On the Fourth of July and the Twenty-Fourth of July we had parades -- everybody got their horses out. We'd have 50 to 100 horses, and the different organizations would get together and the Mutual Improvement Boards, and the Young Ladies would be in one section, and the different men -- and there would always be a Marshal of the Day. Also we had the Marshal Band that would lead this parade.

Trips - We used to have trips up in the canyon -- take a lunch along -- Santaquin Canyon principally. We'd get ten to fifteen trout fish. I'd bring them home to Mother -- she would enjoy them.

We took a trip down the lake one time, and went boat riding. We came back to the shore and there was a boat tipped over. Under that boat was a mother skunk and a lot of little skunks. And one of the girls there said, "Oh, what a bunch of pretty little kittens!" (Clara) She Ran over and was goint to take one of the kittens, and we told her not to. She said she wanted to go, and finally we told her they were not kittens, they were skunks, and if she didn't leave them alone, she'd get all scented up. Ha! So we persuaded her to leave them alone. This was about in 1880's

There wasn't any such thing then as graveled roads, and if it rained they were slick and muddy. Transportation -- we had a wagon and a team of horses. We put about two or three spring seats on that wagon -- then we'd get about three in a seat and away we'd go -- and we really had fun.

No metropolitan entertainment, no radio, no telephones, no electric lights, and we just had to get around, and no speed limits to our travel. Hitching posts were along the streets, and on the sidewalks, nearly every home had one or two hitching posts, where we could tie our horses. Watering troughs weren't so plentiful, we'd take most of our cattle to the ditch and let them drink from the running stream.

I remember as a young man coming to Salt Lake City one time with my father. He brought in a load of tithing, I think it was, for the tithing office in Salt Lake City. And we stopped at the square where the City and County Building now stands -- it was an empty square with a few trees and three or four big watering troughs for teams. I remember three or four teams there with several loads of hay coming into Salt Lake to sell, half a dozen teams laden with grain coming in to trade, and some hauled all their tithing to Salt Lake -- They had a large tithing yard where the Hotel Utah now stands. There was a large barn in the center of that block and many people would camp there -- they would sleep in that barn; there was no room any other place for them. I remember sleeping there a couple of nights with my father when we brought a load in. We started back the next morning, and of course, the wagon being empty we could make good time and we could go from Salt Lake to Provo in one day, and father thought that was wonderful -- that was the longest drive he had ever made, with the teams. We drove in at the south end of Provo and stopped at a friend of father's, a Norwegian family that they had known in Norway, by the name of Elias Olsen. There is a big family of them now -- many descendants.

As time went on I left the farm and began to work in the mines in Tintic. Up in Mammoth, principally, and then I worked in the store. I worked for a man by the name of Hagen, who had a store in Santaquin. For the first winter I would stay in Santaquin a week and help there -- he would go to Mammoth to run that store alone, then he would come home and I would go up to Mammoth and run that store alone for a week. That we did that winter. Then a young man from Norway, one of his old friends came here and they let him work in the store, so I went home and stayed.

Oh! we used to have great times in the winter. We would get two bob sleds, hook them together and put a wagon box on them and put about three or four spring seats on that wagon box. Then we'd get our girls -- about three or four of us boys, and we'd all have a girl. The one in the front seat would do the driving, and sometimes we'd put on four horses so we could go and they wouldn't tire out. I recall one night my older brother, Joseph, was the driver, and we were in the town of Santaquin, and a fellow drove up aside of us and "batted" us for a race. Away we went down the street as hard as those horses could run, and we nearly all spilled out. He crossed the ditch where the sleigh rolled first one side then the other, finally got back on the road, and we kept going. We had a real sleigh ride that night! Some of the boys had a nice sleigh that a carpenter had made -- just room for four -- two seats in it -- that was a fancy sleigh. And we had bells on the horses, and oh! what a time that would be! ---Driving around in the night time with those bells could be heard all over the town. We really enjoyed it and had a good time, wrapped up in our fur coats and blankets -- we were never cold. The man driving always had a good pair of gloves, cold didn't interfere with us at all.

One time we were driving quite fast and crossed a ditch that had a little water in, the guides had been cut down, so there was quite a hole where he crossed, and as he crossed the ones in the back seat of the sleigh got jerked out, and we went about a block before we knew they were gone. We looked back and saw the back seat gone, and we drove back and found them sitting in the ditch in the spring seat which had slipped off the wagon box.

We took our girls to the dance sometimes in the sleigh, and tied the horses out. Mother was very good though, when we went to a dance. She always told us to come home when they had a recess (they generally had a recess from about 11:00 -12:00 or 11:30 -12:30 -- nearly always danced until 2:00 a.m.) And she'd say, "Now you boys, bring your girls home during recess, and I'll have a little lunch on the table, something warm to drink." And the girls thought that was wonderfull! Then we'd go back and finish the dance. We didn't travel very far in those days for our fun -- we couldn't travel over 40 miles a day.

Childhood sweethearts -- Oh, I had a few, but nothing developed seriously until later on in life. I was a bashful boy. I remember if I saw a girl coming down the sidewalk and I was going to meet her I'd cross the street so I wouldn't meet her because I was so bashful. I could hardly meet the girls. But as I grew older I kinda got over that.

We had a nice home life, my mother was quite strict; but they were very kind to us -- they didn't beat us up like some people do. We were thankful we had a father and mother that wouldn't whip us like some of the neighbors children got. My father was very strict -- he demanded obedience, and he got it! We didn't dare say anything against him or say no when he asked us to do something we would do it. Still he never abused us in any way. Because of this discipline we respected and loved our parents much more.

I had a few narrow escapes. I remember riding that wagon and I was sitting front on the cross-bar of the hay rack, and my brother was sitting on the rear end of the wagon, and a board slipped off the rack, hit one of the horses, scared 'em, started running away and I couldn't hold them. As soon as they started running I called for the boys and the girls in the back to jump off, and they did; but they hit on the ground and rolled a bit before they stopped. And when the team had run over a block they came to the west side of town and just how it happened I don't know, but I made a turn and as I turned the one wheel hit a ditch and broke all the spokes in the wheel but one, and the team turned into a brush -- oak brush -- and in the middle of that oak brush was a fence, and when they hit that fence one horse jumped in the air and lit so he was hanging on the fence and the other was pressed right up against the fence, the wagon against the horse, and stopped right there. I was sitting on this cross-bar that broke when we made the turn, but I wasn't hurt-not at all. So I just ran back and told my father what had happened, and he came and saw the condition of the team -- one haning on the fence and the other pressed up against the fence, and that wheel all broken he wondered how I did it. I said "I don't know -- I made the turn, but I don't know how."

I learned to swim -- we used to go down to Warm Creek -- it was quite a pond at Warm Creek, three miles west of Santaquin. There they had a nice pond, and the Goshen boys would come to swim and we'd go down from Santaquin. And the trick was to learn to swim that pond - one side to the other. When I got so I could swim across that pond I thought I was a wonderful swimmer. The pond was about 50 feet wide.

No roller skating, but ice skating then. Sometimes in the winter the water would backup and come down the street and the streets would be a glare of ice. Then we boys would get our skates and skate up and down the streets. When we couldn't afford to buy skates we would make us a pair out of hoop iron and a block of wook and we'd fix it so it would hold up and we would skate on that. We'd put the hoop iron in the block of wook like the blade would be in a block of wood -- holes in the iron, holes in the wood, and we'd drive pegs through that to hold it in place. Then we'd have other holes for the straps to go through and we'd put the straps through that and over our feet, and fix them tight--oh, they were good!

Our principal holidays were the Fourth of July, the Twenty-Fourth of July, and Christmas. Oh, we got together Christmas and danced. We young people couldn't go to big dances, and we would dance on our homes --parents would let us clear the big room, take up the carpet, then one of the boys would play an accordian, sometimes we had two, and the boys and girls would dance. My brother bought an accordian and he would play, and he let me learn to play it also. When I got a little older I could go to the big boys' and girls' dance because I could play for them while they danced. That was how I got in with the bigger ones.

No hobbies in particular those days -- just having a good time. We had to work, that was the thing, we didn't have much time -- it was after our work hours that we had time to play. Then we were tired, but still we would play along in the evenings after we had come from the field. We would be so tired we could hardly walk, but oh, what a job it was to get up the next morning.

Yes, we did do a little mischief. There was an old Scandinavian that would chase the boys when they'd throw rocks on his house. A bunch of us, one time, came along by his place and one of the boys had a piece of wire. He tied it across the gate about a foot from the ground. Then we threw some rocks at his door, and then we all turned our coats so it looked like we were in our shirt sleeves because of the white lining of the sleeves. One of the boys threw a rock at the door, this fellow came out and we ran. He came as fast as he could go, and when he hit that wire he hit the sidewalk on his hands, knees, and face. Then he chased us and we had a little starter and we ran around to the east side of town, went up through the "wash" and cut down the street where the old Co-op store was located. While running we changed our coat sleeves inside out, got by the Co-op store, sat on the steps there talking when he came running by and asked, "Have you seen any boys go by here in their shirt sleeves?" We said, "Yes, they just passed, and they've gone down that other street." And away he went after them, and we were the boys. Ha! Ha!

Not many accidents -- My cousin and I were riding a horse one day coming home from the field and somehow the horse started to buck and he threw us both off, and as I landed on the ground I broke my arm in the elbow. That is about the only accident I had that amounted to anything. We had no doctors in the town, so a lady, a midwife, set my arm, but she didn't get it quite right and it has never been quite right, but it hasn't bothered me to speak of.

I worked in stores most of the time, and some in the mines when I was in my twenties. I had different jobs in the mines--I started in with what we call "mucking" shoveling, filling the cars for them to come out. Then I took a job on top -- as top carman. I spent about a year riding cage -- that's where I had to take the men up and down the shaft to different places, and send up all the ore, and the waste, etc. out of the mine. I had charge of the cage and all of the stuff that went out. That was one of the most important jobs I had in the mine. They pulled these cars in the mine with man-power -- had to push them. The cars in the Mammoth mine had about 18 cubic foot cars -- quite large -- hold about a ton. In the other mines they had 14 and 16 cubic foot cars. The cars were kinda heavy -- we would push them back into the ore bodies and then out to the shaft and the cage. In the Mamoth mine they had an engine room -- it was in the mountains -- about 400 feet from the face of the tunnel -- back where a big place was cut out, and they had an engine in there -- an old time steam cog engine, and there was a hoist, they could hoist a cage with a ton car of ore.

We had a close accident in there one time. I was station tender and Bill Nesbit was the engineer. There was a crack in one of the wheels and he was listening to see if he could tell where that crack was, when all at once the wheel broke -- the cog wheel -- the big spur wheel they call it -- and the pinon wheel with such power that it ripped a half dozen cogs out of the other wheel and cogs flew over to the shaft and almost hit us fellows, but it didn't hit us. One of them hit the timber with such force that it stuck in the timber. We piped in the steam to run the engine. Then they changed and sent a shaft down from the surface to this place about 250-300 feet then they put a large engine up on the surface -- one of those large engines -- one of the largest in the state. And that could pull two cars up and down the shaft. This was along about 1898. Then they sunk the shaft from the bottom -- it was 1300 feet. Then they sunk a shaft down to 2000 feet, and this large engine would hoist that cage with two carloads of ore on it from 2000 feet and bring it up to the tunnel level."

(Here the sound of the door bell interrupted the recording. Tentative plans were made to continue with this story another time, but for various reasons the project was not completed. So, we glean the remainder of the life-story of Lars L. Olson Jr. from the recollections of his children, together with excerpts from his diary kept while on his mission, and other records and notes left by him.)