In March, 1956, Wesley Parrent and his wife, Mazelle, met with Lars L. Olson, and by tape recorder obtained the following account of the early life of Lars L. Olson. Lars gives his story in an informal extemporaneous manner, just as he remembers the events in his early life. At the time of this recording his health was good, his mind sharp, and his memory remarkable for a man who will be 82 years of age in just two months.

"When I was about five years of age I remember a little thing tha happened. My father had a yoke of oxen and he would haul hay and those oxen would mind him. He would say "gee" and "haw" and they would go where he'd tell them to. "Whoa", and they'd stop. In the morning when he'd go to the field he would let me ride on one of the oxen about a block. Then he'd put me down and say, "now run home, and be careful, you don't want to get hurt." I ran home this time. Next morning I wanted to go for a ride again he would not let me. "No," he said, "you can't go this morning." I did not like that a little bit, and as he went away I sat down behind the house and began to cry. Mother came around and talked to me to see what was the matter. I remembered that when elderly people were in the house I had heard them say that when a man gets old he gets into his second childhood, and when he gets in his second childhood he's like a child. And so that was the thing I was pondering on. So, when my mamma said, "What's the matter, what are you crying for?" I answered, "Oh, when I become pappa and pappa becomes Lars, I won't let Lars ride on my ox either." and this she laughed at, and of course, I heard about that several times as I grew up.

My father's name is Lars Larson Olson Sr. He was born the 18th of June, 1832 in Yttermalung Sweden. My Mother's name was Randina Larsen. She was born the 6th of September, 1848 in Nas Hedemarken, Norway. My father was a farmer. One of his hobbies was chicken raising, getting the right kind of food for chickens. He'd grind bones and fix up all kinds of mash for them -- something they didn't have on the market at that time. And he said in taking care of his chickens, they would net him, after all expenses were paid, a dollar a year a hen. So that wasn't so bad.

My father came to Norway as a young man, as a salesman, and he did quite well. When he came up to this little place, Nas Hedemarken, it's north of Oslo, he saw a place that he really liked and he bought it. And there's where he met my mother. The Mormon Elders came in this vicinity and in 1864 he joined the Church. Things became a little miserable there for him --the neighbors didn't like the Mormons, so he decided to sell his place; and he sold it for about half of what it was worth and come to America. When he got down to Christiana, Norway, at that time, is where my mother and he were married. And he brought my grandmother and my aunt along.

When they came to America, they walked from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City. They came in 1866, three days before the railroad got there. My mother was eighteen when she married. And when they reached here they settled in Provo to begin with. There, my oldest brother was born, the 30th of November, 1867, and he died the 17th of June 1868. His name was Laurtiz Olson. The next child was a boy, Joseph Ludwig Olson, born the 24th of January 1869 at Santaquin.

My father and mother moved south. Father was going down to Meadow to get land, he had heard there was plenty of land there. My mother stopped at Santaquin where there were some people from Norway that she knew. And when father came back she wanted to go to Provo again, and he wanted to go to Meadow; so they stopped right at Santaquin -- the poorest place they could have stopped. A sister was born the 26th of May, 1871 at Santaquin. Then I came along, Lars Larson Olson Jr., May 14 1874. Next was a brother, Olof Gilbert, 28th of October 1876. Then a sister, Amanda Josephine, 3rd of January 1879. Then Dena Louisa, the 29th of March 1881. Next Alvin Edward, the 5th of August 1883, Clara Marinda the 20th of September, 1885, Anna Pearl the 7th of September, 1888, and David Martin, the baby, 11th of January, 1891. Eleven children in all.

My eyes are blue green and I stand around about 170 pounds, and at the present time I am white-haired. I was 5 feet 9 inches until I began to get a little older. I'm about 5' 81/2" now. On May the 14th, two months from now, I'll be 82. (1956 now)

I can't remember when I first started to talk--I guess I was a couple of years old when I began to jabber a little. I didn't get much schooling after I was old enough to work on the farm, that is about six or seven years old. Then as I got older I'd start school after the holidays and quit as soon as the spring came so I could work on the farm. We had no way of hiring help and father wasn't as well as he could be--he contracted rheumatism; so from the time I was about ten or twelve years old I had to work on the farm and take care of things, and I also hauled lumber and timber from Santaquin up to Tintic. I wasn't big enough and strong enough to lift the boards up over the hind wheel of the wagon. I took my younger brother along to hold brake for me going down the mountain road, and I would do the driving. But when I was twelve yeras old I told them I could drive alone and hold the brake too, so I did. When I had lumber and timber on the wagon that I couldn't handle, or couldn't unload, some of the men at the mine would help me unload. But it always took two days to make a trip and we camped out at night, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the snow. But we would always quit for Christmas. The trip that we used to make with the wagon was 24 miles. It would take a good day to make that trip with a load. Then we could come back a little quicker. We had two horses on the wagon and loaded about 1000 feet of lumber to a load, or a cord of timber. And some of the timbers I hauled then!--if you go into Eureka now you'll see them still in the front of the old Keystone dump holding the rocks and gravel back from falling down into the railroad tracks.

My favorite toy when I was a little boy was a little wagon made out of wooden wheels. This was down in the "big city" of Santaquin, Utah.

We lived in an adobe house with an addition of two rooms of brick on the north side. In our original home there were four rooms downstairs and two upstairs. There were about two windows on each side, faced east. To heat this home, father and us boys hauled wood. We'd go up on the bench, in the hills, and cut oak and maple and bring it down. We didn't have coal for many many years. We heated our home with wood. And to get good wood we had to go out into the Kimball Creek region where we could get cedar and pinion pine. It would take two boys two days to get a load of wood, and we had to go about 15 miles distance.

The adobes were made at a little adobe yard on the north end of town. The fellow there would mix up a batch of mud, stomp it with his feet and then he'd work with it until it got quite thick and he would put it into molds. They had a horse that was running this mold, this mud machine, what they called an old adobe mill. The horse would wind that and as the mud would come out of this mill, about the right thickness, this man would take it with his hands and slap it into these molds. And there would be about four or five molds in one case, and when he got this full he would have a man run out and dump them on the yard where they would dry. He made adobes all day long that way. He also had two men cutting these molds out so he did several thousand a day. When they were dried they were what they called adobe, made out of clay, and they didn't have to burn them and yet they lasted for years and years when put into a house. They didn't have anything to mix with the mud except water, but they got as good a clay as they could get. And they stirred that until it was a certain thickness, and then it came out of the mill, this man put it in the molds, they took it out in a large flat yard they had, and there they'd let them dry and cover them if a storm would come. The men working would get a dollar a day, I think, for that kink of work. That was in the 80's, 1885-1890. Then they began to get brick. A man came into this little town, put up a brick yard and began to burn these adobes and make brick out of them. Then they were better and would last longer.

Our cooking was done on a coal stove--mother took care of that--she had a stove with four holes in and she cooked for that family of children. We had plenty to eat and never went hungry. And, I don't understand how a woman could do the work that she did! The home was lighted with coal-oil lamps. I remember that before we got our coal-oil lamps we had tallow candles which we made. We would take a string, roll it in grease and make a tallow candle out of it--light one end of it, and there we had a nice little light.

Our funiture was quite nice. The bed, I remember mother had, didn't have springs. She had a rope and the sides of the bed had little knobs, and she'd run this rope forth and back, criss-cross, and that was the only spring we had on the bed. Our mattress was one filled with straw--they are interesting if you get a few thistles in them. Ha! Floor covering--we had carpets on nearly all our floors, and mother wove those carpets herself. She had a loom that a carpenter had made and she bought reeds and brought with her from Europe. She would weave carpets, weave rugs. Many a time have I sat there by that loom winding the rags on the stick that she would run through this loom, forth and back, and strike with power with the big striking arm, and I've helped to thread the warp, they call it, through these combs, and it was quite interesting. And how she did it? She'd weave carpets for neighbors sometimes. And she did this besides taking care of a big family. Straw was stuffed under the carpets - in the bedrooms, the straw was about six inches thick in the middle of the floor, and that made a nice warm bedroom floor. The carpets were put down by stretching; and we'd stretch them putting two young men on the floor with their feet together and their arms stretching the carpet. We'd stretch those carpets right to the side of the room--to the mopboard.

You ask about my playmates. Oh, there was a crowd of us boys grew up - about seven of us in that part of town. The town was divided into about four wards or districts. In our district, the northeast part of town, there were seven or eight of us boys about the same age, and now they are all dead, except me. Games, we played, oh, yes, Run Sheep, Hide Seek, and then we used to play ball of course -- Town Ball was the big game. We had more fun at Town Ball than they do now with their baseball games.

Town Ball -- you have about five on a side, and you strike the ball out and of course you'd have to run to the first base. Anyone on the opposite side who was out, or on the outside, would catch that ball and throw it in front of you they could cross you out. They didn't have to throw it to the base if they could get it in front of you before you got to the base, you were out! That would apply to all the bases and then when there were three out we used to run then to get some of the members back into the game; and we would run what they call "ganders". And then the boy or man would have to strike that ball out far enough that the one who ran the "ganders" could make the run clear around and come into base without being crossed out. And if they could do that they could win a member in. If they could get them all out the the game was over. But sometimes they would play and one would make home run -- that would have an extra count, but very few could they do that because there was so few who run the circle before they could get the ball and strike him out.

Five or six on a side -- we did'nt have any specified number -- whatever crowd could get together -- divide the crowd and then play. Just like baseball now, only we didn't have the rules and regulations -- we just had - if you caught it on a fly, you were out. Or in a certain ____ we caught it on the first bounce, or if you are running, and they can catch the ball and throw it in front of you they cross you out. But they were interesting games, and we just had as much fun playing that Town Ball as they do now playing baseball. That shows a little of the evolution of the baseball today -- its the same thing, only its developed into a baseball game with rules and regulations--different to what they had then.

Our fires were bucket brigades. One time a man's barn got afire, and we had to run and carry water. Sometimes we had to carry water a block and we'd get all the neighbors, and each man would have two buckets. He'd run to the stream, fill his buckets with water, and then come and we'd pour this water--we'd have two or three men pouring this water on the fire, trying to douse it while there would be about 20 or 30 men running and carrying water. That was the only way we could put a fire out. I don't remember the comming of the first fire engine.

Our chores were taking care of the horses, cows and the pigs and chickens; but while we were small mother would get out and do that in the morning before she would get our breakfast. The women, in those days, did a great deal of the chores. But I remember when we boys were large enough we'd have to take over. One would take over one part of the chores, and one another. We'd have to feed the horses at night, so they'd have plenty to eat during the night; and in the morning they'd be ready to go to work. And the cows had to be milked night and morning; and pigs--the same way--we had to feed them.

And I remember, our farm wasn't very large--my father couldn't raise enough grain to feed this family, but we had a nice fruit orchard. As soon as I was large enough, we picked our apples, peaches and plums. We'd load our wagon full of this and drive out to Sanpete Valley. It would take a day to drive out there, and when we'd get into Sanpete Valley where it was too high to raise fruit, we'd trade this fruit for grain. And in about one day we could trade this load of fruit for a load of grain, and we'd drive back to the mill at Fountain Green, we'd have this wheat all ground up into flour, bran and shorts. There, we would have flour for the family, bran for the pigs, and we'd have plenty for the winter---by doing this, we'd make several trips, until we got plenty of flour. Father had a flour bin that would hold at least 500 pounds of flour, and we'd have that full in the fall. And, another thing that he had--as we were breaking up the land -- we'd break up one acre each year fresh and plant that in sugar cane. As long as our new land lasted we had one acre of sugar cane every summer. This one acre of sugar cane would make 100 gallons of molasses. We would fill a 40 gallon barrel of molasses for the family and sell the rest. So we had molasses, our bread, and our butter, which is all good for us. And eggs from the chickens; but our eggs had to go to the store to buy things that we couldn't raise.

The meat sutuation -- we cured most of the meat, dried it, that is if we were going to keep it for the winter, either salted it down or dried it. Pork and beef principally pork, salted it down and oh! for the Christmas, when we'd kill a pork just before Christmas--we would have sausage, all the fancy things--wouldn't that be nice! And, we put it in brine too, a salty brine. Headcheese -- mother used to make headcheese, sausage, and oh! we'd have a great time when the holidays came. She would always spend about two weeks baking cookies, and differint kinds of fruit cakes so that we would have plenty to eat during the holidays. Christmas was a week, not just one day -- it was a week; and all during that week, we'd have these holiday goodies. And the Sonbuckles -- they are made of butter and sugar and flour, but it is so rich that when you put it in your mouth it melts like butter.

We never smoked any of our pork, but a neighbor did. He had a smoke house about 4' x 4' and in the top he had a rod that he would hang the hams from the pig. and the side pieces; and then he would close it up all around, build a fire underneath and this smoke would smoke those hams, and he would cure it that way. He would use wood, rags or anything that would smoke it.

Care of the milk -- We had a basement called a cellar that was cool and nice. I remember mother had four or five shelves down the cellar that she would have her milk pans on. It was always cool, and she would skim the cream off for the butter, and we would get the milk without the cream. The milk pans were about 14" diameter and about 4" deep, and they were filled within about 1" of the top -- you had to be careful you didn't spill it when you moved them. Many a time I stuck my finger in the cream. Ha! I remember one time my little brother, he wasn't tall enough to look into the pan and see how much there was, and he wanted some to drink -- instead of lifting it down, he tipped it up to see and tipped the milk into his face. Ha! That was Olof -- he's dead now. We had big pans of clabber--put sugar on it, cream on it, and it was very good. People now don't know about some of the real good dishes - they don't have them.