1979 Inter­view with Art, Clyde & Char­lotte Creech — OH 736B
Idaho State His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety
Oral His­tory Center

 

OH 736B

 

An Inter­view about the Delaware Indi­ans of Idaho, Inc
By Eliz­a­beth Bryant-Merrill
April 14, 18, 19, 1979

 

Man­u­script No. 0330A-B

 

Tran­scribed May 22, 1979 by Fran­cis Rawlins

Inter­view­ers Comments:

Name: Delaware Indi­ans of Idaho, Inc.

Mrs. Char­lotte Sim­mons (CS)

Mr. Clyde Wes­ley Creech Sr. (CWC)

Mr. Arthur Albert Creech (AAC)

The inter­views (3) took place in the din­ing room of Mrs. Sim­mons’ home at 1360 Topaz Avenue in Merid­ian Idaho. We were sit­ting around the din­ing room table.

Mrs. Sim­mons s the tribal spokesper­son. Mr. Arthur Albert Creech, who is Mrs. Sim­mons father, is also the tribal chairman.

This tes­ti­mony and rec­ol­lec­tions, rem­i­nis­cences of tra­di­tions and rec­ol­lec­tions seem very cred­i­ble to me. Much of this mate­r­ial is not doc­u­mented elsewhere.

Eliz­a­beth Bryant-Merrill: This sec­ond inter­view with Mrs. Char­lotte Sim­mons, Mr. Clyde Wes­ley Creech Sr. and Mr. Arthur Albert Creech con­cern­ing the Delaware Indi­ans of Idaho, Incor­po­rated was recored by Eliz­a­beth Bryant-Merrill of the Oral His­tory Cen­ter in Mrs. Sim­mons’ jp,e pm April 18, 1979. The inter­view deals with more details of life in Monatan, Wyoming and Idaho, fol­low­ing the har­vests as migrant labor­ers and many of Mr. Clyde W. Creech Sr.‘s expe­ri­ences in his trav­els around the county and in the military.

EBM: Can you tell me some­thing about the funerals?

CS: Yes, they used to have a big meal for the group after the funeral, you know, some­thing sim­i­lar to din­ner, because there was always food for every­one with every­thing to eat, every­body from the eldest to the youngest. And the after­wards they would sit around and tell sto­ries and talk. I remem­ber the one time Grandpa was telling bout Kansas, he was telling us how out on the high prairies the grass come clear up to the horses belly, when they came across the prairie.

CWC: I can remem­ber when my father passes away about 1952 in Basin, Wyoming. The Odd Fel­lows gave a meal for the group that attended the funeral, that is the rela­tion of the one buried, and there were thirty-five peo­ple there. And then after the meal we’d all gather over at one of the houses of the group and there’d be sto­ries and there’d be talk­ing and more or less gen­eral con­ver­sa­tions tak­ing place.

CS: There were no out­siders at that meal either, if I remem­ber. They pre­pared that for us because they were aware of that was the way we did things, and so some of the peo­ple there go together and pre­pared the meal and then they all left and left us alone.

EBM: What about Indian burials?

AAC: Oh, when they moved into Wyoming in 1915, approx­i­mately , I was ten or eleven when I started bucka­roo­ing; either the Sioux or the Crows buried their dead in the trees at that time. You’d ride down the Big Horn River or the Lit­tle Big Horn and sev­eral smaller creeks and you’d see ‘em every mile or so there’d be two or three and all their per­sonal belong­ings that belonged to that Indian was wrapped up in buf­falo robes and tied up with buck­skin and then they tied ‘em up in the trees about eigh­teen feet from the ground and left ‘em there. That’s they way they buried ‘em.

EBM: Can you tell me a lit­tle bit more about your life in Mon­tana and Wyoming?

AAC: Well, I was pretty small in Mon­tana and I remem­ber sugar beet work. We worked down at Hunt­ley and a town called Plumberg and around Billings, Bridger, Bel­fry, Mon­tana. And then in 1913-’14 we went into the edge of Wyoming. The rea­son we went to Wyoming was to help build the first sugar fac­tory that was ever built in the State of Wyoming. And we raised the first crop of sugar beets that was ever raised in Wyoming at Pow­ell. We had approx­i­mately eleven hun­dred acres there that we took care of with work­ers. And we hired all the kids along with our bunch and they got paid a dol­lar a day their board and they had to do so much work every week. And they fin­ished up early on Fri­day, and my dad and my older broth­ers would always take me fish­ing or hunt­ing. At that time there was lots of sage hens, which was there by the hun­dreds. And we had a jack rab­bit called white tailed jack, dif­fer­ent than they have here in Idaho, most of the older ones weighed sev­en­teen, eigh­teen pounds. We’d kill them and have an awful feed on the week­ends. Then we went into the Big Horn Basin and famed there in Teddy Roosevelt’s admin­is­tra­tion. Money-there was no money; you traded script for your gro­ceries,. Take two, three dozen eggs in and maybe get a sack of pota­toes or a piece of meat. Money was some­thing dif­fer­ent, and if you had change com­ing, that store would give you a script. It was rough dur­ing that time I growed up ‘tl 1924 in there and there was wild horses in there by the thou­sands, espe­cially out in the place we called Buf­falo Basin. And Wyoming it’s more of a desert coun­try and the trees-there’s a few along the main river, but it’s dry coun­try, was at that time, and the buf­falo had come through that coun­try in the thou­sands and there was what they called the buf­falo wal­lows, be miles and miles where the buffalo’d lay down and wal­low in the dirt and dust to get the flies off of ‘em. Of course, they deposited a lot of what we call buf­falo chips that had lid there for years and we burnt them for sev­eral win­ters ’til they got scarce. And that’s about it there out­side of the gen­eral labor and trad­ing and swap­ping we done . Only 1917 we home­steaded about nine hun­dred acres out there twelve miles from Basin on what was called Elk Creek, and we all lived out there for about four years off and on, dur­ing the sum­mer. In the win­ter time we was always in town, so the kids could go to school. An on Alamo Flats where I lost my two broth­ers there, there was an Indian mas­sacre there about 1880 and the dead is buried between Enlow Creek and Man­der­son, Wyoming on the banks of the Bighorn River. There was all kinds of things when I was there, arrow heads and patches and stuff scat­tered all over there and they killed this bunch in the wagon train. What became of them I don’t know. It’s too many years.

EBM: Can you tell me any­thing about the salmon spawning?

AAC: It was after we came to Idaho. At that time there was no dams on the Colum­bia River, Snake River and dur­ing the dog salmon days, what they called dog salmon, they’re salmon that weighs prob­a­bly, at that time thirty-five to forty-five pounds, had long, sharp teeth about a half an inch long after they’d spawned then they die. And I’ve seen the banks of the Snake River and the Boise River and the Payette River just lined with ‘em. Hun­dreds and hun­dreds. But here in the past thirty years there ain’t been no such thing; built the dams and they can’t get up here. And we’d go down, espe­cially on the Colum­bia River when we was down through there pick­ing fruit, the Deschutes River and I’ve seen-you could walk across the river on the backs of the salmon, they was that thick. It’s unbe­liev­able the changes that’s took place since then and now. Just throw your line out and snag one of ‘em if you didn’t catch him, then snag another one. A good salmon is a bright shiny fish and after they’ve been out of the ocean for a while they turn dark red. We was kind a choicy on what we kept. The same way with the smelt. At that time, which was in the early ’30’s, take a dip­net and dip up a tub­full of ‘em with a dip. In the river, there was mil­lions of ‘em. Which they still do today down there, but nothin’ like it was then.

CS: Dad, do you remem­ber out there in Wyoming before Grandpa died how we used to go out in that one place out there on the river and they had told us that we shouldn’t fish, and so Grandpa used to take us out at night and we’d set our lines at night and fish. Remem­ber that?

AAC: Yeah I remem­ber. When we was in Wyoming in the early days there was fish, cat­fish weighed thrity — five to fifty pounds. And they had what they called 7 sim­i­lar to our carp out in this coun­try. And then they had another’n called a walleyed pike and then we had the north­ern pike in the Big Horn River. And dur­ing my early life we caught and ate lots of ‘em and things like that. And then in 1948 when we went back, par­tial, the rea­son, I wanted to have a nice tuess of cat­fish. We got back there and the Wind River dam at Ther­mopo­lis had been blowed out and the silt had been let go down the river and killed all the fish for about three — four hun­dred miles and they’d just started to restock it again with ling, trout, one thing and another. We used to go down there and catch ling at night; oh, seven or eight of ‘em every night with a trout line, weighed about seven or eight pounds. And they had a poi­son sack right on the tail end of the stom­ach, the out­let of the entrails, and we had to cut that out in order to eat ‘em. They look a good deal like a snake out­side of they had a fish head. No bones in ‘em. They was good fish.

EBM: What about this fish­ing at night?

CS: Well, I remem­ber when I was a lit­tle kid in Wyoming, that they used to go out and they’d set lines, you know, they’d set ‘em at night and then go back the next night and take the fish off the lines.

AAC: The next morning.

CS: Oh, I don’t remem­ber, it was that long ago. But I remem­ber set­ting the lines at night.

EBM: After you got to Idaho and started work­ing in the har­vests; can you tell me some­thing about the dif­fer­ent kinds of crops and how you actu­ally did the work?

CWC: Well, it was all man­ual work. We started in the fruit orchards a— round Payette, which was mainly apples at that time and peaches and prunes was up around Emmett; apri­cots. And we’d prune all win­ter long with a pair of hand pruners and then in the spring, why, the stray­ing would start; we used what they called an oil and lead base spray, which is par­tial the rea­son my lungs ain’t what they should be today; I got leaded in the orchards. A horse would only last a— bout four years doing that kind of work, they’d be wind bro­ken and they couldn’t go. And then after we got a freeze in there and the apple price went down. We picked apples at that time for two and a half and three cents a box. And they began to pull the apple orchards out and prune orchards, so that’s when we started on into Ore­gon and the State of Wash­ing­ton for fruit har­vests. And we usu­ally landed in Free­wa­ter, Ore­gon some­where around the first of July for tomato har­vests, which is all done by hand. Worked twelve, four­teen hours a day for twenty — five cents an hour — is what we got in wages.

EBM: Now, when was this?

CWC: In about 1929 on up to about 1940, then the price started get­ting better.

CS: That was in sum­mer months, in the win­ter months they come back to the home place.

CWC: And from the toma­toes, we’d go into prune pick­ing, and at that time we got from seven to eleven cents a box, pick­ing prunes. Some years five cents, depend­ing on the mar­ket. Then we’d go from the prune har­vest, which ended usu­ally about the last part of August — first of Sep­tem­ber — over in the Yakima Val­ley and go into hop pick­ing. And we picked for a cent, cent and a half a pound.

EBM: Tell me a lit­tle bit about how you did that.

CWC: Well, the entire vine — in other words, they’re vines that’s strung and goes up a string and grows up on over­head wires; make a big vine. We had long knives which we used on a stick to cut ‘em down and we’d only cut one vine at a time. As soon as they wilted they weighed nothin’. They’re just worse than feath­ers as far as weight goes; and we got a cent and a half a pound for pick­ing them. Some­times as high as a thou­sand of us in one of them big hop yards; this big camp. The Yakima Indi­ans and Wapiti Indi­ans, Nez Perce Indi­ans, nearly all of the west­ern tribes was there. My dad set out in the evening there after we’d quit work and he’d talk to some of the old Indi­ans in Indian dia­logue (dialect) which he could — used to speak some of it. They could under­stand my Dad; it was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent lingo.

EBM: Clyde what about that story you told me about the Indian man who made his wife and kids work?

CWC: Well, I was about I guess — seven, eight years old and it fas­ci­nated me to see this Indian man bring his wife and chil­dren out to a field, a man that would take and cut down a bunch of the hop vines and then he’d get on a horse with just a lit­tle string on it for rope to lead it with and he’d go up on the hill­side and lay down and stay up there ‘til noon. Then noon’d come and he’d come down and I get his wife and kids and they’d go in and have lunch, or din­ner and then in the after­noon and he’d cut down enough hops to run ‘en the after­noon and then he’d go back up on the hill with his horse and lay down and stay up on the hill ‘til evening. When it was tine for quit­ting he’d come in and get his wife and chil­dren then go back to the camp and that was his day’s work. But it fas­ci­nated me to see him not work­ing and then lead­ing that horse around with a string! (Chuck­les) It was quite a pet. I remem­ber back in Idaho, but I don’t remem­ber see­ing it myself, but my dad had pic­tures of the first apples that he picked. Of course, he didn’t know how to pick apples, he’d never picked ‘em before and the boss told him all you had to do was take ‘em off the tree and put ‘em in boxes. Went out there and worked the biggest share of the day and the boss come out and, gee whiz, he had apples strung all up and down the road, boxes of ‘em! He had pulled all the spurs off the trees with the apples, which is next year’s cropt(Chuckles) He had to show Dad then how to pick apples; he had to slow him down. My dad had big hands, he could hold easy three apples to a hand and he’d run his elbows into the apple bag and he’d run these apples right down his elbows into the apple bag and he could sure pick apples! Like I say, I was about seven, eight years old at that time when this happened.

EBM: What about the babies? If there were any babies taken to the field like when they were doing the har­vest­ing, what did they do with them?

AAC: Usu­ally laid ‘em on a blan­ket under the hop vines, or under the apple trees. Our daugh­ter, Char­lotte Sim­mons, she was four­teen days old when we went into the prune orchard in Free­wa­ter, Ore­gon and we worked about five weeks and went on to the hop yards. We got into the hop pick­ing in Yakima. She cried for about a week because she was look­ing up into the sky try­ing to find her mother, and her mother wasn’t there.(Chuckles) The kids usu­ally was in a box or bas­ket, what­ever we could get to put ‘em in.

CS: Later on, when they’re tod­dlers, you know, in between the baby stage and the work stage, which was about four or five, they stayed with grandparents.

EBM: What was the migrant labor like dur­ing the thirties?

AAC: Well, I don’t know as you’d call it migrant work­ers. Every­body was — poor bas­tards! Excuse the lan­guage. But when Wall Street went broke in 1929, why, it made pau­pers out of ninety per­cent of the United States. There’d be bankers, lawyers, every­one was out on the “fruit tramp” — what we called the fruit tramp, try­ing to make enough to eat. There was no money. I was work­ing in Kla­math Falls, Ore­gon in 1929 when the break come and the bot­tom fell out of the mar­ket; draw­ing sev­en­teen fifty a day and on the first of Sep­tem­ber we went to work and there was no jobs. It was two years before I got a job. We had a home in Idaho, why, we all come back to the ranch and raised gar­dens, and my mother she had chick­ens and a pig and a cow. We hunted and I trapped for two win­ters on Birding’s Island for skunk, mushrat, lynk, mink; and that’s the way we made out liv­ing. And finally I got a job in the fruit orchard, the price had come back up where they could affrod to do a lit­tle some­thing with it. And we walked ten mile a day each way and drawed fif­teen cents a hour. We didn’t have money to buy a license for an old car we had, so we had to walk. And when my sec­ond son was born we needed milk for him and I and my brother — in — law and brother worked one whole week for a lit­tle jer­sey heifer in order to get milk, and she was val­ued at eleven dol­lars. And just a lit­tle bitty heifer, about so tall. We took’er home and the way we broke her to milk was quite com­i­cal; we drove two stakes in the ground and tied her head to one and her hind foot to the other and we milked her! (Chuckles)

EBM: What were the wages — the other wages like?

AAC: Well, if you could get a job at that time, your migra­tory work was around fif­teen cents a hour. And we made the potato har­vest up in — Twin Falls and Bur­ley, Rupert area. And at that tine we got from two and a half to three cents a hun­dred­weight for pick­ing up pota­toes. For about five years that went on and then the price got up and we got up to six, seven cents a hun­dred. I think about nine cents a hun­dred was the most they ever paid for pick­ing the pota­toes. And it took a mighty good man to pick a hun­dred and fifty sacks of pota­toes a day, I tell you!

EBM: What other kinds of peo­ple were work­ing in the fields?

AAC: All nation­al­i­ties. Amer­i­can — Span­ish, I guess you’d call ‘em or “wet­backs”, Indi­ans, Irish, you name it, they were there. Was no dis­tinc­tion. We had peo­ple from New York, all over the East Coast out here on the West Coast work­ing. And they lived in their cars.
There was no motels, hotels them days. They had to live in cab­ins in the camp­grounds, which ordi­nar­ily cost you eight dol­lars a week, and we, none of us could afford it, so we had our own tents. Just set up a tent and that’s where we lived, wher­ever we stopped. And every­body raised lots of gar­den stuff all over the coun­try. They had to raise it, the only way they could eat. Pork at that time was a cent and a half a pound, live weight. And I sold many a dozen eggs for a nickel a dozen. You’d go to the store and you’d buy light bread far three loaves for a dime. You can see what the dif­fer­ence then and now is.

EBM: What kinds of dif­fer­ent foods did you have to eat dur­ing those years?

AAC: Well, we was for­tu­nate, we had a land base, I guess you’d call it, land. We raised quite a bit of our meat and lots of veg­eta­bles, and it was mainly pota­toes, onions, beans and pork and beef and what­ever wild game we was for­tu­nate enough to kill. We always went hunt­ing and got our deer, usu­ally a bear or two, once in a while a elk. Our food them days is prac­ti­cally what we eat today. I don’t know, it seems like when a kid grows up on cer­tain types of food, why, they stay with it all their life, very few changes.

EBM: What kind of dif­fer­ent camps did they have?

AAC: Oh, you’d see every­thing in camps in them days. We had a big tent; sev­eral tents in the bunch. But a lot of ‘em just live in the car with a lit­tle camp­fire along­side of it and the gro­ceries packed in a apple box. Peo­ple that wasn’t for­tu­nate enough to have a car— they would come in with it on their back. Throw a blan­ket in under a wil­low tree and have a camp­fire and eat veg­eta­bles and what­ever they could get. It was a bad, bad deal, I tell you.

CWC: I can remem­ber see­ing fam­i­lies, men and women and four and five chil­dren, small chil­dren, hitch­hik­ing down the high­ways to get some­place try­ing to find a job. Many a time I’ve seen this hap­pen. I don’t know, but I imag­ine that the Cham­ber of Com­merce at Walla Walla, Wash­ing­ton would have pic­tures show­ing the peo­ple camped along the road by the hun­dreds. There was no law pro­hibit­ing— pull off the road and camp any­where. One car’d pull off and in an hour’s time there’d be five hun­dred of ‘em strung along the road. They teamed and all tried to camp in bunches. This guy needed a spare tire, some­body else in the bunch’d have an extra tire. And they had to over­haul a car, they done it right along the side of the road. You didn’t go to the garages. There was no such thing.

CS: I can remem­ber, too, as a child, when we trav­eled that way, you know, in fam­i­lies on the roads; you used to put a rope around the bed to keep the snakes out! The snake wouldn’t crawl over the rope because the rope would tickle its belly, or some­thing to that effect. But any­way, they kept the rope cir­cled around the bed to keep the snakes out.

EBM: That’s inter­est­ing. What about the prac­tice of giv­ing Indian names to chil­dren as well as the given name?

CS: You know, they were given what you call given names when they were born by the mother, but then the older ones always tagged some name on. Like with me, my name is Char­lotte June Creech was the name I was born with, but I was called Sally 7 for years and then it was Sally; and I’m still called Sally by the group. And there is one cou­ple, her eldest daughter’s name was Helen and every­body knows her as Star. And a lot of the dif­fer­ent ones have dif­fer­ent names.

AAC: Grand­dad called my daugh­ter Cot­ton Top before he died, just shortly before he died, that’s stayed with her all the way through.

CS: My own granddaughter’s name is Katey Jo Harsh, spelled Katey, and she was named after Viola Creech, she was called Kate, too. NY grand­daugh­ter was named –

AAC: Timmy is High Pock­ets the Second.

CS: Dad’s Indian name was Tom Goo­liken(?) and some­body changed that to White Arrow(?). But most of the group has had other names other than the ones they’re known to outsiders.

EBM: Mostly just your group knows those names then. Right?

CS: Yeah. Yeah, because most of the names are kind of a per­sonal thing and you can tell when some­body comes to your house and says they know so — and — so inti­mately, you can always tell whether they do or not because of the way they call ‘em. It’s kind of funny.

EBM: It’s a good way of keep­ing their close­ness as a group.

CS: I think so. I have a list of those names some­where — oth­er­wise they do have the other names. In fact, I thihk it’s in our record book I think I stuck it back in there, a list of the ones that have grown up with dif­fer­ent names. I think we col­lected a list when we sent out the papers and they asked for the Eng­lish name and the Indian name. We got a list at that time and put it in the back of our book after we got incor­po­rated. There must be a list of twenty or twenty— five in the group that carry two names. In later years, like with myself, all of my busi­ness was con­ducted under Char­lotte June Sim­mons — legal papers. But all of my per­sonal let­ters and all of my mat­ters with the mem­bers of the group is under Sally, most of the inti­mate group, a lot of ‘em don’t even know what my real name is. They know me by the one name.

CWC: They had what you called their “trad­ing goods”. Aunt Annie, and it was a shop­ping bag with, oh, any­thing she thought she could trade with some­body for some­thing else; cloth­ing and stuff like this nature. And, of course, being Indian she was always after bright col­ors and stuff of this nature. And if she saw some­thing she wanted she would fina­gle around put enough stuff together to trade for what­ever she was after. But she always — when­ever she went any­place— she always had her trad­ing goods with her.
EBM What kind of stuff did she have?

CWC: Oh, mostly it was cloth­ing or maybe it’s be a hand­ker­chief or a scarf or some­thing of this nature. Just any­thing that would attract some­body else’s atten­tion, why, she would have it with her to trade for some­thing that she wanted.

AAC: Beads, jewelry.

CWC: Beads and jewelry.

CWC: I might go back to Wyoming, too; I started school at Pow­ell, Wyoming when I was six years old and walked six miles to school usu­ally it was twenty to thirty below Zero in the win­ter. I’d walk maybe a mile or two and then they’d have to ride me, they always did. Then we move over in the Big Horn Basin. They had a lit­tle old cabin school­house bout ten by ten and I think there was twenty — seven kids in the one room, all dif­fer­ent grades, mainly our group. There was one or two other fam­i­lies that lived in that area. The old school­house is still stand­ing out there; was the last time I was over there, and it sure is unique.

CS: I can remem­ber when I started school; I started school over at Letha. The old school­house was on the road between Letha and New Ply­mouth and they don’t use it any more, they have a new school in Letha now, but the old school, where I started, was down the road. We lived over — this lit­tle house over on Dewey Road, and we walked to school. And my kids were com­plain­ing about hav­ing to walk any — where’s to eight or nine blocks. And we went over there one time, this is when the older ones were younger, and we clocked it and it was seven miles by the road. And it was the same type of school. They had all of the classes from the first grade to the high school in that one big, open room. But they were seg­re­gated, you know, maybe part of the desks would be on one side of the room and they had one teacher and she would work with the older kids while we were doing our stud­ies and then she would come over and work with us while they were doing their stud­ies. And we took our lunches in an old lard bucket and it was like beans and pota­toes, and at noon they would build a fire out there and then they would heat up the buck­ets.. And later on they got to where they had a stove inside the school­house, one of those that had a big top on it, and then they’d let the kids set their lard buck­ets up on top of the stove and it would be hot then by the time noon come. I can remem­ber that.

CWC: It’s a lot dif­fer­ent than it used to be.

CS: I remem­ber, too walk­ing home. There was always a group of us walk­ing home and they had a truck that went around to the town deliv­er­ing bread, and I remem­ber I used to get my feel­ings hurt because that truck would stop and there’d be maybe ten, fif­teen kids com­ing out of the school, walk­ing in a group and they would pass out day — old cook­ies to some of the kids and they would never give us kids any because they were prej­u­diced, you know. We’d We’d always watch those kids eat­ing the cook­ies. You know, lit­tle things like that made it rather difficult.

EBM: How about you, Clyde, can you remem­ber any expe­ri­ences with school?

CWC: Not too much, I only went to school a few years. I started school first time in Ontario, Ore­gon about — it must have been about l927 — ’28, and only went prob­a­bly two months, then we moved from there and my brother got dou­ble pneu­mo­nia and almost died. And my dad and mother wouldn’t let me go to school until he was well enough that he could go, because she wanted us in the same grade so we could more or less pro­tect each other, if we were together if any­body picked on us we could be a team. So I was about nine years old when I got back in school and then I left school when I was four­teen and never went back again.

EBM: And that was to work in the harvests?

CWC: I went to work and did every­thing. I trav­eled all over the United States and saw the United States on top of a box­car. And I worked all up and down the United States, trav­el­ing. My folks said they never knew when I was going to come or go, I just walked in one day and maybe stay a week or two and they’d get up one morn­ing or come home from work in the after­noon and they’d find me gone.

CS: I think, myself, that’s one of the most dif­fi­cult things that a lot of the group has had to con­tent with is, is, you know, to make it in today’s soci­ety, is to stay in one place, because for years they— you know, the whole group — some­body said, “GO”, and you know the other ones said, “Go”, and the rest would just pack up and they went. Here the last few years everybody’s been stay­ing kind of put, but the kids are still com­ing and going. They haven’t made that They haven’t made that adjust­ment that you have to stay put in order to make it, because it’s dif­fer­ent than what it was when we were young.

EBM: Can you remem­ber any of your more out­stand­ing expe­ri­ences while you were trav­el­ing around the country?

CWC: Lots of ‘em.

EBM: Tell me about some of them.

CWC: Oh, I ran away from home when I left home and there was one kid in Emmett that was sup­posed to go with me and he backed out at the last minute. Well, I was gone about three months, course, Boise — Riggs was sher­iff at that time and they looked and broad­cast all over for me to try to find me. Well, when I left home I had a skull cap and a pair of levis on and my shirt and shoes and socks; that was it, I had noth­ing else. And I went down to Sale Lake City and I had a bunch of keys, I don’t know why I had those keys, but I had a ring with a bunch of keys on it and I got picked up one night by the police in Salt Lake City. And the first thing they did was try to say that I was try­ing to bur­glar­ize a store or some­thing. And then when they couldn’t do that, why, they put the charge of vagrancy on me. Well, when the judge told me I was charged with vagrancy, I didn’t know what vagrancy meant and I said, “Not guilty.” And that night they put me in a cell with an old man and he looked at me and said, “Kid what are you in here for?” And I said, “Oh, I don’t know, vagracy-vagree — some­thing, I don’t know what it is.” lie says, “You don’t know what that means?” I say, “Well, if you haven’t got two and a half in your pocket to buy some­thing to eat and a place to sleep,” he says, “you’re guilty of vagrancy.” “Well,” I said, “I guess I’m guilty then.” I left home with twenty — two cents and I didn’t have nothin’. “So,” he says, “tell you what you do, you go back in there in the morn­ing and when the judge calls your name out, you stand up, and you say, Honor’, and he’ll give you per­mis­sion to speak.” He says, “Then you explain to him that yes­ter­day you didn’t under­stand what vagrancy meant, but this morn­ing that you do and that you’re ready to plead guilty and he’ll give you twenty — four hours floater out of town.” This is what I done, and sure enough, the judge released me. Well, I scairt to get back on the high­way and hitch­hike back to Ogden, Utah, so I walked the rail­road tracks, some­thing like eigh­teen miles from Salt Lake City to Ogden, Utah. ‘Course, I was hun­gry and they were can­ning toma­toes at that time; big can­ner­ies in Ogden, Utah, and I went over and they give me a whole big sack full of ripe toma­toes; that was my meal. Well, I got down in the jun­gles, the rail­road bums all called the jun­gle down around the rail­road tracks, and there was a young man there, Slim Wood­ward and he was a cow­boy; he trav­eled the cir­cuit in the rodeos and such and he was headed to Texas or some­wheres and he looked at me, he says, “Kid,” he says, “you’re new on the road, ain’t you?” And I says, “Yeah, that’s right.” “Oh, “he says, “come on go with me, 1111 teach you the ropes.” We caught a freight train out of Ogden, Utah, and about twenty — four later we was in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And when we pulled in Cheyenne, of course that was a rail­road base, too, and he says, “We’ve got to be off this train out here, out­side of town, because if we ride it into the yards, why, the Rail­road Bulls’ll pick us up,” and, he says, “they get a dol­lar a head for every man they pick up.” So, we left that train and it was doing about thirty, thirty — five miles an hour and that was my first expe­ri­ence in get­ting off of a rail­road train; off of a freight train. And I hung around Cheyenne there for a while and he took me out and we stayed at a tran­sient cen­ter in Cheyenne, I remem­ber that, and then he took me out on the street and taught me to pan­han­dle. And, gee whiz, that was pretty good; get Out there and make six or eight, ten dol­lars a day pan­han­dling eat maybe ten, fif­teen meals at the same time! (Laugh­ter). Then I went to work for a big rancher out of Cheyenne there, and I can’t remem­ber his name, but I went Out Off his ranch. I was out there about two months. And I got some­thing like thirty dol­lars a month and board and room. And I was there about two months and finally I wrote a let­ter to this kid that was sup­posed to run away with me in Emmett, Idaho. And, of course, my dad was watch­ing him pretty close and when he sat him get this let­ter at the post office, he told him, he says, “Earl,” he says, “I’ll give you five dol­lars for that let­ter.” Which Earl sold him the let­ter. There was another girl there that knew me and knew where I was at, so she went down to the tele­graph office and sent a telegram, told me, she says, “Father knows your where­abouts, you’d bet­ter move on.” I come in from work that night and the boss’s wife handed me this telegram and I read it, and I didn’t say any­thing, I went on Out and went to bed and the next morn­ing when I came in I had my few clothes I had bought and I was ready to hit the road again. Well, the boss had to take me some­thing like forty, fifty miles to get to the rail­road to catch a freight train. And, come to find out I was just a few hours ahead of the police; they came out to pick me up and send me back to Idaho to my folks. Well, I never wrote another let­ter then ‘til I went clean down to Galve­ston, Hous­ton, Texas, ‘course I was in Den­ver, Col­orado. There was another fel­low, he1ught me to go out and bum from the houses. He’d take me and walk down the street and he’d look at a house, he’d say, “You go over there, you’ll get a hand­out.” He says, “Now me, I’m going over here; I’m going to get a set­down.” He was able to name what he would get at the houses, cause the houses them days was mostly marked, all the rail­road bums marked their houses. And then, of course, I worked my way on down into Texas; turned around and I came back up to Kansas City, Kansas. And it was in the fall of the year, get­ting pretty late in the fall, it was along in Octo­ber, I guess, Novem­ber. And a big guy there come down in the jun­gles, we called him Ben McGee, is his name, he looked like a tele­phone pole with me stand­ing along side of him I was the base, and he looked at me, he said, “Kid, you mak­ing any money?” I says, “No.” “Well,” he says, you want a job?” I says, “Well, Yeah, I’d take a job.” I says, “What you got?” And he says, “I live out here in the coun­try, my wife and chil­dren are there most of the time by their self,” he says, “I need some­body to do chores and carry water and things like this.” So, I went out there on this place and I worked for about two months and I wrote my folks a let­ter then, and, ‘course, my dad when he got the let­ter, why, he wrote back and he says, “Well, son, if you want to come home,” he says, “I’ll sell the old cow and send you a ticket to come home on.” Well, my folks only had one cow and that the relief or the wel­fare or the state or some­thing had give it to them. It was then Roosevelt’s —he was then pres­i­dent. And I wrote back, I said, “No, Dad,” I says, “when I come home I’ll cone home on my own.” Well, I stayed there in Kansas City until about April. And I packed up one day and I left for home, and wrote my mother and told her I was commt and to write me a let­ter at Cheyenne, gen­eral deliv­ery, and I picked it up there. I come on home — well, in the mean­time I had made, oh, quite a bit of money, I had $250 — $300 on me. And, of course, bums if they knew that you had money, why, they’d take it away from you, they’d get it some way. I had an old army jacket, or coat, on that I’d got­ten hold of and I took and ripped out the seam and I poked this money back into a kind of a hem that was around the col­lar of the coat. And I come on home. Of course, I bummed my way home; I wasn’t buy­ing no ticket home, that was out! And that night, my dad was rather odd, of course, I guess, hav­ing noth­ing all his life, why, he saved every­where he could and my mother had made out a list of gro­ceries and he would take it and he would go down that list, “Well, you don’t need this.” And he would scratch it out. “We don’t need this.” and he’d scratch it out. Got down and just tear the list up and all apart. So, we went out that night to buy gro­ceries, on pay­day, it was on a Fri­day night and Dad went out to get gro­ceries, and I saw the list and I knew what he’d marked out. And we’d go down through the aisles of the store and pick up gro­ceries; I’d pick this stuff up and throw it in the bas­ket. Dad never said noth­ing. We got up to the check stand and the girl she checked it out and he got ready to pay for it, Dad started to pay for it, and I says, “No, Dad, on me, I’ll buy it.” So, it was quite an expe­ri­ence. Well, from that time on, why, I trav­eled for about four or five years, off an on, you know — when I’d find work, why, I’d stop and work and then when the work was over, I’d get up and go again. I’d come home maybe in the fall of the year and we’d head out for apple pick­ing or prune pick­ing or hops work or some­thing like that. I never cared for the beet fields. That’s some­thing I— I went out there, I worked about two hours in the beet fields with a group one time. We took a con­tract on a patch of beets over in Emmett, and I went out there with my dad and brother and I got down on my knees and I worked about two hours and I got up and I says, “Dad,” I says, “there’s a lot of money eas­ier to make than this.” I got up and I went back to town. I asked Andy Lit­tle over in Emmett for a job. I worked for him for sev­eral years, off and on. And I got to be known —s a mule skin­ner. So, I went out on one of his ranches; a dol­lar a day and board and room; worked ten hours a day and seven days a week, if you wanted to. But, I’ve had a lot of expe­ri­ences and a lot of the coun­try I’ve seen and dif­fer­ent peo­ple; I’ve always been one to observe peo­ple, and I’ve got a lot of friends all over the United States yet that know me from days when I trav­eled. But I tell a lot of peo­ple this stuff — lot of the young kids— espe­cially some of the rela­tions, you know, years ago when I was younger up in Mon­tana, why, I’d tell the Cartwright girls, my mother’s sister’s daugh­ters, and they just thought I was mak­ing a lot of stuff up, because they couldn’t under­stand how I could pile so much liv­ing into such a short time. And this is what fas­ci­nates a lot of peo­ple when I talk with ‘em, is because I have have seen a lot. I’ve seen a lot of things that was wrong and crooked and every­thing else. Almost killed one man over a white woman that he was molest­ing in a box­car, and I took that white girl and took her home. She lived in Galve­ston, Texas. Her folks would give me any­thing in the world I wanted if I wanted to take it, but I wouldn’t take it. And I worked for a man in Cam­bridge, Idaho. I worked three win­ters there, and he told me, he said, “You stay with me ‘til I pass away,” he says, “the ranch and the cat­tle belongs to you. My wife and boy, they get the money, but,” he says, “the place here belongs to you.” I says, “No, Jake, I don’t want it.” And that’s when I left him.

CS: Time to set­tle down.

CWC: Well, I got it all out of my sys­tem while I was young and then I got mar­ried in ‘42(1942) and I and my wife has been together ever since. Oh, we travel. I went into the masonry game. I was in the Marine Corps for three years and I came out of the ser­vice and went into masonry or con­struc­tion work in Cal­i­for­nia; started out as a hod car­rier, worked some as a plas­tered and then I went into masonry. And I got my journeyman’s card in Cal­i­for­nia and I came to Idaho and did a lit­tle work here and I went on up into Mon­tana and I con­tracted into Wyoming, con­tracted with the group, and I drove milk truck there, just what­ever I could find to do, I did it. And then we moved back to Idaho and I stayed here for a few years and went to Cal­i­for­nia and then back to Idaho. In fact, in the last three years I’ve made two moves; moved to Cal­i­for­nia then a year later moved back here, then a year later moved back to Cal­i­for­nia and then back here.

AAC: Might tell her a lit­tle of your expe­ri­ence in the Marine Corps.

CWC: When I was in the Marine Corps — I was an odd per­son— I never was one to try to get rates or to show off or any­thing like this. I didn’t want the rates, all I was in the Marine Corps for was to do the job that we had to do over there and get back to the United States in one piece. And I turned rates down sev­eral times. But dur­ing the time I was in the ser­vice, we had a Cap­tain Joslin, they called him Chin­less Char­lie; he had a big, long chin and he had a divi­sion between his head and his shoul­ders looked like a turkey neck. And he used to laugh at me, he’d watch me and I’d get to smok­ing, of course, I smoked for years and I’d start chain — smok­ing about the time we was ready to go out onto an inva­sion, not know­ing that we were going on an inva­sion; he’d look at me, he says, “Well, Creech,” he says, “we’re about ready to go out again,” he says, “you’re chain— smok­ing. Then we went in one time, we was headed for Saipan — rather an odd expe­ri­ence — they tried to teach me to swim in the boot camp in San Diego and they couldn’t do it. Finally, they marked me down as qual­i­fied and that was about it. But we got into Pearl Har­bor and we docked over in the canal. There was seven LSTs tied up side by side. So, we were back there in the canal, and as I say, there was two tied side by side, and the LST I was on was in the mid­dle. And we were all loaded with explo­sives, ammu­ni­tion, air­plane gaso­line, high — test gaso­line ready to move out for the inva­sion of Saipan and Tin­ian. And they brought a Jap civil­ian, Hawai­ian Jap, aboard to do some elec­tri­cal weld­ing and he touched off a fifty— five gal­lon drum of high — test gaso­line. It started the ship to blos­ing up. They sounded aban­don ship and here I was out there in the darn water two hun­dred and fifty yards from the shore and I jumped from one ship to the other and got to the ship next to the shore and still that two hun­dred and fifty yards looked like a long ways. I looked over the side and the sailors and the army boys was jump­ing over about as fast as they could, and when one would pop up Out of the water somebody’s feet would hit ‘em and knock ‘eta back under again. And I said, “No, Clyde, that’s not for you.” I stood back by the bulk­head and about half of ‘em got off the ship as the lieu­tenant came along. “Give me a hand, mate,” he says, “1 want to get that gaso­line off the front end of this ship.” I said, “Hand, hell, I ain’t going to get around that high explo­sive, noth­ing doin I won’t help you.” So, I stood there until every­body got off the ship. The cap­tain of the ship, he came along, he says, “Well, Mate, it’s about time we’s get­ting off, isn’t it?” I says, “Yeah, I guess so.” I walked over to the side of the ship and went down on a rope. I got down in the water and there was a sailor there help­ing an army boy and he looked at me, “Do you swim, Mate?” I says, “No, I can’t.’ He says, “Well, I can’t help you, I’m try­ing to help this army boy.” I said, “Well. here goes.” So I kicked off and was there and I came up along­side another sailor, and the sailor he looked at me and he says, “Give me a hand, Mate,” I says, “Hand, hell, I can’t swim either!” When I got ashore, I was so weak that I crawled Out Ofl my belly like a snake, got onto the beach and finally I got in a ways from the beach, oh, prob­a­bly forty, fifty yards and there was a truck there with a Navy Corps­man; he was patch­ing peo­ple up as they got off the ships. He says, “Give me a hand, Mate, take and straighten up my gear here in the truck.” And I got up and I helped him straighten it up and about that time there was a Marine cap­tain cone along, “You boys bet­ter get the heck out of here,” he says, “this is too dan­ger­ous.” Most of the fel­lows when they come out of the water went right into a big cane field. And there were 10,000 men killed right there in the cane field with some of this explo­sions. They reported in the United States that there a few Marines killed; never men­tioned our explo­sion of the ships what­so­ever — it was an oil dump that was sup­posed to have blowed up. I went off to an angle — course, I got a lot of the flak and stuff. I got into there and got up on a hill­side and got back with some of my out­fit. And Sergeant — he went down into a seabee camp and asked ‘em if we could take one of the trucks to haul us back to cen­ter there in Pearl Har­bor. The seabee says, “No, I can’t let it go, I’m not autho­rized to give you one.” The sergeant, he turned and he says, “I’ll tell you some­thing,” he says,” he gays, “you want to be with that truck,” he says, “you bet­ter get into it, because I’m tak­ing it.” We got back to the tran­sit cen­ter and the lieu­tenant there, he was run­ning up and down the line, course there was 1,500, 2,000 of us there and he was try­ing to get us, he was try­ing to get our names and our ranks and our ser­ial num­bers and all this and that. The com­man­der of the base cane out and asked him what he was doing. He told him. He says, “For­get that. First thing find out how many of these men are injured.” And then he says, “Get ‘em some dry clothes and get ‘em into a tent and get ‘em into a bed.” “Then”, he says, “get their name, rank and ser­ial num­ber:’ Well, when we left tran­sit cen­ter they put us back on another ship, another LST. We was workin’ loadin’ this LST up; now the con­voy had already left us and went on. There was six LSTs that they left, so we were load­ing work­ing day and night to load these LST’s so we could get out of there and catch up with our con­voy, and they’d brought a cylin­der of propane aboard, or weld­ing gas of some type, any­way, it was leak­ing and I was back in the back of the hold there of the LST and there was about 200 men up around the mouth of the LST and they heard that thing hiss­ing, they come back through there like a herd of sheep. ‘Course, when I saw “em com­ing, why, I jumped up and I run over, and the lad­der going into the crew’s ness — I jumped and grabbed the rail of that and swung myself over into the crew’s mess. When I did that the crew they jumped up, tipped the tables over, food scat­tered all over the floor — (Chuck­les) Of course, we were a jumpy bunch of peo­ple. All we had to do was take a com­bat knife out of your scab­bard, and drop the han­dle of it down and let it hit the deck of the ship and you had nobody around you what­so­ever, they just — boom! — they were gone! Then we caught up with our out­fit and we landed on Sai— pan; I was in the sec­ond wave, I was the captain’s per­sonal run­ner. I oper­ated the 536 and 300 radio, plus I stood tele­phone watch. My com­pany, my out­fit, landed in the first wave, but the cap­tain ordered me to come in in the sec­ond wave and make a recon­nais­sance on the beach and report to him on the wounded. I got onto the beach, and gee whiz, there was already one wave in there and the sec­ond wave hit the beach — they hit the deck— and they started shoot­ing right into their own men. And I run up and down the beach hol­ler­ing for ‘em to knock off the shootin’. We fought our way all across Saipan. I can remem­ber one — oh, a cou­ple of inci­dents there; one after­noon we were going down across — went down across this big cane field and kind of up on a lit­tle knoll and we saw two Japs and two geisha girls run­ning out across this cane field, locked arm in arm. say there was six DARs, a— bout fif­teen Ml’s opened up on them; they killed the two japs and never put a scratch on the girls. And when I got to them — I was one of the first ones to get to them — when I got to them, one of the girls was try­ing to pull a pis­tol out of one of these officer’s scab­bards and I kicked out of her hand took the pis­tol myself and kept it. And it was stolen from me at a later time. But it was rather odd to see that many weapons being fired at four peo­ple locked arm in ann and not put a mark on the girls. And then we went on out across there and we cone onto a saki dump. Every man in the out­fit had a fifth of saki under one arm and a rifle in the other hand on the front line fight­ing. They had big tanks and every tank had a case of saki on the back end of it. Well, we got down on the lower end of the island and ordered to dig in for the night; set up our defense, which we did. Along about ten o’clock why, the bul­lets started fly­ing every which way. I was always con­scious; I always dug me a nice deep hole, down below the ground. So I’m down in this hole and Cap­tain Joslin, he’s over from be a— bout fif­teen, twenty feet, he hollers over, he says, “Creech, what’s going on out there?” I said, “I don’t know, sir, why?” “Well,” he says, “raise your head up and look.” I says, “Like heck I will!” (Chuck­les) But the men had got­ten pretty well drunk on saki and they thought they saw some­thing mov­ing, so they started shoot­ing. And this was one of the expe­ri­ences that didn’t get reported in a lot of the things that hap­pened. And we went on down to the end of the island — well, in the mean­time we’d come a— cross a woman and her father, I have a pic­ture of the woman’s son yet, and she had been hit by a piece of shrap­nel from a bomb or a big bul­let fired from the ship. She had a spot on her hip about the size of a din­ner plate that had been blowed com­pletely off, and the edge of the skin — the meat was off and gan­grene had set in. The woman couldn’t walk, she crawled out from under a build­ing— her dad crawled from under a build­ing, he was an old man, I sup­pose eighty years old, and the cap­tain left me there with them to be a guard over ‘em the tfPs from back behind or the doc­tors or the Navy’d come up and picked ‘em up. And while I was there, why, I talked with ‘em quite a bit, and at that time I could talk a lit­tle bit of Gua­man­ian(?) which I had been taught in the marine Corps but not a whole lot. I was able to com­mu­ni­cate with her and she told me a lot of things about what was hap­pen­ing, and she gave me a pic­ture of her son. He was a pilot in the Jap Army. And she gave me a razor and I don’t know what all but sev­eral dif­fer­ent things. And about that time, why, this Navy corps­man came up in a jeep. He jumped out of there and he come over and he hauled off and kicked her and told her to get up and get into that jeep. And I threw my rifle down, “Why, you son of a — — , you kick her again, I’ll kill you where you stand.” A doc­tor came up about that time, he looked at me, “What’s going on here?” And I told him what had hap­pened. He turned around to the corps­man and he says, “Son,” he says, “You pick that lady up and you put her in the jeep, in your own arms.” Which they did. Well, then, of course, I joined my out­fit and I went on down on the end of the island. I had learn’t to make satchel charges dur­ing the time in Hawaii, and we got down on the end of this island. We come into a lot of caves; there was one cave I remem­ber that had a hole in the top of the cave; there were thirty, forty Japs in there; women, kids, what­not. We talked to ‘em for a good two and a half, three hours try­ing to get ‘em to come out. But they had been indoc­tri­nated by the Japan­ese peo­ple, Hawai­ian peo­ple or the Cua­ma­ni­ans, peo­ple that lived on the islands, there was a bunch of them in there, civil­ians; they’d been told that the Marines were bar­baric and they would tor­ture ‘em, rape their women and then kill ‘em, and it was bet­ter to die rather than to have this tor­ture. Well, they wouldn’t come out to us. The cap­tain ordered me to make up a satchel charge and drop in this hole on top of this cave. I remem­ber lookin’ down in there when I dropped and there was a woman set­tin’ down there, right under this hole and she caught the satchel charge. Course, I run back away from the hole and when it blew up there was a baby’s arm come out, out of the hole and it landed on one of the kid’s back. Sick — made all of us sick. And that was when we first got down close to the beach and we were fight­ing our way down through there and there was a bunch of these natives, they stood up in the rocks wav­ing their hats, or wav­ing their rags or wav­ing just any­thing to attract our atten­tion, Cap­tain Joslin fig­ured that they were ready to sur­ren­der, he’d just walk down there and take ‘em, see? Take ‘em over and that’d be it. We started down there and all of a sud­den they dis­ap­peared into the coral rock and the Japs they started shootin’ at us; we got pinned down. I run the radio at that time on a lit­tle 300 and the colonel, he radioed in for us to with­draw, set up a defense back up on the ridge. Cap­tain grabbed the mike and said, “Say,”he says, “1 with­draw if and when I see fit.” He says, “When I can get my men out of here that is pinned down,” he says, “then I’ll with­draw.” He turned around to me and he looked at me and he says, “Creech,” he says, “a man’s life isn’t worth a plugged nickle, is it?” Well, that man, he stood seven foot tall and he stood right up in the — on the bank of the coral reef there— the trench — and in plain sight of the Japs directed the with­drawal a good thirty min­utes and they never once touched him. Never hit him at all. We with­drawed and we got out of there and then we came back next morn­ing, course, and we took the rest of the island. But I saw those 250, 300 peo­ple jump off of the clift, com­mit sui­cide, than than be taken pris­on­ers. I saw one man that killed his daugh­ter, she was eigh­teen years old with a piano wire wrapped around her neck and killed her. Two. days later that man was a bro­ken spir­ited man, you couldn’t believe it. He says, “To think, I killed my daugh­ter when she could a had all of this.” Ha says, “You peo­ple treat us like we’re human beings.” And then we took one kid pris­oner down out of the rocks there. At first he stuck his hand around the edge of the rock, and I hollered at Sergeant Wend­strom, “Yeah,” he says, “1 see him, I’m watch­ing him.’ As we got fur­ther around, why, he saw that it was just a kid and we took him pris­oner. And he told us that the night before there was about 200 of ‘em set­tin’ in a cir­cle, Gua­ma­ni­ans, natives of the island; Jap guards over ‘em and some­body in the group lit a match to light a cig­a­rette with and the Japs opened up and mowed ‘em all down. He was lucky, he got Out of it alive. And his mother lived in Hon­olulu at the tine and at a later date we found out that he had been sent back to Hawaii and he got back with his folks. And, of course, I made four land­ings; I landed in Eni­we­tok, Palau and 7 , Kwa­jalein. And down in Eni­we­tok there we went in there to set up the pre­lim­i­nary defense, Of course, I was curi­ous — the islands, you could walk the coral reefs from one island to another, see, and when the tide was out — this one big island we were on, you could walk out there a ways and there was a lit­tle postage stamp island, noth­ing on it, but I didn’t know this. I went over to it and I went on over her to another big island and I vis­ited with a bunch of the Navy and Marines and Army boys and about three o’clock in the after­noon I started back, and I got back out to the postage stamp island and that’s as far as I could get; the tide cone in and I couldn’t get no fur­ther, Of course, I was pretty scared. There was navy boats run­nin’ around there and every­thing else and I tried to sig­nal one to get ‘em in to me and I couldn’t get their atten­tion, so I had to stay there the night. I had on a swimnin’ suit and I had a lit­tle knife that I car­ried and I took and dug a hole, not know­ing whether there was any natives on the island or Japs or any­thing else. I dug a hole on the beach and I took palm leaves or linbs off the palm trees and I lined a trench with it and then I cov­ered myself up and I slept there all night. I got up the next morn­ing and when the tide went out and I got back to my com­pany and when I come into the com­pany area, Cap­tain saw me, he says, “Creech, where you been?’ I says— I told him where I’d been. “Well,” he says, “you get on over to reg­i­men­tal,” he says, “there’s a report that you’re miss­ing in action.” He says, “You’d bet­ter get over there and stop it before it gets out.” Which I did, and it never got back to the fam­ily that I’d been miss­ing in action. We were follin’ round there one day and there was some col­ored boys dig­ging sou­venirs, and there was one boy down in the hole, oh, about eight feet deep; they’d dug out quite a few sou­venirs, he was down there dig­gin out sou­venirs and we had a crazy guy in the out­fit, he was all the time pulling some­thing. lie took a hand grenade and dis­armed it, left the cap in it was all. We was stand­ing there talkin’ to this col­ored boy and this other one crawled up out of the hole and was stanidng there and we was all talk­ing, and this boy had his hand behind his back and all of a sud­den he just tossed the hand grenade down at their feet. One of the col­ored boys he took right out across the island just as hard as he could run. The other one he was stand­ing there and his feet was just work­ing like pis­tons; wasn’t mov­ing an inch! (Chuck­les) Oh, there’s a lot of things that’s hap­pened that bring back old mem­o­ries. We named the first road made on Iwo Jima — was named Maui Boule­vard. Now, Maui, Hawaii is where our base was. Of course, when we came back from Iwo I come back with the com­pany, I got wounded on Iwo, but when the other boys came back from Iwo, the natives on Maui met the ship, of course, every­body received a lei around their neck, and the young girls, course, they make quite a thing over this, that we gave them the honor of named the first street on Iwo Jima after the island that we was sta­tioned on. At that time the col­ored boys was known as Amer­i­can Indi­ans to the natives of Hawaii, and we seen quite a bit of this over there.

AAC: What about the flag rais­ing there on low Jima?

CWC: The flag rais­ing on Iwo Jima? We went in and made a land­ing on Iwo Jima; course I was car­ry­ing a radio on my back that weighed about thirty — five pounds. I landed on Blue Beach, and it was a— bout, oh, maybe a quar­ter of a nile from the top of Mount Surib­achi and the Japs saw that radio and every time they’d see that radio, why, they would shoot at me. ‘Course, I moved — run maybe fif­teen, twenty steps and hit the deck again like I’d been hit and when­ever they’d raise the fire from me I’d move on. And we worked our way in on the air­field; went across the air­field and we come to a lit­tle kind of a hill and we set up our defenses for that night. Well, the other part of the com­pany came in and they went toward Mount Surib­achi. They got tied down and they were three days in tak­ing Mount Surib­achi. Then that time I set down here on this lit­tle hill and I watched through field glasses, the advance on Mount Surib­achi. Of course, I saw the flag rais­ing and all that. And when they secured Mount Surib­achi, they swung around— of course they was all the way across the island and we could see the Japs in front of ‘en run­ning in our direc­tion, so we set up machine guns to set up a field of fire and we caught quite a few of the Japs that way. And, oh, the first night on Iwo Jima after we set up our defense that night, it was under the edge of this cliff, cliff about twenty, thirty feet high and I was in there in the line of defense and the cap­tain he was over hera bout twenty feet from me and he called me and he wanted me to go out and make a run and I got up and walked over and set down beside him; well, when I got up there was a kid aht we called “Music”, he was the trum­peter in our com­pany and he moved into the posi­tion that I’d got up from. Well, of course, the Japs they made quite a run on us about that time, that kid that moved into the posi­tion where I was at, a hand grenade landed between his legs and blew both his legs off. And that boy cried and hollered and begged for help the rest of the night. We were pinned down, we couldn’t help him. He begged for help and we couldn’t do any­thing for him. But, you know, I have thought many a time since how for­tu­nate I was; there was a Super Being beyond me that was watch­ing over me that saw to it that I was moved from out of that posi­tion wo where I didn’t get hit. And dur­ing the fight­ing on Iwo I took the flat, it’s a paper flag, I still have it. In the cen­ter of it there’s a round cir­cle and there’s writ­ing all the way around it which would be the rays of the sun. This writ­ing, I am told, now, I don’t know because I’ve never found any­one who could inter­pret it for me, but I’ve been told, that it is the sig­na­tures of all the rela­tions of this young man that had it on him — this Jap. And I’ve tried sev­eral times to get it inter­preted and I haven’t been able to find any­one that can do it — that will do it for me. I’ve got sev­eral of the Japan­ese war bonds and quite a bit of the money that they had and things of this nature. But I was going out across the island there on Iwo Jima and I had picked up an offjcer’s Samuria sword, which is a long sword and the han­dle is about, oh, six­teen, eigh­teen inches long. ly’s cov­ered with seal­skin wrapped with spun gold with jew­els set in a dia­mond form, or dia­mond shape, the spun gold was in dia­mond shape and there was jew­els set in the han­dle of this. I Had it on my pack and every time I would move some darn Jap would shoot at me. And after about the sixth or sev­enth time being shot at I decided he’d seen that sword and knew that I had got it off of some offi­cers, so I just reached back and grabbed it and threw it as far as I could throw it! And this stopped the shoot­ing at me. That is peri­od­i­cally shoot­ing at me, all the time, you know. And we were going along there and we — the com­pany got pinned down by a machine gun nest and I got a lit­tle fur­ther out beyond the front line, out in no — man’s — land, cane field. Well I fig­ured, “Shoot, I’ll just set down and when the com­pany catches up with me, I’ll be with ‘em.” I was set­tin’ there with that radio on my back lean­ing agin the corn field, corn stalks— or cane stalks. All of a sud­den a bul­let flies over­head, chips of cane fell down on me, I thought, “Oh, oh!” I crawled over into a trench between the rows of cane and I crawled for­ward about twenty feet, and then they had to sight in all over again. And I just kept work­ing back and forth, changed my posi­tions to where they couldn’t hit me. I did this for about twenty min­utes. Finally the com­pany went a team of demo­li­tion men and spe­cial­ists up to make a cir­cle round behind the machine gun nest and knock it out, and when they come close to me, course the sniper quit shoot­ing. And ‘7 says, “It’s time you got your bot­tom out of here!” And I moved back into the line sight, got back to where I belonged. But on Tin­ian; we went from Saipan to Tin­ian. We were 356 men to a com­pany, yeah, a com­pany, and when we went to Tin­ian we had bean thinned down so much that there was only 90 men in our com­pany, and we made the first land­ing; first wave on Tin­ian. We walked in prob­a­bly in there a good 200 yards and we stopped, looked back behind us and real­ized that the sec­ond wave wasn’t com­ing. I got on the radio and radioed back and they said, “Well, turn around and mop up the beach, we Can’t get on the beach.’ Well, the Japs had dug holes down in the ground, cov­ered ‘em over with boards and put dirt and grass on top of these boards, and after we had went past ‘em, they threw the boards back and here they were behind us and in front of us both. And, of course, we had to turn around and mop up the beach so the sec­ond wave could get in. Well, as we went on in on the island, we set up our defense that night; we set up on a straight line across the island before dark. After it got dark, why, the cap­tain, the com­man­der of the com­pany, he decided that we would with­draw our right wing and make it on an angle across the island, which we did and we took and dug holes. We were so few that they put two men to a fox­hole, and it was twenty feet between fox­holes. About, oh, two o’clock in the inorn­ing the Japs made a run on us and here they come, and the two guys that were on my left, they chick­ened out; they come over and crawled in my fox­hole with I and my buddy. One of ‘em had a BAR. I put him in the foot of the fox­hole, and the other three of us had one out to the right, one straight ahead and one to the left. We had forty feet here area to cover. 1q11 never for­get this one Jap offi­cer, he come run­ning out across the line there in front of us and Cor­po­ral Japan, he says, “Creech,” he says, “watch it,” he says, “here comes the Lone Ranger.” And we knocked him out. And after that, the rest of the evening, we could hear the Japs hol­ler­ing for “Angelo”. The rea­son I remem­ber this name so well, my half stepdad’s name is Angelo Fer­rel, and this name has stuck with me all these years. I’ll never for­get that Jap. Then along about day­light, six tanks, Japan­ese tanks pulled up on the line and here the Jap troops, they’re out there all ganged around these tanks, they opened up the tur­rets and they’re talk­ing to the dri­vers of these tanks, and of course, they don’t know where our line is, because we had with­drew. We had no bazooka on the front line, he was back in com­pany C? and of course, by the time we got him up to the line there were sev­eral flares went up, lit it up just as bright as we finally got him up on the front line and we knocked out four tanks. Two tanks went through the line and on don on the beach and they were knocked out down there. And then along about day­light, it was start­ing to get pretty well lit up out there, you could hear then Japs hol­ler­ing “Ban­zai” They would take a hand grenade in their hand and grasp it to their stom­ach; pull the pin on it and kill their self. We had a lot of ‘em do that. And, of course, as quick as it got day­light, why, the biggest share of the Marines were out there sou­venir hunt­ing. And it was some­thing to see that, I’ll tell you! Well, that’s some of the expe­ri­ences I had in the Marine Corp. I got hit on Iwo Jima; shot through the shoul­der and they put me out on a ship and sent me back to Pearl — well, first they sent me to Guam and I laid there in the hos­pi­tal for, oh, four or five days or a week and they sent me back to Pearl Har­bor and I laid in the hos­pi­tal for a month and a half. I got back to my com­pany and I says, “Clyde,” I says, “this stuff isn’t for you, shoot, you’re crazy!” So I put in for a mail clerk’s job. I got in as the com­pany mail clerk. From that time on I didn’t do any field maneu­vers or any­thing of this nature. I spent most of my time on lib­erty until they shipped us home. And before they shipped us home, they were train­ing us for the inva­sion of Japan. And we had out­lines and maps and the city as a whole beach­head in Japan; Tokyo, where we were going to land and we were being trained for this very strong. Well, I’m in tent one night, my tent, and sleep­ing and about two o’clock in the morn­ing, why, the offi­cer of the day came in and he says, “Creech,” he says, “get up and get the radio on.” I looked at hi, I says, “Go on, it’s two o’clock in the morn­ing, you’re crazy.” “No”, he says, over, come on and get up!” I got up and turned the radio on and, of course, they were broad­cast­ing the bomb­ing of Japan with the atomic bomb and talk­ing about the sur­ren­der and every­thing. There was all the lights in the area on. The Colonel he wakes up and sees all the lights on and he gets on the tele­phone and calls the offi­cer of the day, he says, “What’s going on down there in the 25th Area?” “Well, Sir, haven’t you heard? The war’s over!” He said, “Dou­ble all guards on ammu­ni­tion dumps and uel dumps.” And then he says, “Get those lights out down there even if you have to shoot ‘en out, get ‘em out!” Well, they got the lights out. And along about eight, eight — thirty next morn­ing, why, they took up a col­lec­tion, $250 and I went down and bought whiskey. Cane squeez­ings, for the com­pany. “Course, we cel­e­brated the bomb­ing of Japan, and shortly after that, why, we was sent back to the States. I was mus­tered out on Octo­ber — no, I landed Octo­ber the 25th in the United States and I was mus­tered out of the ser­vice on the 23rd or some­thing like that of Novem­ber. And I had all the ser­vice that I wanted. I didn’t want no more. But I was tick­led and thank­ful that I got back to the United States in one piece, because it could have been a lot worse. They called me “Eagle Eye” more or less dur­ing the time that I was in the ser­vice and then after I got back to the States and I started in the masonry game, the fore­mens, or the con­trac­tors all over the coun­try, more or less, knew me as “Eagle Eye” for the sim­ple rea­son I had a straight eye that I could sight down a line and tell whether a wall was run­ning straight or not, block— work or brick work. So this is my Indian name, is “Eagle Eye”.

CS: I thought one thing that was kind of inter­est­ing was the way that all of the kids in my gen­er­a­tion were taught to swim. I remem­ber as a lit­tle kid watch­ing the older ones when­ever a kid would get to be six or seven, we’d go down to the river: And there was a bridge across the river and they took him out on the cen­ter of the bridge and then the older ones would take their feet and hands and swing ‘em back and forth and have ‘em into the mid­dle of the river and then you have to sink or swim. And that was always a fun time, you know, I thought that was very funny, until my turn came, and then when they threw me in and I didn’t swim and I went under the water and I must have been under the water block down the tti’’er and when I came up it wasn’t too funny any­more. I think most of the older ones were taught to swim that way.

CWC: It seemed odd to me –that I couldn’t swim, in one way, because when my dad was sup­posed to be a good swim­mer and my grand­fa­ther, both, and they claimed that one tine my grand­fa­ther and father both could swim that river in Wyoming with a sack of flour around their neck and their clothes back there on:their neck and get across the river. Had no other way to cross it. But my dad never allowed me to go sw±mming. Of course, we didn’t have swim­ming pools when I was a kid and I didn’t get to play around much any­way, I had to either work or study. But I w — s never allowed to go swim­ming, and I was never allowed to fool with a gun or rifle of any kind. That some­thing my dad was very, very strict about.

CS: That’s kind of strange, because us kids all knew how to shoot by the time we were six or seven years old.

CWC: No, it wasn’t really with my father, my father saw his brother shot when he was a young man, just a small kid, and so Dad would never let us kids— my dad took me hunt­ing my first time when I was about, oh, fif­teen, six­teen years old, and that’s the first time that my dad ever knew that I han­dled a rifle. I had sneaked the .22 out a few times and fooled with it, but if my dad had a found out about it, it would have been pretty rough. My dad was a man that when he made a state­ment or he said, do this or you’ll do that — ” he only told you once, and after that, why, it was pun­ish­ment. And I had been pun­ished a few times.

CS: A major­ity of the kids grew up with guns. We did. I know I was talk­ing to 7 the other day and they all learned to shoot early. I can remem­ber shoot­ing Dad’s old .22 and tak­ing the bul­lets out of that leather pouch when I couldn’t have been more than five.

CWC: My Dad, they claimed, was one of the best rifle shots in the coun­try. One time, the story is told, that there was a buck deer stand­ing, looked like a mile away on a ridge, and all the boys that was there, I guess Ace was there and some of the rest of ‘em, says, “Come on, Bruce, you can hit it.” Had a big rifle, I don’t know what it was, but he went ahead and pulled up that rifle and shot; leaned it agin a tree and shot, and all of ‘em said, “You got it, Bruce, you got it.” “Naw,” he said, “I couldn’t a got it, it’s too far away.” Well, they walked over and just over a ridge of of this hill there laid the buck. He had got it, airight. But Dad told em that his dad, when he was grow­ing up, was just a young man, his dad would kneel down on the ground — my dad wasn’t big enough to hold the rifle, and Grand­dad would kneel down on the ground and Dad would put the rifle across his shoul­ders and shoot. But you put a shot­gun in my dad’s hands and he couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn. But he was a rifle shot. I’ve seen him, he’d go hunt­ing, he’d take four or five sheels hunt­ing with him, that’s all he needed, he’d bring all of ‘em but one back. He was a good shot.

AAC: Well, I told you the other day, or my daugh­ter did, we come in a wagon now; we didn’t, we came in a 1917 Hud­son Super Six; nine pas­sen­ger tour­ing car. Com­ing over the sum­mit between Dil­lon, Mon­tana and Monida, Idaho going down into Idaho Falls, there was about two of snow on the ground; no road graders them days, you waited ‘til they got ready to clean the roads out.

CS: Can I say some­thing? Why don’t you tell them about some of the other cars that were in the group too, besides just the car that.

AAC: Well, our car, my father and brother that was older than me, we had this Hud­son and when we got into Dil­lon, as I started to men­tion, the snow was about a foot and a half or two foot deep and hadn’t been broke down off the sum­mit. Money was short; not enough to stay in a hotel, so we went down and we bought four log chains, inch and a half chains, and made snapon chains and fas­tened ‘em over our reg­u­lar chains; put four on each rear wheel, and we bucked the snow com­ing down off the sum­mit clear to the top of the radi­a­tor, ‘til it ‘d get so we couldn’t push it and we’d get out and shovel it and back up and go again. And we broke the trail that way for two or three model Ts and an old Dodge car they had. And that’s how we come into Idaho. It was kind of a strange deal, we got into Idaho and at that time they had these native pheas­ants, they’d stocked the coun­try with pheas­ants and we’d been used to shoot­ing sage hens and rab­bits and stuff over the other side of the Rock­ies, and for the first six months, why, very few pheas­ants we got, ‘til we learned how to kill ‘em, see, they were so much faster that what we’d been used to. In Wyoming I’d take a sin­gle bar­reled shot­gun and ltd shoot one aset­tin’ and put another shell in and get another’n