 'Now I don't care if you don't like what they put on your dish, you eat it.' They gave me a big ole black piece of bear meat or something, I don't know what it was, but it was awful."
Carroll: "When I left to go in the service, I was expecting to get a little advice or something from dad, or some of the things I could expect, you know. And all he told me was, 'Just remember who you are.' I'll never forget it. You know, certainly when he says things, it's pretty profound, but all he said to me by way of counsel was, 'Just remember who you are.' He knew I was going for four years, and that's all the counsel he gave me."
Charlie: "That was it?"
Carroll: "That was it."
Norm: "Bart, did you ask for Shanna's hand?"
Bart: "Ya."
Norm: "So did I, ask for Barbara's hand."
Bart: "I didn't dislike him at all. I kinda respected him, but he thought I was really a brat, he didn't like me much in the beginning. A loud mouth. I was the thing that he had warned his kids about not becoming."
Norm: "Looking back, I sense in the same way, I think he looked at us as two college graduates that was going to come up and rob his family. I think he may have looked at Glen the same way."
Charlie: "He spent a lot of hours with you, didn't he Bart?"
Bart: "Oh, you bet."
Norm: "You probably spent more time with him than I did."
Bart: "I used to go down when he got sick, and I'd rub him with oil or whatever. I spent quite a bit of time with him. I don't remember much of it in terms of, you know, direct instruction or anything like that, but it was good to know that I was accepted."
Charlie: "Before you joined the church, didn't you discuss the gospel a lot? Did he attempt to teach you?"
Bart: "Oh ya. He was the third shift. I'd bring Shanna home about ll o'clock, and she'd be exhausted, so she'd go to bed. And her mother would be there, you know, and so I'd start talking to her. We talked, and I had a lot of questions about the church, so I talked to her for a long time, until finally, her dad would come home, you know, then her mother would go to bed. He had come home from swing-shift."
Bart: "Then he and I would talk about the gospel."
Shanna: "He would go in and sit down. Mother said, 'I'm telling you to go home.' And he said, 'Well if you would quit hinting, and say it right out.' And he just was looking for answers.
But Dad said to him one time - Bart was talking about evolution and Dad was a patient missionary, you just wouldn't find a better missionary. But Bart asked a question, and Don and Dad were trying to answer with the scriptures and everything, and finally Bart asked the question again, and Dad says, 'Any fool could see that.' But he wasn't offended, I mean he respected Dad."
Charlie: "Did you find it difficult to discuss with him logically, I mean you know, he wasn't college educated. Did he enjoy talking to you."
Bart: "Oh ya. It was obvious that he was really an authority, he really knew what he was talking about. And I was very hungry for that sort of thing. Your mother was kinda more on a spiritual, emotional level, you know, and she'd tell me about experiences with the boys in the war, you know, she'd know when they were in danger, and it had a tremendous impact on me, emotionally and spiritually. I knew that she was not lying to me."
Charlie: "He was an authority figure to you?"
Bart: "Well, scripturally. He didn't approach me on a spiritual level at all, that I remember. It was purely scriptural and logical, and doctrinal. He was an authority on doctrine, and your mother was very impressive on the spiritual part. I think to describe him the best, is to say that his favorite scriptures was Isaiah. That says a lot about anybody, if that's their favorite scripture." End of tape.
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