Charles Sidney Brown was born in Hyde Park, Utah 5 March 1874. His father was Homer Brown and his mother was Sarah Ann Woolf. His early years were spent in the Salt Lake Valley. On 9 Oct. 1895, he married Mary Halls of Huntsville, Utah. They had 11 children: Harold Cyril, Eva, Lucille, Elna, David Owen, Charles William, Ben Lincoln, Mollie, Hannah, Homer Frank, and George Halls Brown. All were born in Mancos, Colorado, except Homer Frank, who was born in Farmington, New Mexico, and George Halls born in Tucson, Arizona. From his early upbringing in Utah, Farmer moved with his family to Colorado, where he was engaged in ranching and farming until about 1914, when he moved to Tucson, Arizona. This was followed by a move to Mesa 10 years later.
Before moving to Arizona, he ran an Indian Trading Post on the San Juan River in the 4 Corners area. He liked the Indians and they liked him. He learned their ways and tried to understand them, rather than trying to change their long-standing customs to the white man’s ways. When Farmer first came to Arizona, he settled in Tucson. About 1924 he came to Mesa where he brought his family, bought a farm, and lived until his death.
Charles S. “Farmer” Brown was connected with the County, State and Federal Farm Bureau most of the time he resided in Arizona. He was the first Pres. Of the Arizona Farm Bureau and a member of the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Board of Directors. He was connected with the Federal Farm Bureau under Pres. Hoover’s administration & engaged in speaking tours throughout the United States, gaining considerable prominence as a speaker. In the early part of his Farm Bureau work and while he was Pres. Of the Arizona Farm Bureau, there was another Brown who was connected with the County Bureau. Since their initials were similar and their names alike it was easy to mis them up, so Charles Sidney began designating himself as C. S. “Farmer” Brown, which name stuck with him through the years. He always signed his legal papers C. S. Or Charles S. Farmer Brown (without the quotations).
Farmer was a self-made man. He did not have a formal education, but was a well- educated, scholarly man. He was a profound reader. He retained what he read and could always leave a quotation with his friends & family for them to remember. He never ceased to study & improve himself: he kept up on current events & availed himself of classes & lectures of various kinds. Only a year or so before his death, he was taking a Dale Carnegie class where he was learning to meet people & improve his speaking.
The author, Wilferd A. Peterson, tells in his book, The Art of Living, that we give of ourselves when we give gifts of the heart: love, kindness, joy, understanding, tolerance, forgiveness. We give of ourselves when we give gifts of the mind: ideas, purposes, ideals, principles, poetry. We give of ourselves when we give the gift of inspiration and guidance. These were the gifts that Farmer Brown gave to his friends and family. Farmer Brown (he always preferred being called Farmer to Grandpa) believed as
Emerson: “We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count.” He stayed young by keeping his mind alive and alert and continuing to grow. As has been said, “You do not GROW old, you become old by NOT growing.”
Farmer was not always getting ready to live and never living; neither was he always packing his bags with things he valued most in life, but never leaving on the trip. He did pack his bags, but stored the contents in his mind. He did leave on his trips, and opened those bags full of accumulated wisdom, knowledge, inspiration, and love for all those with whom he came in contact.
Farmer was always willing to lend a helping hand, but never interfered or imposed himself or his ideas upon friends or family. He loved the wide-open spaces and enjoyed his farm, but he had an especially keen love of horses. In his younger days he was a bronco buster. He knew the ways of horses and how to handle them. For many years he rode his horse to Church meetings. He enjoyed it and the doctor had told him it would be good for his health. On the morning of the day his heart failed, he was feeding the horses on his daughter’s ranch in Ely, Nevada.
Farmer died at age 88 on 13 Oct. 1962. Funeral services were held in Mesa, Arizona, 18 October , with burial in Mountain View Memorial Park in Mesa. His wife Mary preceded him in death in 1958 in Mesa. Fern Kimball Brown, Daughter-in-law
Typed into the computer by Kathleen Jardine Woolf 23 Oct. 2002 Idaho Falls, Idaho
Information taken from the book JOHN ANTHONY WOOLF FAMILY Publ. 1986
Farmer and his family 1918:
Farmer Brown's Children
Farmer's Photographs
From the memory of James C Brown:
Charles Sydney Brown was born in 1874, sometimes referred to as “Farmer Brown” was Arizona’s first Farm Bureau President, and worked for President Hoover for the Federal Farm Board. As part of his job he went around the country giving speeches, speaking in nearly every state in the union. He became a very accomplished speaker, and was in demand for Church firesides, having a good sense of humor and being very well read.
He was known as a great philosopher and people enjoyed coming out to his farm to visit with him. He corresponded with many people, including President Hugh B. Brown, who was a general authority in the Mormon church. He used to tell President Brown, “Come out and sit under the lemon tree with me and I’ll tell you how to run the Church.” He felt he could say this because he was President Brown’s uncle.
He was a skilled horseman and would delight the Aaronic priesthood boys by riding his horse to priesthood meeting
Polygamy info:
Yes, Sarah Ann's (Charles's mother) new husband, Fredrick Baker, was a polygamist. Sarah Ann was divorced from Homer at that time. Sarah Ann was Frederick's fourth wife, but his first two had died prior to their marriage. So he was married to his third wife, Mary Avery, and Sarah Ann when they went to Mancos. Mary died in 1889 in Mancos. At that time Frederick was no longer a polygamist and they returned to Utah, leaving 15-year old Charlie behind. Mary and Frederick apparently had just one child living at the time they went to Mancos. Her name was Elizabeth. I have not idea what happened to her when her mother died. I believe he also learned a lot from the man who boarded him after his mother and step-father left, George Halls, the brother of his future father-in-law, William Halls. A
Extra information on sites Farmer lived:
The red bubble is Aenth Utah where his trading post was and you can see it is near the border of Utah and Colorado and Mancos sits just inside Colorado:
Kent,
I drove by his place in Mancos, but I don't have an address. As you drive down through Weber from Mancos, there is a small, but paved road which heads North. His place was a yellow stone, as I recall, on the left side of the road, as you travel North. It has a veranda built on at least two sides--the South and East.
The trading post is in Aneth and on the main highway which runs through it. There's not much of a "town" there. There is a convenience (Thriftway) store, built in front of the actual trading post.
Ann
Farmer had a trading post at the end of McElmo Canyon in Aneth, Utah nest to Montezuma Creek:
The area as it looks today:
"Before moving to Arizona, Farmer ran an Indian Trading Post on the San Juan River in the 4 Corners area. He liked the Indians and they liked him. He learned their ways and tried to understand them, rather than trying to change their long-standing customs to the white man’s ways. Farmer was in Aneth in the 1910 census with his wife and 7 children and left for Arizona about 1914." Farmer’s history
OnlineUtah: Aneth is a small community on a point North of the junction of McElmo Creek and the San Juan River. It was the site of a Navajo trading post during the early 1880s. In 1886 it was named Holyoak after an early settler. In the 1900s the name was changed to Anseth, then Aneth for an operator of the local trading post. The discovery of oil and gas in the area accelerated settlement and population growth. Kent
Located along the San Juan Skyway and Colorado's scenic byways is the town of Mancos Colorado.
Founded in 1894 Mancos had been home to cattle ranchers and cowboys. Before settlers arrived Mancos was home to the Ute and Navajo people. The name “Mancos” comes from the famous Dominguez-Escalante Expedition of 1776, though the reason for the name in unknown.
When Mancos was founded it was a trading center for Montezuma county and at that time the bustling city today of Cortez was only a wagon stop along the way.
Mancos was a stop along the Denver, Rio Grande & Southern Railway, connecting Durango to the east, and to the Telluride mining districts up north, via Dolores. Ranchers in the Mancos Valley provided beef, timber, and other agricultural products to the mining camps.
Newspaper clippings:
Deseret news Jan 10, 1917 George Halls (Farmer's bishop in Mancos and a man he lived with when he was 15.)
Deseret News Jan 10, 1917 Second column
Tombstone Epitaph April 18, 1920:
1921 The Bulletin, Cassa Grande, Pinel County, December 3, 1921
George Halls and his wife Moiselle:
1900 census:
1900 census:
Charles completed his mission in December of 1900. Mary may be seen living with her children in the home of her parents in the 1900 Census:
Column headings: Name, relation, color, gender, birth, age last birthday, single widowed or divorced, note: Mary Halls has been married 5 years and has two children, while her husband is on a mission.
Mission photograph:
1910 census:
1930 census:
1930 close up:
1930 census:
1931 State of Washington:
1940 Census:
Recollection:
It
was only a scrap, and soaked completely, but since it represented a form of
human life I decided to keep it, and I put it on my saddle and sat on it to dry
it as I rode along. At night when I had made my camp and built my small fire, I
didn’t dare build a very big; one for fear of disclosing my location, - I got
out the little piece of paper, and though it was difficult in the dim light, I
read every word on both sides. And two things that were printed on that paper
struck me as being very true and worthwhile. – and good advice to anyone. I have tried to use it as a guide ever since. This is what it said:
"I
always feel more like saying Grace before reading a book than before eating a
meal.”
“Lord
help me to choose with equal care, my friends and my books, for they are both
for life. Help me to respect my mind as much that I will not read what has no
moral nor meaning. Assist me to get the moral and the meaning from everything I
read. Show me that as in a river, so in reading, the depths hold greater powers
than the shallows, and when I’ve learned this, give me courage to teach it to
others, and when that's done, stop me, and assist me to say a grateful Amen.”
“Every time you pray
sincerely to God, it makes His love pulsate thru your soul with such force that
all about you can feel it like a magnetic current.
Study
that word that is underscored until you know exactly what it means. Note carefully the prayers you hear uttered
and measure them by the standard of sincerity or artificiality.”Letter to Mary
Lee Mays from Farmer Brown Nov 6, 1955
Letter:
Farmer Brown
1146 E 8th
Street
Mesa, Arizona
We prayed for rain in
the Salt River Valley, the Lord answered our prayers, not by increasing the
annual rain fall, but by giving us courage to use our imagination and
initiative to build dams to conserve what rainfall we have which formerly did
more damage by floods and washouts than it did good than as a byproduct of our
dams we found an immense amount of electric power which we were much in need
of.
We pray for the Lord
to give to the widows and orphans while in reality that is our job not as a
duty but as a privilege, when we embrace this privilege giving our selves with
our alms we “Feed three” and strange to say, for (truth is stranger than
fiction if it could be told) we unconsciously feed ourselves with the richest
portion of that which we give away. Try
the experiment by attending the Brown reunion next year at Downey, Idaho and
giving to me some of that youthful camaraderie which you have in such rich
abundance. I need it.
This I believe – that
Love is action not reaction. Billiard
balls react because they can’t do anything else. Human beings respond as a result freedom of
choice, decision. Your love for a person
does depend upon his love for you if it is not love it is only negotiable
investment with the hope of making dividends.
I want to write a
letter to the “Homer Brown” Bugle” Homer
Brown is my father and mother tells me that I am related to him by marriage.
His seed does not
equate that of Abraham but it is on the way.
To those of you who
expect to go to Alaska I would recommend that you don’t go. Especially if you are eight seven or
over. It is written, “man is that he
might have joy.” You can get more joy by
touring Arizona in winter and Idaho and Utah in summer.
No matter if you have
been to the Alps or the Andes you should go to the “Glacier National.” You will thank the Lord for the beauties of
nature and for your capacity to enjoy.
“Joy is an inside job.”’ “Tis
more blessed to give than to receive” is a statement of simple philosophy whose
depths we do not fully comprehend simply because we do not practice the art of
giving.
It is not necessary
to give away all our money or all of our property in order to practice this
art, but if we practice giving freely of courage, of hope of love opportunity
with the accent on love. Love is the
greatest force in the world and the least understood and seldom used. Love is not negotiable and is never found on
bargain counters.
.
Farmer Brown – Selected Journal Entries
April 6, 1960
This I believe that: The highest ecstasy of human
fulfillment comes thru the realm of meditation.
April 9, 1960
“The unknown increases in arithmetical progression as
each unit of knowledge is acquired by man.” Cressy Morrison
The above statement confirms the diagram that William
Halls (father-in-law) drew for me about
60 years ago. The small circle
represents the known, the larger circle represents the unknown, and as the circle
of the known expands to equal the circle of the unknown - the process reveals a
still larger circle of unknown which circle you were unaware of before. So the principle of relative proportions
stays the same.
For years I have accepted the idea that “It matters
not so much what happens to you, as what your attitude is toward what happens
to you.” This I must have accepted in
theory only but when it came to implementing that philosophy and letting it
govern and control my behavior I must have been, and still am, seriously at
fault, my hope lies in the fact that I still “hunger and thirst after
righteousness.”
April 17, 1960
Went to priesthood meeting heard discussed the idea
that the God of the Old Testament was a God of hate, revenge jealousy and
destruction. Wane Davis said that God
had a right to exercise all of these abilities but that man had not that
right. Brother Rhoton said conditions
change and what was right once is wrong at another time. He illustrated this by referring to his early
days when it was wrong to “Foxtrot” and now it is right. Many of the members conceded with both of
these ideas but I could not agree - that God did not want to be disagreeable.
I told the group that God is a God of love and always
has been. That he is a God of constructive
purposes and always has been, that he is not a God of destruction and
never has been. That when a people or
nation is destroyed they destroy themselves that as Toynbee points out that of 21 civilizations that have faded and gone 19
of them committed suicide. That early records and history misinterpreted the
inevitable laws of compensation and called them personal interventions of
God.
That God never interferes with free agency and that to
force man would be inconsistent with the law of freedom of choice. Of course some
orthodox members that agree with Bro Julien promptly opposed that. After meeting two members including Smith Skousen,
the class leader, thanked me for my contribution. This is but a cross section of the divergent
opinions of a small group of men who are members of the church who are supposed
to be indoctrinated by one faith.
Farmer Brown: April 21, 1960 12:30 AM
Just past midnight.
Not often do I feel like recording dreams; I am not going to record the
one that I have just awakened from, but the one I had after I awoke I would
like to review sometime, so I am making a note of the inspiring impression that
commanded my attention and respect so profoundly that I want never to
forget. "When it gets dark enough
you can see the stars.” The dream made
it dark enough, and I saw the stars because I woke up, not down.
This I believe that: there is a difference between
being childlike and being childish. To
be child like is a crowning achievement, one is on his way to maturity; but to
be childish something is the matter - one is revealing symptoms of
sickness. To forgive is being childlike;
to hold grudge is being childish.
When I wrote to the paper known as “Homer Brown
Bugle” announcing the transition of my wife I titled the brief article “A
change of address.” “Death is but a
door, leading into a school room not a court room.” No after my dream I want to
extend that statement and make it read also - life is but a door leading into a
schoolroom not a courtroom.
EDUCATION means to draw out. Reason forbids that we send childlike people
to prison or to court in order to draw them out. Those environments would draw
out the wrong attitude and the worst behaving.
Love not only adjourns court it dissolves it - as Christ did in the case
of Mary Magdalene and "the woman at the well.” There was no sentence pronounced in either
case. No time limit set, no probation,
no bond required. The bond that love
recognizes; is the bond of free agency, Even God does not ignore that bond.
My dream impressed on me the modus operandi of
forgiveness - showed that the act of
forgiveness is for me not for the person who offended me. When I awoke I prayed to God to forgive me for
being offended, it is childish to be offended, to be easily offended leads to
self pity and that is but one step from self-righteousness.
From this day, past midnight, I think it will be
easier for me to forgive, why shouldn’t it be - it's for my benefit, I am the
one who is released from the death dealing disease of gangrene of the soul.
April 25, 1960
The subject was repentance - a thing we know little
about because we don’t practice it.
This I believe that: repentance is a conveyance that
should be used daily or it corrodes, rusts, disintegrates and the batteries go
dead.
One class member said that repentance is only to be used
when sin was committed, calculated or premeditated and it is not required when
a mistake is made or an error committed; that repentance consisted of feeling
guilty.
The earliest definition of the work repentance says
Fosdick was “To turn your feet around,” This meaning simplifies the that and
makes it cover any kind of wrong doing as well as sin – immoral and amoral. Went to sacrament meeting and found a group
of enthusiastic workers full of zeal and willing to work. The future looks
bright.
April 27, 1960
This I believe that: Repentance is a gift from God
guaranteeing a passport to return. To
know the definition of the word repentance is of little value unless we
implement the knowledge and practice daily what we know.
May 8, 1960
Aunt Lily still feels heart broken because David did
not want to be buried in the regulation temple clothes. She breaks down every time she mentions it.
Another case of worshipping the symbol in place of
what the symbol stands for - something that we are all at fault in both past
and present. I told her that Dave had
not committed a sin by his last request, that God is just and sensible and
would not hold us guilty for not following some man made fashion guide that was
man made and that I do not think he ever went into the business of designing
fashions for underwear or burial costumes and that principles, honor, behavior
and love are the issues that will make for harmony in the hereafter as they
have stood for good will here.
I don’t know what effect our conversation had on Lilly
but we will wait and see. Some people
would think my views were the proof of my apostasy.
May 9, 1960
Louis Halls came over yesterday and proved that
boredom does not diminish with old age.
He would tell the same experience thee or four times and then laugh
exultantly after each recital.
May 10, 1960
Love is not only an attitude of mind it is an
activity. Jesus asked Peter, “Lovest
thou me,” Peter answered in the affirmative.
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” Feed
in this sentence is a verb denoting action. He did not say keep that sweet emotion in your
mind, but get a move on you, do something about it.
“What defeats a woman, if anything does is not being
loved.” Rhona Jaffe. This concept of love is universal and it is
fallacious; Love is never found on a bargain counter or at an auction sale, it cannot
be bought or sold, it can only be given.
Love is like the light from a lantern it starts from
within the center and radiates outward, you can’t get it from the receiving end
you have to start from the giving end.
When we hear it said, “I would love, if you would love
me,” we know it is an attempt to commercialize an endowment that is not or never
was in the field of barter or exchange.
When we actually love our neighbor as ourselves we
increase our love of self but we don’t let it get out of balance, and to keep
them even, is an art that can only be achieved by practice, which is more
difficult than learning to play the violin.
We think and act and do like the community thinks and
acts and does, but conformity is no guarantee of unity. Military drill or brain washing may achieve
conformity of action of body and brain and may be far from the souls purpose.
This I believe that: It is a tragedy to lack the
capacity to love. One who falls in love
with self has not need to fear competition.
May 14, 1960
“Who is my enemy?” is a question that I want an
answer to. It is frequently said that he
was his own worst enemy and that no one can hurt you permanently but
yourself. It is not difficult for a
thinking person to accept of this philosophy in theory, but few men can live by
it and implement it in actual practice.
Mark Anthony’s life is one of the most forceful
examples of the truth of the above statement that history has recorded. Just after 38 conspirators had stabbed Julius
Caesar to death for the purpose of getting the Roman government into their own
hands, Mark Anthony at Caesars funeral with his forceful speech, his fearless
courage and his magnetic personality turned the tide, with the help of Octavius
Caesar, and organized forces and began a long fierce struggle with the
conspirators and actually took the world away from them. In his struggle for the right he lived on
rations eating insects, but his hardships only made him stronger and more
popular. But when the power of Antony
seemed secure and further effort seemed unnecessary Anthony became idle; he
fell victim to ease, and he could not overcome that.
He also fell in love with the bewitching Queen
Cleopatra of Egypt; his great mind became clouded with the fumes of wine and
lust, he lost interest in the processes that had developed him and ease, apathy
and idleness “transformed him into a strumpet's fool” Shakespeare. And when what he called his
"enemies" were almost knocking at Cleopatra’s door to take him
captive he said to her:
“Let not Caesar’s minions
Mock the lion thus laid low;
Twas no foreman’s arm that felled him
Twas his own hand that struck the blow
He who pillowed on thy bosom.
Turned aside from glory’s way
When made drunk with thy caresses
Madly threw a world away.”
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
By William Haines Lytle
Thus he was his own worst enemy. His success, was a
conveyor which, directed in the wrong way, conveyed him to defeat.
All the water in the world,
However hard it tried,
Could never sink the smallest ship
Unless it [gets] inside.
And all the evil in the world,
The blackest kind of sin,
Can never hurt you the least bit,
Unless you let it in.
Author unknown
May 18, 1960
In reading the book “The Naked Communist” by their own
statement documented by chapter and verse and page they do not hesitate to say
that by treachery deception and false promises of peace they will lead us into
bankruptcy and make us help to crush ourselves.
They say that all of their own people who are apathetic should be put to
sleep.
That was Nicks (Nikita Khrushchev) job under Stalin -
putting them to sleep by the thousands.
When he was visiting in the U.S. he was asked about that period of his
life, and he laughingly brushed the question aside and suggested we talk about
present things.
When we read about loving the Lord with all our heart
mind and strength, that seems within the range of the mind and seems within the
range of the possible. When we think of
loving our neighbor as our self that mental attitude also appears like it could
activate and at least approach. But then I think of even trying to love a man
like Stalin, Lenin or Nick whose whole mission and purpose is to destroy. Their deeds of murder are calculated cruelty
and their torture of the innocent are premeditated. I can not find a starting point to activate
love, yet when I read the history of Ernest Gordon, Star Daily and Stephen it
shows me that others have dissolved hatred merely by introducing love, just as
when we introduce the lighted candle the darkness is dissolves. Long years ago I learned from William Halls
(father-in-law) that “Every form of wrong doing is due to some for of ignorance.” And this philosophy is upheld by Jesus
himself.
Yet I have not yet found the way to implement the
principle and make it a rule of conduct.
It may be because I have not practiced forgiveness enough or it may be
that I don’t know how to repent. Yet,
the fact confronts me that such men studiously inflict such barbaric torture
and hatred surges thru my mind, not love. Christ not only knew the force of
love, he knew how to use it and he demonstrated that. “The bee that robs the flower also fertilized
it.”
May 21, 1960
Saw an example of industry that was unusual, three
little girls Twyla, Eleven, Donaq and Deta eight, all handling eggs on a
washing machine; 4,000 eggs daily. The
skill and swiftness with which they did their work showed that they had practiced
the art a long time and they were interested and responsible. In my opinion a large part of our juvenile
delinquency would be solved if children were provided with some essential work
to do daily.
May 22 1960
Dorothy Thompson says that the moral fiber of our
nation is softening year by year. And
the principle cause is money and ease.
Not that money in its self is evil or that rest is
wrong but that we don’t know how to use either one. We let money make us selfish and ease makes
us lazy.
May 23, 1960
This I believe that: Honesty is a relative term – so
is the word modesty. Fear is only
beneficial in short intervals, when that impels us to fight or flight but fear
in perpetuity destroys the ability to either fight or flee.
Fear plus anger prevents a mad bull from bleeding to
death, but fear and anger entertained at long periods will loosen and let down
man’s brutal jaw and make man unable to hope or greave.
May 27, 1960
Got up at 5:50 because I had enough sleep after a good
night’s rest
Rest is not quitting ones busy career,
Rest is the fitting of self to ones sphere
Tis loving and serving the truest and best,
Tis onward unswerving
‘This is true rest.
(Dwight)
This bit of logic I learned something like 55 years
ago, and though I have written it many times before I just want to see if I
remember it.
I am deeply impressed with the fact that the liberals
in our church are in what appears to be the hopeless minority. Yet in reviewing
the pages of history both written and unwritten I see that the venerable progress
that has been made has always been initiated by the minority.
It is always uncomfortable to be in the minority but
the ultimate rewards are always gratifying if one is in the right. Some minorities are fundamentally wrong like
Wayne Morse and Nick, but people like Lincoln, Jesus and Florence Nightingale
will never die nor will their royalties ever cease coming in, yet where they
lived they were stoned because they were in the minority.
The timid audience, in the field of liberal thinkers
in the Mormon Church, makes progress slower because they are most always
inarticulate, we dare to create but we fear to express. We can’t stand the persecution, yet persecution
has its values, if met intelligently and not stubbornly.
May 28, 1960
Received a letter yesterday from Mary Y. Brown
advising me not to intrude on her family by visiting my son Harold.
June 3, 1960
“Your sins always finds you
out but the collector always find you in”
“We never have it so good or
parted with it so fast.”
“The fellow who toots his own horn is usually in a fog.”
“The fellow who toots his own horn is usually in a fog.”
“A woman’s promise to be on
time usually arrives late.”
“Some TV. Shows should be
pitied not censored.”
“How are you? is a greeting
not a question.”
June 4, 1960
In looking back over my past history I am compelled to
marvel that as much maturity resulted as did result with such object ignorance
to start with. The early associates of
such older boys as Jack Miller and Fred Baker whose highest ambition seemed to
run to the gratification of sex. The
early invitations of girls like Nettie Burnham and Lola Brown and Josephine
Matthews; while these seductive temptations were successfully resisted,
physically the adverse mental attitudes have lasted all of my life. My early vocation on the range, hearing all
manner of rough language, witnessing the pernicious propagations of the species
with not too chaste an attitude was more exciting than instructive.
But as a balancing force my mother taught me virtue, a
belief in God, a high regard for honesty and courage. Then I had the impact of such influences that
William Halls, George Halls, and Mary Halls who was my life long
sweetheart. The ideals of these high-minded
people became my ideals and had tendency to counteract or at least to modify my
earlier negative influences.
After marriage my work in the church developed in me if
not a love for people at least a deep regard and respect for people and
sometime after we moved to Arizona when I was 41 years old and my horizon
became extended and my acquaintance with good people not members of the church;
my tolerance grew and I began to realize that “Virtue is its own reward” and
that the love of God is impossible until preceded by the love of people.
Then I started a systematic cultivation of love for
people. My work for and with the public
brought me in direct contact with Frank Evens of Salt Lake City, Herbert G
Hoover, Sam Thompson of Illinois, Mrs. C. W. Sweell of Indiana and many other
strong characters and forceful personalities. Director Wm Cook of the extension
service, Dr Rufus B. Vonklinsmit of the University of Arizona where ideals of
humility and courage that caused me to raise my sights and gave me hope that by
implementing these ideas I could start on the road to maturity. A road that I had detoured from for nearly
44 years; now at 86 I would be called a failure if measured by financial
criteria. I never could get the
enthusiasm in the realm of acquiring wealth and yet I doubt that Christ could have
done a finer job in his field if he had been a millionaire and his apostles,
which followed him in the first century of Christianity, changed the world and
they did the job without money.
Former chief of staff Omar Bradley said in summing up
our immaturity, “with the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in
danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescence. Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped
our capacity to control it. We have too
any men of science and too few men of God.
We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the
Mount. Man is stumbling blindly thru
spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death.
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom,
power without conscience; ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical
infants. We know more about war than we
know about peace; know more about killing than we know about living.” This is
20 Centuries claim to distinction and progress.
The great actor, reader and elocutionist who could
repeat the 23 Psalm to a thunderous applause with all the polished periods and
shades of inflation, then called an elderly grey haired man from the row in the
audience come to the state and repeat the same psalm. This old man did with bowed head; subdued
voice and reverent attitude. At the
conclusion there was no applause not a sound, nothing but hushed silence the
noted actor said to the audience. I know
the words to the 23 psalms but this man knows the shepherds and your silence is
testimony of the most profound applause.
“Humility that divine force, so seldom utilized by man
and yet available by all men ‘who spoil the bread and spill the wine,’ which
spent with due respective thrift can make brutes men and men divine” John
Ruskin.
Since 1921 when I read H. G. Wells definition of
humility I have tried to understand it and implement it but it is one of the
most elusive things that I have ever tackled.
The times when I have felt it most, have been occasions when I was
trying least, when I utterly lost myself in the service for others. Those who make the loudest claims of
humility have the lest of it. The actor
who repeated the 23 psalms did not have it and knew he did not have it, he also
recognized it in the old man and acknowledged it by referring to the silent
applause which was more impressive than the loud applause that he himself had
just received.
June 7, 1960
Leanora said today “Your presence engenders the spirit
of love.” If that is so I wonder why it
does not work that way in my own family with Mary Y. for instance.
June 13, 1960
Mary Y. wrote me that Harold had been arrested jailed
and fined $300 for drunk driving. Lucille
(Harold’s younger sister born 1901) paid
the fine. It seems to me that it would
be safer for him and for the public to take his drivers license away than for
someone else to play his fine and then have the offence repeated.
This I believe that:
Tough breaks can be turned into blessings. But the turning is sometimes very difficult
and sometimes impossible or at least it seems impossible.
History pages are filled with examples when men and
women have turned their disappointments into helps “As the oyster turns into
pearl by the sand that annoys it.”
1. Milton wrote “Paradise Regained” after he had gone
blind.
2. Chopin beautiful compositions came off his pen
while he was slowly dying of tuberculosis
3. Beethoven was too deaf at 30 to hear his latest
symphony in its premier.
4. At 45 Columbus considered himself a flat failure
but at 46 he won himself a ringside seat among the immortals and inspired of
every kind of opposition.
5. Miguel de Servantes lost his right hand at 57 then
he wrote Don Quixote with his left hand
6. Thomas
Carlyle had stomach ulcers for 15 years and twice he almost died, after which
he wrote “The History of the French Revolution.” Then he loaned the manuscript to a friend
whose housemaid burned it up. He did
not say a word but sat down and rewrote the entire thing again.
This I believe that: You can do what you want to if
you want to enough
Thomas Jefferson’s two sons murdered one of
Jefferson’s slaves and cut him to pieces in their fathers meat house because
the slave had mutilate one of their mother’s keepsakes. But Thomas did not let that disgraceful act
corrode his life or even slow down his development or retard his climb to
greatness.
Yet when my son gets arrested, jailed and fined $300
for drunk driving I feel like my hopes have crumbled.
John Bunyan a tinker was kept in jail for 12 years
because of his religious beliefs and there he wrote “Pilgrims Progress”
considered one of the most important books in my library.
Sir Isaac Newton spent a year working out a
mathematical formula and just as he was about to reach the answer, his pet pup
climbed upon the table and tore his works to shreds. Newton spanked the pup and then devoted seven
years to rewriting the formulae:
After these and other examples by the hundreds why
should I think that I have all the rough breaks? Helen Keller used hers to promote
optimism. Johnnie Smith was born blind
or nearly so, and yesterday I saw him tuning Verlan’s piano with as much speed
and skill as one could do if he had his vision.
Yes, if his widowed mother could have prevented it she would never have
let him go away to school. He was born
in an environment that he did not like and he changed it.
June 22, 1960
Rebels are made from life, not from ancestors. Rebels usually make it easier for the descendants
that follow; thus the descendants become soft.
My ancestors as far as I can determine were rebels both politically and
religiously. That is why they helped
fight the Revolutionary War and later became Mormons; that also may account for
my becoming soft. However, I am
considered a rebel by some. I think that
I am just a liberal.
With the reference to eternity this I think that at “86”
I am not near the end, I am just farther from the beginning, for eighty six
years every night has been followed by a day, every sunset has been followed by
a sunrise so when the final sunset comes, I don’t think the established law of
the universe will be broken or repealed.
So I rest my case in the assurance that a final sunrise will follow the
closing day of transition.
It is impossible to understand the pranks that
hereditary plays on us and the way it shapes our destiny or rather influences
us to behavior that shapes our destiny and to try to understand the countless
thousands of ways the environment turns our feet around and actually inverts
our eternal attitude thru which digressions we reach a philosophy that leads us
to a port that we never dreamed of reaching.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
--
Joyce Kilmer
This I believe that: Grace is an inward and outward
harmony, seminally spiritual.
June 23, 1960
Occasionally aloneness is essential to spiritual
maturity but like so many virtues if carried to excess can be come damaging,
not that the virtue is changed, but the excess carries it beyond the point of
diminishing return and the results are changed from good to evil.
Laughter is redemptive; remedial it shakes the brain
ash out lets the oxygen in and burns up the waste matter. But ”excessive laughter is the religion of
the little; the low hills are marked with flowers and greenery, but the lofty
peak stands austere and desolate holding a prophecy of doom” Ambrose Bierce
The above sounds cruel and harsh yet to me it is
true. Excessive laughter leaves no
chance fore pause nor poise it offers no opportunity for creative response, in
fact it is more of a physical reaction than a response, a billiard ball reacts
to the force that propels it. It can do
nothing else; can go in no other direction.
Socrates responded with deliberate calculation, a matter of free agency,
of individual choice, while the billiard ball has no choice.
I have my grip full of other pencil like pens that won’t
write they will be going along nicely then all at once they won’t make a mark,
some folks say it is slick paper that is at fault.
June 25, 1960
To maintain a balance between work and rest is a
delicate matter; it is so easy to go to extreme in either direction and since
it is my nature to go to extremes I am continually going too far, first in work
and then too much rest. In my earlier
years work was almost dissipation now at 86 resting is almost a hobby. I feel guilty when I spend too much time
resting but not quite guilty enough to stir me to actions. Yet I know that action is life and inertia is
death.
June 29, 1960
Drove with Scott and Jessie to Rawling Wyoming, most
of the way is a beautiful drive; some of it is long stretches of waste nothing
but bad land. Over this same trail my
mother came with her parents and brothers and sisters when she was 8 years
old. I don’t understand yet how they
managed for water for themselves and their animals. Fort Bridger, which was formerly Camp Bridger
until Johnson’s Army confiscated the whole thing, is a beautiful tract of meadow,
trees, and streams, of clear water.
My father (Homer Brown) as a young man on his way to Salt
Lake got snowed in at Camp Bridger for the winter. Food was so scarce that they had to kill and
eat their animals, they made these sacrifices endured these hardships because
of their love for the church and then my own father and many others later left
the church or at least he was excommunicated apparently thru personal
prejudice, in an event father was cut off and spent the remainder of his life
out of the church until David H. Cannon, John H. Henry Smith, Francis M. Lyman
and Brigham Young Jr. persuaded me to go to the temple and be baptized for him or
behalf of my father Homer Brown. In the
ceremony all of his former rights, powers, priesthood privileges and family was
restored. In my mind it is doubtful that
they were ever taken away.
This I believe that: No tribunals on earth, either
civil or religious can unbaptized me or sever my relationship with God.
July 2, 1960
This is my mother’s anniversary. (Sarah born July 2, 1834)
In reading a few chapters of “The Virginian” I am impressed
anew with the force of character that radiates from a person either in silence
or in words. We feel they either make us
welcome or unwelcome.
“Every little movement has a meaning all its own.”
Every thought and feeling in some action can be
shown.”
The above philosophy is brought forth in almost every
page of Wisters book and if we are keen observers we see it and feel it in our
daily contact with people and with nature.
Sometimes “No comment” is more expressive than a volley of words. Oliver Wendell Holmes said:
Better too few words from the woman we love than too
many.
While she is silent, nature is speaking for her,
When she speaks she is working for herself.
(And the angel retires.)
The ability to listen, the ability to reach back, the
ability to re– appraise our motives, the ability to write our troubles in the
sand of the seashore before the tide comes in is a prescription that will lead
to human fulfillment; a further maturity.
This I believe that: Salvation is not a destination,
but a journey.
July 4, 1960
Rereading the Virginian
is just as interesting as the first time 56 years ago. The way Owen Wister has of putting words
together to make them express clearly and forcefully the thoughts of honest
people and even dishonest people, of people with courage of cowards, of people
of clear resolve and people who waver.
Karl Peterson said that Satan was the most successful
salesman in history. I had to disagree
with that, though I could have kept silent and not expressed my
disagreement. Admitting that there is a
Satan which I seldom admit only to give the other fellow what he thinks is a foothold
admitting he is a salesman, which I don’t admit, he only sold one third of the
hosts of heaven, and one third was not voting, God let the entire population
make their own choice. One third voted a
straight ticket and one third was none partisan which really totaled two thirds
on God’s side, so where is the skillful salesmanship? Satan otherwise exhibited there; if he did
entice that one third away, which I don’t believe he did, they just made a
wrong choice which everybody does at some point on some subject.
This thing called conscience is enough to tangle me up
when people say they keep their consciences clear, I wonder if they don’t use chloroform
or some tranquilizer? When it comes to
conscience that’s a creature of education.
It depends on how its been brought up.
If your born broad gauge and your parents or church try to make you operate
on a narrow gauge road it going to do a great injustice to your conscience if
you put in a life time trying to confirm.
It will require more than persuasion or even brainwashing and then you
will turn out to be a failure.
July 5, 1960
These I believe that: one had better have an
intelligently educated conscience than to have a clear one.
I have known the clearest of atmospheres to produce a
mirage, which was the most misleading deceptive lying thing I ever met. If one were intelligently educated he would
not accept of optical illusions for truth; I have frequently been able to
detect a fool in a circus, but I have never yet been able to tell just how much
of a fool he is until he educated me by repetitions practices which convinced
me that maturity is the journey of a destination.
I have just reread the “Virginian” a book that I have
admired and whose philosophy has influenced my life or good and helped me in
making decisions which were difficult to make; of course I realize that Mr.
Wister took all of the knowledge, all of the wisdom, all of the wit, all of the
courage, all of the patience, all of the higher qualities of pure love and
placed them in the person of the Virginian.
He makes him win every argument; he always makes the right decision he
always conquers in the end.
His attitude toward the tenderfoot, his attitude
toward Emily, “the old the maid” then his kindly feeling toward shorty “the
lost dog,” his mastery of the self-righteous missionary, his bending over
backward to see that “Trampas” was given a fair deal, even his victory over the
good Bishop of Wyoming. But I think Mr.
Wister signally failed to make him win the argument with Molly Wood when she
tried to convince him that he should not kill “Trampas.” His justification for hanging the cattle
thieves was not only sublime and brilliant it was local and just, but while
“Trampas according to all human standards should have been killed and by those
same standards “The Virginian” was
justified in shooting him but he was not justified in doing it on the eve of
his wedding on account of what the anticipation of it was doing to Molly Wood,
the woman he loved.
I did not catch this weak link in Wisters logic the
first time I read his book nor the second or even the third time but this time
it glared at me. It did not lessen my
respect for the author or my appreciation of his book but I am glad I found
that weak link in the chain
Some people can be pinning for love and never know
what is the matter with them. Some
people can be starving for love and unwittingly refuse it when it is offered to
them, thus they go on withering until they perish. Rank and cast and so called noble ancestors
and misled people make them underestimate and even completely overlook the
greatness in humble people because these humble people’s ancestors did not come
on the “Mayflower” or fight in the Revolutionary War. Such measurements and estimates of character
are usually made by people who were born on a narrow gauge pattern or inside of
doors that open but to golden keys. Some
people while doing their best can make you feel as comfortable as if you were
at a funeral and with one like Mary Y present you hardly notice the absence of
a coffin.
When one tries to educate a conscience from the head
alone, he finds a disappointing human - without humanity. If the heart is left out of the curriculum
the soul perishes and you are likely to get a Chauncy Spilsbury a Dave Harman
or an Al Capone.
July 10, 1960
I won’t go to the Sunday school; the lesson is on
genealogy. Somehow I can’t warm up to
that subject and I don’t feel a deep sense of guilt either. Some of my perennial delinquencies make me
feel guilty but not that one. I did not
inherit that apathy because my mother was very devoted to genealogy and many of
my people go almost out of balance in that field and they are mostly good
people and intelligent.
Had three letters from my daughters and some from Mary
Y. She is one who has gone to the extreme.
August 17, 1960
I just read in “This Week Magazine” where two French
girls were talking, one said to the other “Well as for me I want to live well,
do my work well and die well.” What a forceful
sermon? To live well - what does it mean
to live well? Is it high living, rich
living, easy living, No! Good living
implies useful service, sharing, giving of self, without expecting or wanting
reward.
“You can’t always be a hero, but you can always be a
man.” Ben Franklin
“Just because you have fallen in love with the dimple
is no reason for marrying the whole girl.”
W.C Fields
“Building boys is better than mending men.’ W I Williamson
Kindness is the golden thread by which society is
bound together. Goethe
This I believe that: God never hides anything from mankind
that when he hungers and thirsts after righteousness he will find it, if he
hungers enough and hunts intelligently.
This I believe that: God does not withdraw his Spirit
from man, that whenever men are separated from the spirit of God, it is men who
withdrew.”
September 4, 1960
This
I believe that: Nature does not indulge in gifts. That
whatever values we receive in any field are the wages that we are
paid for. Work well done. Compensation is the law that this
operation is known by.
September 30, 1960
I still am convinced that there is an eternal law
that operated continually whether we are aware of it or not and this
law is operating for our good, not for our harm, for our health not for
our sickness, This law invites us to use it for health, happiness and
abundance if we will but tune in on station L.A.W. This
idling instrument is our mental attitude.
“As a man thinketh in his heart so is he” is not
just a catchy phrase nor a mere platitude, but it is a shaft on which
a principle revolves, it is as actual as light, as powerful as magnetism,
as warming as the rays of the sun, as stimulating as a father’s
blessing. This law is working for us now but our unbelief makes
it ineffective. We can’t see the beautiful sunset if we look
only to the east. We could perish of thirst on the banks of
a sparkling brook if we refused to drink. This refusal may be
the result of ignorance or fear but the perishing foes are just the
same.
“He jests at scars who never felt a
wound.” Anna Robertson Brown
He who has never know sorrow is strangely crude and untaught.
This I believe that: “Blessed are
they that mourn for they shall be comforted," Jesus
But Jesus came revealing a new meaning for
sorrow showed how it could be redemptive, remedial showed how it can
break through the shut doors of self and make men’s hearts beat with a
universal sympathy.
“Sorrow and misery are two different things, sorrow
is a school teacher who kicks us closer to God. Misery is
natures protest against degeneration.” David Star Jordan.
October 29 1960
I am thankful for the leadership like David O. McKay
who can become an efficient administrator without loosing the art of being a
shepherd of souls. If ward teachers
could realize that they are shepherds of souls it would not be hard to get 100%
teaching done, it would be difficult to stop them, if leaders would emphasize
100% quality teaching in place of 100% statistical visits the results would be
both revolutionary and evolutionary.
“There should be in every ward better music and more
of it.’ There should be in every ward
better speaking and less of it.” Adam S.
Bennion.
November 1, 1960
This I believe that: the term “Fasting and Prayer,” as used so many
times by Jesus, are inseparable. That to
engage in one without the other brings only partial results. I think the church leaders of all churches
have stressed prayer and overlooked and even ignored the great spiritual value
of fasting. I am convinced that fasting
not only cleanses the physical body but also clears the soul for a freer flow
of spirituality.
January 1, 1961
The spirit of writing the last few months has somehow
faded out, but since this is at the beginning of a new year and since I am so
well and so many things to be thankful for and since I recently put in 3 days
or parts of three days work on the new 18th ward chapel and felt all
right about it and since I put in four days at the festival of learning from
which I received many times more value than the tuition fee and the physical
and mental effort required to attend; I feel that I owe it to this diary to
make some kind of entry or expression of gratitude for when we fail to express
our gratitude, I think that feeling grows dimmer and when we cheerfully and
sincerely express our gratitude our capacity to appreciate grows and our
ability to estimate value becomes more accurate.
January 2, 1961
This I believe that it is just a damaging to
healthy maturity to teach, “The church can do no wrong” as to
teach “The king can do no wrong.”
I remember about the middle of my two-year
mission for the church, Apostle John W. Taylor was president followed
by J. A McRea, who for some reason did not like me.
So two years after I was released from my
mission McRea visited my home town Mancos and asked one of the Stake
authorities how I was getting along in the church. “Well,” said the
high councilor Thorne, “He is Superintendent of the Sunday
School and head of the ward teachers which body is doing the most
efficient work in the history of Mancos, besides being the head of a local
dramatic association and starting a new meeting house and amusement
hall. Why?"
“Well,” McRae said, “I am surprised that he is
in the church.” Supposing my family, my ward, my stake and my
community had taken his appraisal of me when I returned home and had
treated me according to his measurements? I would probably
have embittered me and pushed me out of the church; it would have
required more native strength and mature judgment than I had at the age
of twenty-five years. I know people who have been driven
out of the church by prejudice intolerance and total absence of love
or even friendly consideration.
This I believe that: We can
never entirely destroy evil, we can never completely define it because our
ideas and beliefs are constantly changing, that is, if we grow,
the greatest evil can sometimes be transformed into the greatest good
or in other words can be directed in such a way that the results of evil
can be made to produce good. Paul’s misfortune of
being stricken with blindness lead him to recognize the spirit of Christ and
his entire life was transformed. Is it ever right to do
wrong?
January 3, 1961
If I had followed the advise of church leaders
I would have entered into polygamy and married a second wife, and if I had
followed that advise I would have been in open violation of the law and
also been dis-fellowshipped in the church, which many of the
church members did and were persecuted and prosecuted, as Walter C
Lymon, Richard. R. Lyman John W. Taylor, Matthew Cowley and all of Short
Creek Saints were.
January 6, 1961
Lue Neilson told me how Lucy Phelps mother
said that Farmer Brown (me) is just as guilty as Homer and
Lucy, which is probably true as far as guilt is concerned, but she
said, “I got even with him, I told Hugh B. Brown’s sister about
Farmer Brown’s deceptive conduct and told her to tell Hugh to stop calling
Farmer to the stand in his public meetings because it is a
disgrace.”
Well I guess it is working all right for Hugh
did not invite me to the stand the next time I attended conference where he
spoke. Oh! Well, I don’t think that will hurt me if
I don’t give my consent. Homer Phelps did not let it
hurt him though hundreds of his good Mormon friends and even his
own family turned against him. Yes, Homer has not
turned against them. He speaks well of them, not with standing
they turned his son against him and against Lucy, the mother of the
boy. The only crime that Homer had committed was that he
was friendly to the Short Creek people but that was enough to have
him excommunicated. Fear has been used by church and state from
the beginning of history to force people into conformity, in spite of the
fact that God gave man his free agency and his son came to earth to
help men to become free.
January 8, 1961
When a protestant man marries a Catholic woman
he is required to pledge before the priest that he will see that the
children are taken to the Catholic school and to the Catholic
church. This in my opinion is an admission that the
Catholic theology is orthodox and that the Catholic schools are superior
to the public schools and indirectly that the woman is better than the
man.
If the woman acts upon this and assumes an
attitude of superiority, it automatically puts the man in
an inferior position.
I have seen this situation verified in at
least two marriages where two of my sons married Catholics
and one grandson married a Catholic. The results were
far from happy and I think that pledge at the beginning had much to
do with reversing the order of who should be the head of the family.
January 9, 1961
Last night in sacrament meeting a returned
missionary Elder Evans, I think, a son of Walter Evans, spoke. He had
splendid logic forceful language and a good personality but he was
an exhibitionist, his posture was studied like a dramatist studying
for effect; his emphasis on words, his poise was deliberate calculated
at times with the idea to please like, “this would be an appropriate
time to smile, or now a frown would be effective."
This I believe that: exhibitionism
always cheapens a religious discourse.
January 14, 1961
History shows that men move in cycles. The cycles are something like this,
1st people go from chains to spiritual faith
2nd with spiritual faith they gain courage.
3rd with courage they gain liberty
4th with liberty people produce abundance,
5th with abundance they develop selfishness
6th from selfishness they go into compliancy
7th from compliancy they sink into apathy
8th from apathy they go into dependence
9th from dependency they return into
bondage.
I had almost always known the end results of apathy
but I had never before heard them traced out step by step as these 9 steps so clearly
set forth the rise decline and fall of man and empires. These steps can be seen and followed in all
of history. Egyptian, Babylonian, Bible. Book of Mormon, Greece, and and part way through the history of the
United States of America. Question: Does
old age bring on apathy? Answer No
apathy brings on old age!
“Think twice before you speak, especially if you
intend to say what you think.”
January 19, 1961
This I believe that:
Age should not be determined by a calendar but by one attitude of mind.
Some people live on love alone and when love is withheld
or fades out those people perish.
January 16, 1961
This I believe that: it is not what happens to you
that counts, but the way you respond to what happens to you, your attitude of
mind.
“One ship sales east and the other sales west, by the
self same wind that blows, Tis the set of the sail and not the gale that determines
the course they go”
January 23, 1961
”The Will to
Live” tells me that our decisions as to what kind of sickness that we will
have are arrived at in our unconsciousness while we sleep and in our waking
hours after turbulent arguments between the unconscious and the un conscious
and while these decisions are arrived at thru the emotions they are carried out
by the physical mechanism of the body.
The emotions have their own compelling logic we actually single out an
organ to destroy as sacrifice on the alter of propitiation in appeasement for
something we have done that was wrong or we thought was wrong. This process is
carried on according to our standards which standards were acquired by
tradition or teaching or superstition.
Medicine speaks of tissue Memory. Something I had never heard of before yet
William halls use to tell me that everything has intelligence. Tissues say my book, remember what has
happened to them before and we may have forgotten it or think we have, but thru
the sub-consciousness these tissues actually invite a repetition of the
accident or the disease. This is what
insurance actually calls “accident-prone.”
This I am just beginning to understand.
When a wife has no love for her husband. She is likely
to spread an over abundance of food on the table in an attempt to compensate
for the absence of love but in reality she has simply provided the cause of the
ulcers and other digestive disorders while the husband and family unknowingly
eat their way into sickness and early death.
Psychiatrists explain the asthmatic wheeze as an aborted cry of the
infant for help. The author of “One Little Boy” says the most cases of
asthma have their origin in the absence of love.
January 30, 1961
My lesson for tomorrow night asks that I make a two-minute
talk on some incident of my mouth or childhood, but it does not say which
childhood the first or the second childhood.
I have not written a speech and timed it since I used
to speak over the radio where everything had to be timed that was 30 years ago.
Now I will see if I have lost the art.
When I was 13 years old I came from Utah to Colorado
by team and wagon, We crossed the Colorado river in the night under the most
terrifying circumstances which I will not take time to describe. The next day a kid 16 years old by the name
of Moses Gibson gave ma a licking - both eyes were not only black but they were
swelled shut. That day I resolved to get
even with Mose. The next year I was
working for an outfit on the range decked out in shaps spurs and six shooter,
They were worn in them days as utilities, not as the drugstore cowboy of today
wears them for exhibition purposes and my desire to get even with Mose Gibson
grew stronger. I even made plans for
revenge since the invention of double action colts made small kids equal to big
kids.
Twenty years later I was riding down the blue river
and I stopped at George Cospers for the night. Gosper kept a little store in addition to his
cattle business; he had to bring his good in by pack horse. A few cattle men out in the rock for a radius
of 30 mils would come in and get provisions which they would take home on pack
horses.
During the evening Cosper told me of an outlaw hiding
out in the rocks in a cave who would come in the night to within 14 mile of the
store where Casper would leave provisions and then look or feel under a certain
rock and find the money to play for the groceries.
The outlaw had robbed a bank and then killed an officer,
while making his get away.
I asked him the name of the outlaw and he said his
name is Mose Gibson.
The next morning I saddled my horse and rode on down
the blue river but I had had a rebirth; my revenge had dissolved and my hatred
had evaporated; Mose Gibson was punishing himself more than my puny hand could
inflict even with a colt six shooter. He
was in a self-constructed prison that was more in solitary confinement than any
prison made of stone or steel. That day
I pulled the thorn of hate out of my mind lest it turn to gangrene of the
soul.
February 1, 1961
Clear and cool.
Read on of Carnegie’s pamphlets on how to learn quickly the art of
speaking in public. I think his basic
principles are right but we don’t acquire the art without practice and that
takes time.
Carnegie says, “Get a subject that you are
enthusiastic about with and have an unquenchable desire to tell it to others
and we will find the way to tell it in ourselves, not in text books,” which I
believe, however that technique can be improved upon by intelligent
practice.
Practice does not make perfect unless it is
intelligently directed.
The road to strength is work; the way to perfections
is practice. When people or nations slow down in their struggle the angle of
the ascent is slower, when they get slower in their efforts the directions
levels off to a horizontal directions and when they stop thru apathy or any
other cause that line actually takes a downward direction.
February 8, 1961
Pilate was merciful until it became risky. It was his soul that needed washing not his
hands.
February 12, 1961
I never pass thru Chicago without stopping to visit
the statue of Lincoln by St. Gaugins and standing before it uncovered. I look
at those large feet and large hands, those long arms and long legs and I think
I see in them symbols of our young country with all of its youthful
awkwardness; then I look into the serious but mirthful face and I find there
qualities that have made the American. Then
I gaze into those earnest and steadfast eyes, eyes that can see things in their
right relationship and in their proper proportions. Eyes that see far more than they look at and
believe in far more than they see, they were eyes that belong to one who had
made a success because he has lived well laughed often and loved much, because
ha had filled his nitch and accomplished his task. He was a success because he
had gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children,
because he had given to the world the best he had and expected, the best from
others.
February 13, 1961
“A recipe for perpetual ignorance is to be satisfied with your opinions
and content with your knowledge.” Elbert
Hubbard
His life is an inspiration and his memory a
benediction.
February 14, 1961
“I must lose my self in action lest I wither in despair.”
Tennyson
February 16, 1961
“The great aim in education is not knowledge but
action.”
Herbert Spencer, the great English philosopher all of
my life ACTION has been my salvation.
And yet I am just now beginning to realize how almost every disorder in
any field can be improved or completely dissolved by intelligently directed
action, even rest is not inertia but modified action to rest we don’t stop
going we first change direction. Even repentance
is not stopping nor going backward, repentance is turning your feet around and
start traveling in the right direction, not stand still.
In the process of reform its more important what you
turn to than what you turn from.
Rest is not quitting your busy career
Rest is the fitting of self to your sphere
Tis loving and serving the truest and best
Tis onward unswerving this is true rest.
February 17, 1961
This morning my heart is filled with JOY and gratitude
to God for being one of his children and for being a part of his creations,
being slightly acquainted with some of his laws and for having a desire to live
in obedience to those laws and to constantly learn more about the operation of
His laws all of which were designed for the benefit of his children which He
created and called it good not bad or evil.
In 16 more days I will be 87 and I am happy to say in
this record I feel an urge to do things of a constructive value and to learn
more of the real purpose of life. One of
which is to help others to be well and happy.
This morning I feel more confident that I can deal
intelligently with my problems of which is being more tolerant and patient with
my children who I am sure I love with an undying love but when they are willing
to trade their right and privilege on the highway for a drink of whiskey it
disappoints me but does not make me love them less; what disturbs me more is to
have them argue that that is the right thing to do.
March 5, 1961
I never was 87 before. Got up with a headache but two cups of coffee
and one and one half hours of vigorous exercise at the woodpile I am now
feeling as fit as ever.
March 8, 1961
My memory reached back to 1887 when I saw a bunch of
wild cattle being swum across the Colorado River and after milling and
stampeding in midstream, swimming in a circle and pouring down stream into a
box canyon and death. I saw them rescued by a young man with ability to
perceive, wisdom to choose and courage and initiative to act without being
told. He rode into that torrent of muddy water roped one steer dragged him to
shore and the rest followed safely.
The text in our assignment was point, example, reason.
My reason was to show that some place in
every maturing American there comes a time when he can develop generalship. That
is the time when perceptive wisdom, courage and initiative are to be used in rapid
fire succession and if one quality is lacking; his ability as a general is
lacking.
March 14, 1961
I was forcefully impressed with the change
that enthusiasm can bring about in an individual, not alone in
his ability to make clear his message but the chemical change
that enthusiasm can produce in the individual himself, a change that
constituted the difference between the feeling of fatigue and restfulness,
between sickness and health, between apathy and animated zeal and
action.
Yes there are those who claim that we have no
right to even want to cause people to change – that is the whole purpose
of education. That is what happened when people began to think
that the world is round. Change is what brought into men’s minds the fact
that the sun does not revolve around the earth but that the earth
revolves around the sun. Be willing and ready to change.
Mar 15, 1961
Got up early to start to Nogales with Enas and Mary
Mays.
Notwithstanding the fact that I have demonstrated
thousands of times the fact that early rising produces a better balance of
activities thru the day and even promotes health of body and clearness of
mind. Yet I am lapsing into the habit of
turning over and going to sleep every morning.
“Y” lesson last night on enthusiasm should help to get back into that
habit of early rising, which habit by necessity forces me into form.
This I believe – that: “We do what we have to do and not a dam tap
more.” Hubbard, 50 years ago.
March 1961
Ned Newell an amateur photographer phoned and asked
permission to come out and take some pictures of me making me believe that he
chose only subjects of outstanding character and personality. It made it
easier for me because George’s two youngest children were here and they both
like to crawl all round on my lap so I rung them into the picture.
March 28, 1961
Ned Newell brought 9 large pictures of me and
Martha J. and George Halls Brown Jr. I think it is the best photography
that I have seen. We all appreciate the work of art and his gift to us.
April 15, 1961
While Jesus lived his disciples leaned upon
him; they depended on him, they took no initiative and they
did not develop. John and James were tinctured with a
cheap and selfish desire for show and honor: such as sitting on
the right hand and on the left hand of the master when he went into
his kingdom. Peter was a coward and a liar until it
got dark enough so he could see the stars, then he was not
only transformed, he was transfigured into a fearless truthful powerful
influence because his efforts in helping open the channel and let the
life of God flow thru. John and James lost their
desire for self-aggrandizement and began working for together when
they fell and knew the love of God sustained them and that thru love he
forgave them. Thru the coming of the Comforter they
were able to overcome selfishness, pretense and revenge.
Peter had to change his mind before he could
overcome race prejudice. When this was done he proclaimed
to the world a universal principle, “This I perceive that God is no
respecter of persons.”
This I believe that: – that
the same Comforter that transformed men in the days of Jesus has been
doing the same thing ever since to men who hunger and thirsted
after righteousness. Some few characters as proof
of there are Abe Lincoln, Gandhi, Henry Clay, Edmond Y. Ross of
Kansas, Herbert Hoover, General MacArthur and Joseph E. Robinson.
May 10 1961
This I believe that: we should prescribe for the sick
child’s parents in place of prescribing of the sick child. We should sometimes prescribe for the alcoholic’s
wife in place of the drunken man.
June 16, 1961
Felix Kerstin was born in Estonia became a Fin by
adoption became a celebrated massager and chiropractor, moved to Germany,
practiced his therapy on Himmler and proved the only Dr. who could relive the
pain that this, the greatest mass murder that ever lived, thus becoming indispensable
to Hitler’s top man. By that friendship
he was able and did get to trainloads of innocent people who were condemned to
the cremation ovens diverted to either concentration camps or to refuge in
Sweeter or Switzerland. He did not
redirect them himself but persuaded Himmler to so direct their trains and thus
he incurred the suspicion and hatred of most of the top brass except those
whose lived he had saved and whose health he had restored by his miraculous
tough and skill which enabled him to locate the disease and restore the patient
to normal health.
His enemies were constantly plotting his death even
when he was riding in Himmler’s private car but fortune or fate or destiny or friend
seemed always to protect him. When
Germany finally fell, Hitler dead and most of the war criminals found and
sentenced they were still hunting for him thinking that he must be guilty
because he was always associated with the Gestapo. Even our allies were suspicious and wanted
his execution but investigation finally not only found him innocent but exonerated
him as a hero in the cause of humanity and as a fighter for freedom. But they hung Brandt who was and accomplice
with Kerstin and did many descent things together with the ignoble deed. Himmler crushed a poison vile between his
teeth and died within 15 seconds.
July 7, 1961
This I believe that: pessimism is a disease of the
mental attitude where we habitually look for and find the worst side of people
and the worst side of things until, if persisted in, we lose the ability to
find or recognize the better qualities in people or the favorable potential in
things and thus unconsciously we hate, replacing love and ourselves becoming
slaves to a tyrant that we have created.
July 17, 1961
Yesterday I was asked to give my impression of
the parable “The Prodigal son” in Sunday school, which I
did. I have not heard any comments except from Leanora
Quist. Though the lesson that I learn from the parable
is in places unlike the teaching that we receive and is
somewhat unorthodox, yet I firmly believe that the boy who stayed
home was equally in need of repentance as the prodigal was because the
good boy had become self righteous conceited and unforgiving and what
made his sin more serious he did not know that he needed to
repent. And the father tried to soothe the jealous hearted
introvert by telling him “All that I have is thine.’” Yet
what was the intrinsic or everlasting values in all that he had? - land,
cattle, flocks and granaries and perhaps gold and silver? But
what he had to bestow were subject to moth and rust and decay, none
of these goods or chattels could he take with him in death, but his
selfish unrepentant nature. While his prodigal brother could
take with him into the eternity a clean shed made clean by the act of
repentance and the forgiveness of his Father in Heaven and the spirit
of atonement.
July 18 1961
This I believe that love is action.
July 21, 1961
“Science has found that nothing can disappear without a trace, nature
does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation.”
The above fact should be convincing to all but it is
not, simply because some minds do not accept of facts as evidence or as
proof. I have found this kind of mind in
the most unexpected places. The fact is
very convincing to me and also very comforting when contemplating the principle
of the eternal soul of man.
July 28, 1961
This I believe that: We could
not be in the attitude of prayer either physically or orally all of the
time, but if prayer is “the soul’s sincere desire,” then we can
have sincere desires always.
We can exercise love of God always; that is a
prayer. We can be helpful always; this is a form of
prayer. We can be hopeful and expectant of good which is
praying. So with this concept of prayer, we can pray always.
We have the potential to do all things if only
we know how to make the right connection with the source of power but if
that connection is broken thru negative thinking, or out of order because
of transgression the circuit is grounded as completely as if
the electric lines on your telephone were cut.
July 29, 1961
This I believe that: becoming grateful, like
becoming a musician, requires practice, it is not a lip service
like just saying thank you as one would brake the tip of an icicle to
bestow it upon one whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize but gratitude
is an act of the heart to express thru the mind and voice some way
or other. When it gets dark enough we can see the stars
and not before. I don’t know why this is so but it is.
It was not until the apostle’s hopes were
shattered, their king was dead that the Comforter came that they saw the
stars. Then it was that their courage became infinite, their
joy complete, their yoke was easy and their burden was
light. Not that the poundage was made less but their strength
was made greater equal to inhuman tasks. The apostles were not
exceptions. God is no respecter of persons. One of the
apostles said that and yet we have segregation and race prejudice:
the color classification in education and in politics and the
superstition of the curse of Cain in the church as exemplified by denying
the colored race the privileges of the priesthood.
Yes, in the days of Joseph Smith the Negros
held the priesthood. There is perhaps not one member in a thousand
who has ever read that bit of church history and seemingly the historians
and librarians don’t want it read. Why? If the truth made
us free, then let’s have the truth.
July 31, 1961
This I believe that: the test of any law is in its
application – its value is not dependent upon definition by any fallible human
mind.
We waste time quibbling over a definition when if we
would implement the principle we would get results at once, which would render
unnecessary any technical definition. Paul
in the 13 chapter of first Corinthians spent the whole chapter in defining
love, while Jesus demonstrated the principle in his every act.
Christian ministers have wasted
centuries trying to define fasting and prayer while Mahatma Gandhi implement the principle and brought political freedom to four hundred
twenty million slaves. He exerted more
influence on Great Britain though he was half naked and on foot than Creaser
did with armies and all the wealth and splendor of the Roman Empire.
August 18, 1961
This I believe that: there is no prescription that can
take the place of love. This little
girls mother is my niece; a very fine lady devoted to her religion and to what
she conceives her duty but the frustration of inflicting duties may have been
more than she could solve and the result was the elimination of some of them
and the choice of which duty to leave undone may have been the wrong choice and
the little girls was unintentionally left destitute of appreciation, of
companionship of love; thus the little girls emotions grew out of balance which
condition opened the channel for disease.
When the little girl brings her mother a hand full of
weeds and says, “Here mother I have
brought a bouquet,” and the other shuts herself off because she is mixing bread
or washing dishes, she has left an ungratified want of appreciation in the
little girl’s heart and the void is filled with something negative, something
not conductive to normal maturity. The
mother did not need the bunch of weeds neither did she want that
interruption. But the little girl wanted
and needed the affection of a good intention.
What the busy mother should have done was to dry her
hands, accept the bunch of weeds, put them in a vase and place them on the
mantle, take the little girl in her arms, kiss her and express a thank you my
dear for the beautiful flowers
“A weed is a flower gone astray
perhaps in some long by gone day
It bloomed in garden fair
And I’ve a thought if we’d but give it love and tender
care
The glory of its sweet perfume
The wonders of splendors bloom
Again would fill the air."
Whether that philosophy is true in the field of botany
or not I do not know but I am convinced that holds true in the field of human
relations.
No change in childhoods early day, no storm that
raged, no river that ran blue leaves it track upon the clay and slowly hardens
into man.” Ruskin
Billiard balls react because they can’t do anything
else. Human beings respond as a result
of choice, free agency, and decision.
Your love for a person does not depend on his love for you. When it does it is not love. It is only negotiable interest with the hope
of reward.
August 10, 1961
When I was about 15 years old living in Mancos
Colorado with Bishop George Halls, my mother lived in Malad, Idaho. I can remember when I would get a letter from
her I would cry with loneliness, though 15 years old, I was still a baby
longing for the love of a mother or someone.
But soon I fell or rose in love with the best girl on earth and maturity
began. I soon ceased wanting to go to
Malad.
To hold a deep sense of guilt and keep inflicting self-punishment
in an effort to purge ones self almost completely renders ones self-unable to
change or mature and also blocks the road the leads to a better life. While honestly looking inward with a view to
self-appraisement, recognizing the cause of the departure than with sincere
intent assess the values of traveling in the right direction, one capacity to
reform is stimulated with the hope and enthusiasm rather than having his soul
corroded by regret and despair.
August 23, 1961
Am hearing some expressions of appreciation on
the talk that I gave Sunday.
“Prayer is a petition asking that the laws of
the universe be set aside in favor of a single petitioner, admittedly
unworthy.” Amborose Pierce
In substance that is often what is in the
intent of the petitioner, in place of praying for wisdom to get in line
with the law. Yes if “prayer is the souls’ sincere desire” we may
be pardoned for asking favors that are in part, the law of
self-preservation. It is a manifestation of selfishness.
This I believe that: God
wants cooperation not surrender, partnership not submission.
August 26, 1961
I feel more sure than ever that I have not selected
with judgment thru life the best values that would make for maturity of mind
and emotions or of body, but since life is largely a probation of experiments I
am confident that I can make some progress in those fields of growth yet
because I am able to recognize some of the things that I should turn from and
what is more essential I am beginning to see what to turn to. This later part of turning has been sadly
neglected. When we don’t know what to turn to, we may just about as well not
turn at all.
August 28, 1961
I have noticed in my later years how a little
child will respond to a smile from me. In church or a public
gathering they will respond to such an extent that the mother who
is holding it will notice the friendly and smiling expression on the
baby’s face and turn to learn what the cause of the good nature is
and then the mother catching the contagion will invariably smile in recognition
of genial fellowship and comrade which has all been started thru a
wordless communication with no other means of communication than the
muscles of the face and the glint in the eyes.
What is the force that can make acquaintances
out of total strangers and can establish confidence where no confidence
exists? ”Pure Love casteth our fear,” said Paul. I
wonder if he "ruled" (an authoritative, prescribed direction for
conduct) better than he knew. The smile of a stranger is a
symptom of love, and fear cast out of the little child’s heart and
mind. “Love is the greatest force in the world yet it defies
final analysis and can only be studied by its manifestations."
Paul could just as truthfully have said. Fear
casteth out love.
November 23, 1961
Thanksgiving day, a day which thru the evolutionary
process has grown to be for some a mere holiday for others a day to get out of
work and for others a day in which to get drunk.
For me I don’t know exactly what it affords me. Most of today has been day of meditation; if
I know what meditation means, just now it is twilight and the phonograph is
playing some old time masterpieces which take me back in fond memory, “Come sit
by my side little darling, do not hasten to be me adieu.” (from Red River
Valley by Stonewall Jackson)
November 24, 1961
This I believe that: the Spirit of God will flow more
readily through a mind that is hungering and thirsting after it, than in a mind
deadened by apathy or a mind that says it is none of my business; of one who is
always ready to say “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“The master artist does not put on canvas what is in
his mind he paints what is in his soul. The
powers of the soul are without limitation, the mind is but a vehicle through
which expression is made by the soul.”
November 29, 1961
This I believe that:
temples are means to an end and not the end, a temple is a vehicle to help
bring service to people and some temple goers worship the vehicle and
forget the service, becoming so self righteous that they are intolerant
with people who don’t go to the temple.
Someone in the group qutoed the authorities as
saying that we should not say “you” or “your” when praying to the
Lord.
This I believe that: God
doesn’t not object so long as the intent is right, neither does he indulge
in hair splitting semantics.
One of the master pieces in prayer is the “The
Cowboys Prayer,” and it uses the pronoun you and your all the way thru
the prayer and long before I started giving the prayer on
radio programs Apostle Anthony W. Ivans used to quote the same
prayer in his public speeches as an example of purity, simplicity and
eloquence, even from the pulpit in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
December 3, 1961
Twenty years ago today the Pearl Harbor betrayal first
betrayed by our own leaders second by the Jap fleet. Maybe in 20 years more the public will know
the truth about FDR and George C. Marshall and the part which they played
before the Japs struck.
December 22, 1961
Early in life I wanted to accomplish something in life
that would be of use to others now I am finishing my 87-year and that is about
the only thing that I have finished.
According to the law of averages chronologically I
have missed the boat. George Bernard
Shaw said at about my age “My bolt is shot, over short.” I refuse to say that of myself or even to
think it.
I received a dare today and I accept the dare. It was like this: “I dare you to do something
that will be worth remembering before you check out.”
The thing that I want to do first that will be worth
recording in some body’s book of remembrance is to write a letter to my
children, seven in number. There are
several stumbling blocks in my path some of which are first, I am not a scholar
in the field of composition, second my children are all my superior in some specific
filed third they all have such varied tasks personalities and characteristics
that what would appeal to one would not appeal to another. I have decided to ask my son Homer to help me,
not to be my ghost writer exactly but to wrote an outline that I could sort of
fill in where by I could express my love for them, my appreciation of them and
my expectation that they will finish what I have only begun.
I will ask Homer tonight to help me get started if I
can get Homer on the phone before he starts to California for the Christmas
vacation
February 18, 1962
Last evening a phone call from Harold’s wife Mary convinced
me again that I am not emotionally mature for she upset me physically.
“The man that lets himself be forced is even more
contemptible than the bore.” Samuel
Butler.
This I believe: In the evolution of words we should
make the word death became obsolete and use instead the word transition and in place of the word
funeral we should use the term graduation
class or commencement exercises,
and in any event the speaker should bring cheer not gloom, hope not despair. If he is skillful with words he can do just
that by showing the meaning of sorrow and its purpose as school teacher, an
educator a refining which brings us one step further up the road to maturity
and thus one step nearer to God.
“Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be
comforted” “He who never wept is
stranger to a laugh and he who never doubted, never thought.”
February 20, 1962
Heard bad news that Jim R has deserted his family
again. Also that Louise and Jerry Sumary
are in domestic trouble. I suppose by
comparison my troubles are insignificant.
March 22, 1962
Warren Spahn the World’s great baseball
pitcher said when asked by a news reporter, “What do you do the last thing
before you start pitching a matched game? Said Warren, “I offer
a prayer to God.” In that prayer does you ask God to help
you win the games? “No,” said Warren Spahn, “I ask
him to help me do my best.” He has already blessed me with the equipment
to win the game and he expects me to do the rest.
Man can’t do it without God
And God won’t do it without man.
March 29, 1962
James Russell Lowell:
“Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne.
Yes that scaffold sways the future
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.”
May 8, 1962
Went to see Zola Adams Peterson just
recovering from pneumonia which. She came down with it the morning
of her wedding breakfast having just been married to her third
husband a Mr. Farnsworth, 79 years old. Then he died that day of a heart attack. We
do some strange things and don’t’ stop when we get old.
Talked over some serious questions with Lily
and Dollie, with the result that I am more confirmed than ever not to get
married. I don’t consider that I made too great a success as a
husband though I was married to a woman that I love to distraction;
my need to try it over with someone whom I love less would be to
invite failure which I could not stand at my age.
If I can begin to be self reliant without
being self-righteous can be humble without being servile, I think
my chances for maturity are better in single harness than in double
harness. I think my opportunity to work will be unhampered and
the temptation to idleness will be less
“Idle: thoughts of an idle fellow” might be a
good title for the entries in this record.
June 13, 1962
Last month I discussed in detail the murder of
Byron McGuier by Ed Caviniss. In Mancos, Colorado, my childhood home. I discussed
this event with George Meneffee one year older than I., 89 years old but
he remembers in great detail the particulars of the
murder. He was on a round up Pirate Spring 20 miles east
of Monticello, Utah when he encountered Ed Caviniss making his get
away.
My sweetheart Mary Halls and her close friend
Rose Smith used to work for Ed Welch waiting on table in the Dave
Lemmon Hotel where Ed Welch was cooking. It seems that Ed
Cavinis sort of kidnapped Welsh to aid him in his flight from the law
of which there was very little in those days around the
territory known as the Four Corners; where Utah, Arizona, New
Mexico and Colorado join. This phenomenon in geography made it
convenient for outlaws to escape.
Most of the population of the counties of
Laplatta, Montezuma, Dolores and San Juan County, New Mexico and San Juan
County Utah was made up of people who were run out of their homes
for the violation of some law or custom, some cattle rustlers, some
horse thieves, some bank robbers, some train or stage robbers and some who
exceeded the legal limit in the field
of matrimony. My mother and stepfather were in the latter
class of fugitives with hundreds of other good outlaws who felt
a sense of self-righteousness because they felt sure they were being
persecuted for conscious religious behavior.
3:25 I can’t keep my eyes on my paper for
looking at the giant Wasatch peaks with streaks of snow, light and shadow
shafts of sunlight as the rays shoot between peaks with the most brilliant colors,
which forbid description.
(Kent: I am 1/2 way through a book on the
lawlessness around the area Farmer grew up in called Indians and
Outlaws by Albert R. Lyman, an excellent read)
June 15, 1962
…William Halls senior who is the father of my wife. He had nineteen children who had nineteen
different personalities and as many different degrees of religion and of
irreligion. Most all of them had keen
minds in most fields of learning. Others
would not accept evidence as evidence and one of the 19 was perfectly obtuse in
subjects upon which he had an emotional bias or an economic prejudice. Some of these children put their father on a
pedestal of perfection, admitting no faults and seeing no imperfections, others
in the same family mothered by three different women could see no good in their
father but magnified his weaknesses into such dimensions that it became vicious
wickedness.
In attempting to assess the attitude of children
toward their parents, especially their fathers I find this tendency to go to
the extreme, either all good or all bad.
Unyielding uncompromising, unwilling or unable to reach a balance, if
they see good in their father they are blind to any bad and should they
discover a fault, the blind spot obscures completely all virtues.
Why this tendency is so universal I have not been able
to find a satisfactory answer and yet I have recognized symptoms of the same
inconsistency in my own appraisal of my father of whom I knew very little until
I was 20 years old, and then I had only brief glimpses until after he was dead.
Then somewhat by accident I became acquainted with
David H. Cannon president of the St. George Temple, who told me much good about
my father, Homer Brown, whom he knew long and intimately. He told me that my father’s excommunication
from the church was a tragic miscarriage of justice carried out by a prejudiced
bishop Thorn, and misinformed Stake president Angus M. Canon who was David’s
own brother.
This character witness which David Canon gave me
voluntarily of my father’s innocence of the prefer charges that resulted in his
severance from the church was substantiated and confirmed by two apostles,
namely John Henry Smith and Francis M. Lymon.
Both advised me to be baptized for my father thus
doing a vicarious work for him which would not only reinstate his membership in
the church but would restore the priesthood with all of tits powers and privileges
including the restoration of my mother who had been divorced because of his
excommunication and her children whom she took with her in the separation.
John Henry Smith gave me a temple recommend and in
doing so he violated the red tape rules of requiring the recommend to originate
with the ward bishop and then signed by the Stake President. He by passed and short cut the red tape and I
went thru the Salt Lake Temple and was baptized for and in behalf of my father
Homer Brown.
Now whether this gesture changed the destiny of my
father in the hereafter I know not but I feel sure that though it had not been
done the attitude of a just God would not sustain a miscarriage of justice
against one of his innocent children even though that act was committed by his servants
on earth and though it was recorded on the books of the church, even human
justice would not sustain so flagrant an abortion as that. Once I felt resentful toward the men who did this
injustice to my father, now I do not feel that way but have forgiven the men completely.
June 28, 1962
Mancos, Colorado. Stayed at Lilly Halls
last night and saw Lydia Fielding of Provo. This
morning went over to Harry Halls, got a saddle horse and helped Keith
take 75 head of cows to the pasture. This was a pleasure to be in the
saddle again with a bunch of cattle.
August 7, 1962
Since we can’t take wealth with us when we go, service
is the act of sending it on ahead.
August 14, 1962
When people think more of you than you
deserve, it makes you want to behave even better than you
intended to. I still know and enjoy a few good men
and women in the world, preferably women. It always seems like they make
me want to be better.
August 25 1962
I don’t believe that the writers of love stories know
much about the dimensions of depth that runs silently thru the principle of
love. I think their words are but
shallow symptoms of the real thing. I
think that Owen Wister came close to plumbing the depths of love in his telling
of Molly Wood and the Virginian. I think
there is a three point process of love and that the fourth dimension is reached
in fulfillment as maturity is reached the fusion of holy wedlock, these four
points are in my opinion spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical, where
one point is lacking the chain has a missing link, or the dimension of depth
has ben lost. Sometimes a little lack of
faith can break this chain. Jealousy, anger, misunderstanding or prejudice can
impair the complete flow of love. I have
seen love go into reverse gear and mysteriously turn to hate; a metamorphic
change that in my early life I thought it was impossible. “of all the tragedies of live, and all the
heart braking phantasms that pass before the panorama of life, shone where deep
rooted in the weaknesses of muscle the ineradicable cause.” William Allen White
This I believe – that love, intelligence and the will
to live we have within our power the means not only to add years to our lives
but life to our years and thus bring about fulfillment of a joy and peace of
mind that was in the beginning the purpose of creation.
This I believe
- That to study history without studying the causes, which made history, is to
try to get light bread with out yeast.
Last entry, September 12, 1962
For four days and nights it has been cold it is warmer
today. Was planning on going down the
McElmo to our old trading post where I have not been since 1911. But Lily's plumber came today so I will
postpone the trip until tomorrow as she wants to go with me.
No word has come as to Harold’s intentions about his
trip to the dedication of the Navajo trail highway on the 16th
It is difficult for Lily to believe that a man can be
sexually passionate at the age of 88.
Why did Farmer die in NV?
An excerpt from our (Farr) family history explains why Farmer was in Nevada when he died:
Rudolph and Elna sold their very successful dairy in Casa Grande, AZ in 1962 and with their son Clyde bought The Willows Ranch, located midway between Austin and Eureka, NV. The beautiful ranch was a combination of 152,000 acres of deeded farmland, Forest Service and BLM leases. Rudolph loved to farm and Clyde loved ranching, they both loved horses, so they felt it was a good fit for them both.
In Oct of ’62, on one of Clyde's moving trips up from Arizona with their equipment, Farmer took the opportunity to come with him and spend some time with his daughter, Elna and her family. I’m sure that was a great trip for both of them. Likely Farmer shared stories and Clyde probably sang for a good part of the trip, because that was what he always did, to everyone’s delight.
While visiting at the Willows, Farmer died of a heart attack on October 13th. It is said he died while doing one of the things he most loved to do, whether that was trail riding or something else is lost to our memory. The closest town of any size was Ely, and also the county seat which is why the county coroner listed it on Farmer’s death certificate even though it is over a hundred miles away. The family immediately returned him to Mesa and he was buried four days later.
Note: The location of the Farr ranch is between the word Nevada and Round Mountain:
The ranch is located in the Vast Great Basin Area of Nevada;
After dying in Nevada his body was taken to Mesa Arizona and laid to rest in Mesa, AZ:
Burial:
Mountain View Memorial Gardens
Mesa
Maricopa County
Arizona, USA
Plot: Sec A, lot 246, space 12
Research
Kent,
Brookie would definitely be in a better position to tell you about Mary Halls. I never met her. Farmer started visiting the Quists in Utah and Idaho after she died. That's when I became acquainted with him. He seemed "bigger than life" to me and my family. I do have a few copies of photos of Mary Halls, mostly with Farmer. I suspect Brookie has better photos of her.
There definitely is a lot of Brown history in Nauvoo. It's awesome being able to locate their property, see Cordelia's grave in the "Old Nauvoo Cemetery," and see the names of some of the Browns, and Mumfords on the lists of those who died in Nauvoo.
There definitely is a lot of Brown history in Nauvoo. It's awesome being able to locate their property, see Cordelia's grave in the "Old Nauvoo Cemetery," and see the names of some of the Browns, and Mumfords on the lists of those who died in Nauvoo.
I have been able to find death certificates for Hannah and Mollie, but not Ben Lincoln. Hannah was the one who died of scalding. Mollie died of peritonitis, a complication following appendicitis. That must have been terribly difficult for both Farmer and Mary. I have often wondered if these deaths weren't contributory to their decision to leave Mancos. Hannah died in September of 1914 and they left Mancos in DECEMBER of that year.
Kent, what are the years on the journals you have? Susan Halls came to my house and scanned all of the materials I had at that time on Farmer. I'm not heavy into scanning--can do it, but prefer to spend my time doing research and writing. I believe Brookie has the contact info on Susan Halls. The journals I have are in three periods: 1) His missionary journals from 1898-1900; 2) Journals from his travels during his American Farm Bureau days; and 3) After Mary died, actually largely from 1960-Oct. 1962.
Merry Christmas to both of you, A
2011
Kent (and Brookie),
Brookie would definitely be in a better position to tell you about Mary Halls. I never met her. Farmer started visiting the Quists in Utah and Idaho after she died. That's when I became acquainted with him. He seemed "bigger than life" to me and my family. I do have a few copies of photos of Mary Halls, mostly with Farmer. I suspect Brookie has better photos of her.
There definitely is a lot of Brown history in Nauvoo. It's awesome being able to locate their property, see Cordelia's grave in the "Old Nauvoo Cemetery," and see the names of some of the Browns, and Mumfords on the lists of those who died in Nauvoo.
I have been able to find death certificates for Hannah and Mollie, but not Ben Lincoln. Hannah was the one who died of scalding. Mollie died of peritonitis, a complication following appendicitis. That must have been terribly difficult for both Farmer and Mary. I have often wondered if these deaths weren't contributory to their decision to leave Mancos. Hannah died in September of 1914 and they left Mancos in DECEMBER of that year.
Kent, what are the years on the journals you have? Susan Halls came to my house and scanned all of the materials I had at that time on Farmer. I'm not heavy into scanning--can do it, but prefer to spend my time doing research and writing. I believe Brookie has the contact info on Susan Halls. The journals I have are in three periods: 1) His missionary journals from 1898-1900; 2) Journals from his travels during his American Farm Bureau days; and 3) After Mary died, actually largely from 1960-Oct. 1962.
Merry Christmas to both of you, A
It's my understanding that they lived with her parents initially. I don't know where they lived after he returned from his mission. Ann
The 1900 Census shows her and the children with her parents. In 1910 they were in Aneth, Utah--trading post from A.
2011
Kent (and Brookie),
Brookie would definitely be in a better position to tell you about Mary Halls. I never met her. Farmer started visiting the Quists in Utah and Idaho after she died. That's when I became acquainted with him. He seemed "bigger than life" to me and my family. I do have a few copies of photos of Mary Halls, mostly with Farmer. I suspect Brookie has better photos of her.
There definitely is a lot of Brown history in Nauvoo. It's awesome being able to locate their property, see Cordelia's grave in the "Old Nauvoo Cemetery," and see the names of some of the Browns, and Mumfords on the lists of those who died in Nauvoo.
I have been able to find death certificates for Hannah and Mollie, but not Ben Lincoln. Hannah was the one who died of scalding. Mollie died of peritonitis, a complication following appendicitis. That must have been terribly difficult for both Farmer and Mary. I have often wondered if these deaths weren't contributory to their decision to leave Mancos. Hannah died in September of 1914 and they left Mancos in DECEMBER of that year.
Kent, what are the years on the journals you have? Susan Halls came to my house and scanned all of the materials I had at that time on Farmer. I'm not heavy into scanning--can do it, but prefer to spend my time doing research and writing. I believe Brookie has the contact info on Susan Halls. The journals I have are in three periods: 1) His missionary journals from 1898-1900; 2) Journals from his travels during his American Farm Bureau days; and 3) After Mary died, actually largely from 1960-Oct. 1962.
Merry Christmas to both of you, A
It's my understanding that they lived with her parents initially. I don't know where they lived after he returned from his mission. Ann
The 1900 Census shows her and the children with her parents. In 1910 they were in Aneth, Utah--trading post from A.