A SHORT HISTORY OF RAPHAEL CLEMENT AS I REMEMBER IT
Shortly after Raphael Clement married Pearl Iretta Olsen they took over the 82 acre farm from Grandpa Clement, located 2 miles north of Fairview, Utah. This was one of the best farms in the area as it always had water even in years of drought. When the farms around dried up people would come to Dad for water, this didn't happen often but when it did, it was nice to have water that he could share with others.
Dad tried to be friends with everyone but once in a while it didn't work. One time he and some of the other farmers got together and leased an alfalfa farm in Indianola, Utah. All went well until one of the other farmers decided that Dad wasn't holding up his end of the bargain. Dad told them if that's the way they felt he would just pull his team, wagons and help off and they could do it alone. That ended the argument and they all went back to work. Dad wasn't one to mince words.
He and Mom had to struggle to make a living and Dad's patience got short at times, he especially didn't like to have his tools left where they didn't belong. I got a strong disciplinary action when I left his tools out by the haystack. For the most part Dad was kind and helpful. He had farm equipment and horses that he couldn't do without and still make a living, but with us boys he let us use any of them after he was confident we knew how to use them and would take care of them.
We used the horses for hayrides, buggy rides, surrey rides and bobsled rides. He would even pull us behind the truck on our miniature bobsleds. That is the way we went to church once in a while. We were white with snow when we got there but it was fun.
Dad did things with what he had. Mother wanted a basement under the house for storage so he would send us older boys for some dynamite, caps and fuses. We would drill holes in the dirt bank under the house and load them with a quarter stick of dynamite. The first time we set it off we forgot to notify Mother. When it blew, she and the house and the pictures on the wall shook. Mother came flying out with her Danish indignation standing up so needless to say we were sure to let her know after that. The basement only got half dug out (underneath the kitchen was left unfinished). To get the dirt out we would pull the scraper back to the loose dirt, with a cable attached to the scraper and double trees on the horse, and then Chub (the horse) would pull the scraper load of dirt out, and do it again and again until all the loose dirt was removed from under the house.
Dad always had good horses and they made well-matched teams. He had a knack for that. And it paid off during pulling matches with other farm teams. His teams were always the best in the county. It was fun to go to these events and watch the horses pull. His horses were matched so well they were just like a great pulling machine.
On the farm Dad raised alfalfa, timothy hay and meadow grass. He also raised grain (wheat and barley). When it came time to haul the hay from the fields, he would do it with slips and sling chains. The slips were a platform built close to the ground about 18 feet long and 6 feet wide. To build the slip, Dad took three 5" diameter poles and laid them on the ground - one in the middle and one on each end, then attached planks on top of the poles making a platform bed. The poles made it so the slips would drag over the ground smoothly. They were pulled by horses.
The sling chains were 20 feet long with a ring on one end to tie 3 of them together. Then we would spread them out on the slip, one set per slip. The ring and 3 chains were hooked up to the derrick and the load was pulled up onto the haystack. A rope was tripped and the 3 chains turned loose and dumped the load, then the chain was returned to the slip for another trip to the field. It was a fast way to haul the hay in.
Sometimes the loads were built in three layers, a third at a time. This required 3 sets of sling chains, alternating the chains and then the hay, ending with hay on the top. The load was built in the field.
A separate operation was when the wagon would haul the hay to the barn, then large hayforks were used to unload the wagon to fill the barn. The curved hayforks would open on a center hinge, and reach down into the hay on the wagon and grab a bundle of it, then it would be drawn up and dumped on the growing haystack in the barn. It was a 40 ton barn.
When it was time for the grain harvest Dad would haul the wheat in with the wagon to the yard and then make arrangements with the threshers to come in and separate the grain from the chaff and the straw as it went through the threshing machine. Dad put us boys to work at an early age and we learned how to work hard. Dad's day ran from daylight till dark. In slack time on the farm he would take the family up Cottonwood canyon and we would work in the coal mine and haul coal to town for our own use and for sale. Dad would teach us to work but he also taught us how to have fun. So when we took the teams, wagons, sled etc. out to play we knew how to handle them to keep from getting hurt. Dad did many other things on the farm with us.
There came a time when Dad needed more finances to take care of the family so he took a job with Utah Power and Light in the Salt Lake area and would commute back and forth until he could sell the Fairview farm and move his family to Taylorsville, Utah. He rented a house on Redwood Road in Taylorsville. We stayed there about a year and then moved back to the farm as it hadn't sold. About a year later, 1943, Ted Mower of Oak Creek bought the farm and we moved back to Taylorsville and bought a house and 5 acres. He planned on staying there for good - he thought. By this time Dad was working for Remington Arms Plant in Kearns, UT.
The reason for selling the Fairview farm was that there would be nobody left to work it after Don and Bud left for the service in WWII; Dad had to be away working a job in Salt Lake County, and Grandpa Clement was too old to work it alone. It was the end of an era for the family.
Then the government sent scouts out to find people who would like to go to the Hanford, Washington area to work on a project there. The pay was good and the living conditions weren't bad, so he went and lived in a dorm (or barracks) at Camp Hanford while learning the business of operating the equipment necessary to run the plant. Mother and the family moved there to join him about 6 months later. They lived in the Desert Inn Hotel in the town of Richland, Washington until the furniture arrived from Utah and was delivered to the new two-story house they had picked out. Life became better for them. Dad worked in the power plant in Richland for a number of years.
That equipment consisted of a domestic water system, irrigation, water filtering plant and a steam power plant. The power plant was used for heating the dormitories and business buildings. The power plant was coal-fired and when they blew the soot out of the boiler it really made some of the women hostile as it was done at a time when their clothes were hanging out to dry. The time obviously had to be changed.
He also supervised the operation of the Richland sewer plant. He learned the operation of the above but his job was supervising the operations. The area he worked in was rather wide spread, about 20 miles one way. He supervised the downtown area, the 300 area utilities and the old Hanford town area utilities including the steam power plants.
He was kept rather busy going from one area to another. He drove a furnished company pick-up truck and would make at least one trip per shift to each of the areas. The men who worked for him really liked him as he was fair with them and stern when the need called for it. When I got back from the military service and went to work at Hanford things had changed considerably. The 300 area had their own supervision and took care of the facilities at the old town of Hanford. Dad stayed in town (Richland) for the rest of his working days at the Hanford Atomic project.
He would get a lot of calls from the men and women who lived in the dorms because it was either too hot or too cold and needed a thermostat adjustment so he would send an operator over or go himself. Pull the cover, inspect it, replace the cover and tell them, "That should do it." They were well satisfied because someone took care of their needs (or so they thought).
He took the family on fishing trips and camping on his time off work. It was good to go with him. He even went when he was in pain with cancer, then when it got worse he was confined at home because it was too hard on him to go out.
Dad mellowed a lot after the family moved to Richland, partly because his finances were not so tight that he had to count pennies and they had a much easier life. When he passed away we all missed him greatly, but soon we will all be with him again.
Dad was the first Patriarch to be called in the Richland Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. He was very active in all church activities. He was serving as a Stake Missionary to the Indians on the Yakima Indian Reservation when he was diagnosed with cancer. He continued his missionary service until he became too sick to continue.
He and a group of friends had several hives of bees and they enjoyed working with them. They called themselves the Bee Board and they extracted the honey from the hives and the group used it for themselves and gave any that they didn't use away to friends.
Dad finally passed away on Thanksgiving Day at the age of 56. He has been greatly missed and was loved by all during his lifetime. These are the memories of his second son Bud LaVon Clement.
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