Chapter 4
Beginnings of a Career
The summer a year after my father died was certainly the summer of decision and probably was the one that shaped what was to be my future so far as career was concerned.
After I had worked a few months in the Phillips’ store, I got an opportunity to work in Waugh’s Store. I would guess that this opportunity came largely through Harold Eldredge, who was the clerk at Waugh’s Store at that time, and of course as I told you before, was a very close friend of ours. My father and Mr. Waugh had been good friends too. They were together on the Town Council and they had a great deal of respect for one another, and he had gotten pretty well acquainted with me as I had gone in the store all those years with the butter and eggs. Anyway, this opportunity came to work in Waugh’s Store for $50 a month and I took it.
Before I start telling you some of my adventures in the store, I think I’ll tell you something about Mr. Waugh and about the store. Mr. Waugh had been out in Uintah Basin many, many years, long before it was settled by white people, or opened for settlement. He had worked in trading posts and had finally opened his own store there in Myton. As I’ve mentioned before, there was a trading post at Fort Duchesne and perhaps some others, but when he opened his store in Myton, the Indians followed him there. The Indians loved Mr. Waugh. Now, I did at one time know his first name, but I can’t think of it now, all I can think of is Ernest Waugh. He was single those many years that he had been out there. In fact, rumor had it that he had been a “squaw man”[what a man with an Indian wife used to be called] for many years. At one time, a very beautiful Indian woman was pointed out to me, by Harold I suppose, as the woman who had been his wife. She was a well-educated woman, I think of the Cherokee tribe. As white people had moved in and the country had become more civilized—that might have been the reason—but at the time that I knew him, he was a single man. He was a man about my father’s age, and at that time, he had a partner in the business, whose name was Mr. Ward. Now I used to know his name too, but I can’t remember it now. They were very close friends. I don’t know where Mr. Waugh came from, nor where Mr. Ward came from, except from the outside. But they were in the store as partners for a good many years. They each took what they wanted from the store; it was a very unbusinesslike arrangement. If they wanted something, they simply took it and neither one of them minded, and everything worked out just fine. I think they even “bached” together for many years.
But prior to the time that I had gone to the store, Mr. Waugh had gotten married. She was quite a few years younger than his age. She was rather a lovely little woman. She was very efficient (I think she had been a schoolteacher) and a very knowledgeable person, and she decided that she would help in the store. She and Mr. Ward took an immediate dislike to one another and it was the breaking up of the friendship of these two men. She felt that it was very unbusinesslike, the way they handled things, and she resented very much when Mr. Ward would take anything from the store, and she saw to it that Mr. Waugh took something of equal value each time that he did. It must have been rather an unpleasant situation for quite some time.
Then Mr. Ward went on a vacation outside, and when he came back, he brought a wife, and the two wives took an immediate dislike for each other. They really created havoc with the friendship of these two men. She too was rather an attractive woman, and I’m sure a very intelligent woman. She thought that if Mrs. Waugh worked in the store, she should work in the store too, and so they were both there at each other’s throats most of the time, according to Harold’s story. Well finally, I guess the two men realized that it was an impossible situation, and about that time an opportunity for postmaster came up, so Mr. Ward took the job of postmaster with his wife as his assistant and sold out his interest in the store to Mr. Waugh. I don’t know what interest he had; I’m sure it wasn’t as great as Mr. Waugh’s, though he had probably taken the same out of it that Mr. Waugh did.
When I went to work at the store, Mrs. Waugh was still coming in the store some, particularly at inventory time. She always came in and helped us take inventory, but she was not clerking at the store. That was probably what made the opportunity for me to come in: the Wards leaving and Mrs. Waugh spending less time. During this time they had built a rather lovely home out on South Myton Bench and she wanted a baby. They were able to adopt a little baby girl that looked exactly like Mr. Waugh, a beautiful child. I don’t know where they got her, but she was a delightful little girl, and then they later adopted another little girl.
Anyway, the opening was there, and I was offered the job at $50 a month, which was as much as I was going to get if I had taught school, and so I went to work in the store. It was really a tremendous experience and I’m sure I’ll spend quite a lot of time talking about it. Before I do, though, I think I’d like to describe the store to you a little bit. It was a typical trading post store. It was the largest store in Myton, and it was pretty much the center of activity. It and the pool hall across the street, I’m sure, were the most central places for killing time of anywhere in town. People went to the bank and they went occasionally to get their hair cut, and they went to the post office, but Waugh’s Store always had a lot of Indians in it, because they liked Mr. Waugh so much because he was so good to them.
Each Indian got an allotment at the beginning of the month from the government. Of course, at the beginning of the month they spent and spent; they went to the pool hall and played a lot of cards and gambled a lot, and they bought a few clothes and they loved to eat the sweets and the foods that they had not been accustomed to. They loved fruit; I’ll never forget when the cherry season came along, they used to love to buy cherries. The cherry would go in one side of the mouth and the stone would come out the other side. I never could figure out how they could do it, but they were almost as good as a machine, the way those cherry stones would come out, and they always went on the floor.
Near the end of the month they would begin to run out of money. Then you would see them going back to Mr. Waugh’s desk and pretty soon he would come up and cut them off a little piece of tobacco and get a few packages of cigarettes, and a little of this and that, and make it up into a little bundle, and away they would go. Of this I’m sure there was never any record kept, unless he did in his books back at his desk. I’m sure it was never paid back, and each month I know there were several hundreds of dollars went out of the store to these Indians.
Let me describe the store to you just a little bit before we go on. The one side of the store was dry goods, as we called it then. On this side we had what clothing we carried; we had loads of overalls, both bib and waistband overalls. The farmers liked the bib overalls, but the Indians preferred the waist overalls, which some wore low on their hips. I always thought it was so their big stomachs could come out over the top. We had shoes of many kinds, work shoes mostly, and cowboy boots. We had men’s hats, mostly cowboy-type hats, a few dress hats, and in the summer of course, loads of straw hats. We had lots of underwear, long-johns for winter, heavy underwear, and heavy socks for the men. In the women’s department we had black lisle stockings, and slips and a lot of dresses—that is, house-type dresses that the Indians bought—the farm women didn’t wear ready-made things. We had a lot of calico and gingham and dress materials that they would buy to sew their clothes. We always had a few little trimmings and bias tape and things that went along for their sewing.
We had a long ladder that I don’t see in stores any more, on a track from the ceiling and it went clear to the ceiling. We really had a big stock, particularly in the fall of the year, because in those days with the bad roads, most everything was hauled out on wagons, and it was hard to get merchandise out there, so a tremendous amount of stock was always bought for the winter.
On the other side of the store were the groceries. We had lots of canned goods, and the shelves in the fall would be four and five cans deep and a couple of cans high on each of the shelves along that side of the store. There was a long counter on each side for measuring merchandise, yard goods and so on. On the grocery side there was the cash register, and there was a showcase that had candies in it. It had horehound candy, old-fashioned white peppermints, taffy, and candies of that sort, a few bars, and an occasional box of candy which usually got given to either Harold or me before it got too old, because no one ever bought them. Under the counter were drawers that contained peanuts, both shelled peanuts and unshelled peanuts, and rice, and beans, and tapioca, and things of that sort, and there was the sugar bin.
On top of the counter, there was a big, square glass case, the cheese case. The lid came up, and there was always a great, big, round cheese on it. Nothing was ever packaged in those days as it is now. It had a big knife that, if a person wanted a pound or two pounds or whatever they wanted, you guessed as closely as you could how much to cut. We soon learned to be pretty good at it. Right by that was a scale that told you how much you had cut. If it wasn’t too far off, why, you just gave it to them for the pound, but if it was too much off, it also figured how much it would be.
One of the most important things on top of the counter was a case that contained a big plug, well, that isn’t what they called it; I can’t remember what we did call it, but a great big sheet of chewing tobacco. It was called plug tobacco. That also had a big knife with it, and you learned pretty well what to cut for a pound or whatever amount they wanted of chewing tobacco. That smelled good; I really liked the smell, and I was always tempted to try it, but I never did. And of course we had cigarettes of various brands.
Between the two counters there was room for one row of tables, and on these would be assorted items: blankets for the Indians—bright Indian blankets—and saddles for their horses, and bridles, and anything that you might think of would be there. We had two little show windows, one on either side of the front door. In those we would show our new items, such as our new house dresses when they came in, and the occasional shipment of hats for the ladies that came. On the other side we would have stacks of groceries of various types, and soap, or anything of that sort. I’m certain that they were not very decorative windows, but at least we always kept something in them, and once in a while we even washed them.
Towards the back of the store, at the very back of the store, was Mr. Waugh’s desk and a big safe. In all the years that I worked in the store, there was never any money kept in the safe. At some time or other it had been robbed, and there was a sign that hung on it, and this sign read, “Turn both handles to the left and pull hard. This safe is not locked.” This was put on because when they couldn’t open the safe, apparently the time they had tried to rob it, they had hit it so hard with hammers and things that they had dented the safe. Rather than have that happen again, Mr. Waugh had put this sign on it. The only things that were in the safe were Mr. Waugh’s ledgers, which I’m sure didn’t have much in them, and perhaps insurance papers and fire insurance and things that were flam— could be burned should the place catch on fire.
The money was kept in various places. At night when it would be time for us to close, it would be my job to stand by the light switch by the front door and Harold’s job to stash the money. Or mine, if I was there alone, which I sometimes was in the summertime; I was never left there alone in the wintertime when it would be dark at closing time, but in the summer I often closed up. Whoever closed up had to get there first in the morning, because they would be the only one who knew where the money was. One of the ways we entertained ourselves during the day was deciding where we would hide the money that night. It got hidden in various places; sometimes it would be in the bean barrel, or it could be in a shoebox way up high on a shelf, or it could be in the shirts. (Oh, I forgot to tell you we had loads and loads of bright colored shirts and also blue work shirts, and a very few white shirts, not many.) Or it could be hid under a loose board in the floor, or it might be, the money might be hidden most anywhere, but it was your job to remember where you had hid it the night before. It was never put in the safe.
Another thing that might be interesting about the money is that so few, or so many of the transactions that we had, we didn’t deal with money at all. They were eggs and butter and things of that sort. If you had eggs, you counted them out three in each hand, which was a half dozen, and if you had twenty double hands full, why then you had—you divided by two and that meant you had ten dozen eggs, and at 15¢ a dozen, that would be a dollar and a half that the lady would have to spend. Then you would figure out with her what she could buy, and she would buy up to her dollar and a half. Oh, occasionally she might have a little money extra and buy a little extra. That money of course would go into the till, but the amount that was dealt with in eggs, there was no record kept of any kind. You simply added up what she could spend until she had spent the amount of her eggs, and away she went. That was as much record as there was.
That was a strange old cash register. It didn’t add anything up for you. It had just one drawer, which we both used, and you had to figure up what the customer was buying on a piece of paper, and then you cranked the register with a hand crank to put the money in and take the change out. I’ve seen a lot of hard-looking cash registers, but I’ve never seen one quite as ancient as that one was. At the time, it was the only cash register I had ever seen, so I thought it was all right.
I’ve forgotten to tell you about the most important piece of furniture in the store. It sat about, oh, more than halfway back in the store and it was a great, big, potbellied stove. In the wintertime that thing would get red hot. There were several chairs arranged around it and there the Indians would sit and visit and talk, or road construction men, or whoever happened to be in the store would sit around and visit. On Saturday afternoons sometimes things would get quite rowdy and the stories would get rare, and on such occasions Mabel would get sent home by Mr. Waugh.
That old stove, by morning the ashes would be pretty well around on the floor, and as I mentioned before, the cherry pits would be pretty well scattered in that season of the year. The floors were bare and each morning it was our job to sweep out the store before we opened, so you’d always get there about half an hour earlier than opening to sweep out the store.
The basement of the store was about as big, and usually about as loaded with merchandise, as the main part of the store, particularly, again as I say, in the fall of the year. In the basement, which was loaded with merchandise, towards the back of the store, they kept the rope. We sold an awfully lot of rope for the farmers and to the Indians for their horses and so on. It came in several different sizes—thicknesses of rope. Rope came in great big rolls, huge things weighing a great deal. The men would tug and pull and get them into the basement. Then they bored a hole in the floor and would put an end of the rope up and through this hole, and tie a knot in it so it wouldn’t slide back down. Then when people wanted rope, they simply pulled along that piece and measured off what they wanted.
The first morning that it was my turn to sweep the floor, in order to do a nice, neat job, I untied all of the knots and let the rope slide down so that I could sweep. That created quite a turmoil when Harold got there and had to go down and push all the rope back up and we had to retie all of the knots. I learned that if you had a little dust behind the rope on the floor, you just didn’t worry about that.
As I mentioned before, it was quite the center of the town. People coming in to shop visited with each other, told what they had been doing, discussed their affairs and how their crops were going, who had visited whom, who had a new baby, who was sick, who had died, and so on. So the man who was the reporter for the little newspaper spent many hours in the store. I can see him yet, sitting on the counter by the peanut drawer, reaching behind him every few minutes to get a handful of peanuts and sitting and shelling them, letting the shells fall on the floor, and eating them and listening to the visiting that was going on. If he wasn’t there, we were instructed to remember what was said, and that was how the newspaper was printed. Next week you would read all of these little bits of gossip in the newspaper of what had gone on in and about the community.
I can’t remember his name; I wish I could. I really had a bit of a crush on him. He was a very nice-looking fellow, in his thirties, and Harold worried terribly about it, because he thought he had too much of a crush on me, being that he was a married man and had about four children. He had a funny little drab wife, poor little soul; they lived out on South Myton Bench too. I don’t know whether he went outside to get her, or whether he brought her with him when he came; I don’t know how long he had been there. He was a very bright fellow, a very interesting person to talk to, but he had very little to say about his own past, and I don’t know anything about him. As I say, I can’t even remember his name now. But that was the way he gathered his news. That, in addition to the United Press organization that Mr. Cook got, comprised the Myton Free Press. I suppose the reporter went across the street and gathered up a few notes from the pool hall too. They probably were even more exciting than the ones that he collected in the store.
I remember one time being terribly—well, it’s really the first time I really was aware of severe suffering. We were in the store and we heard someone screaming. You could hear them a long way off. As they came closer, we discovered that this man who was being brought into town had been burned severely. His house had caught on fire, and he had a desk right near a window in which he had his insurance papers and things that he thought he needed, and he had reached in through this window to get these papers out. I don’t know if he got them or not, but in the process he had burned both arms very badly, and he was in tremendous pain.
They brought him to Myton, and they had phoned from Myton to Roosevelt for a doctor to come, because there was no doctor in Myton. While we were waiting for the doctor to come, they brought him in the store part of the time and part of the time he just walked up and down the street on the outside and screamed and moaned with pain. That was one of the types of newspaper items that this man got, I’m sure. We really saw life in the raw there.
One of the funny things that happened when I was in the store alone—well, many things happened that were funny—perhaps I’ll tell you the very first day that I worked in the store.
Harold went home to lunch and Mr. Waugh had been out to his place on South Myton Bench, and I was left alone in the store. As I told you before, the Indians are really fun-loving people. They really worked me over that very first day. The bucks would come in and they said they wanted a bottle of lemon extract: “My squaw, she make lemon pie.” Well, I knew my mother didn’t make lemon pie with lemon extract, but so what if they did? That was all right with me, so I sold them the lemon extract. During the hour that Harold was gone to lunch I sold two full cases of lemon extract to the Indians. Before Harold got back, Mr. Waugh arrived in the store, and I was very proud of myself, and I told him just as soon as he got there what a success I’d had on this lemon extract. Mr. Waugh made one beeline out the back door in the direction of the Indian Agent to try to salvage the store, I suppose. I didn’t get into any trouble over it, but we surely had a bunch of drunk Indians that day, and I’m sure nobody made lemon pies.
Another amusing incident—well, the Indians had a lot of fun with me for quite awhile before they came to accept me, which they did. At first they all looked just alike to me, and one would step up to the counter and buy something, and I would get it ready and wrap it and go and give it back to them, and pretty soon another would step up and say, “Where’s my package?” I’d say, “Why, I gave it to you!” They would giggle and laugh and have a great time, and pretty soon a different one would pull it out from under his shirt. They just thought I was the funniest thing ever.
We all had Indian names. I learned to count (I couldn’t do it now), and I learned the names of most of the commodities that they bought. Mr. Waugh had had his name I guess many, many years. He was called Sutsegar. I don’t know whether the name was because when I knew him he had grey hair, which he combed straight back, but he could have gotten the name for that, because Sutsegar apparently meant White Duck. Whether it was because he was an early white man, or because of the grey hair and the way he combed it, I don’t know. Harold’s name was Ohwatnekubuts, and it meant Big Ears. Harold does have—anyone who knows him knows that he does have very large ears. My name, as they got better acquainted and named me, was Cheenuggets, and I couldn’t find out for the longest time what the name meant. I would ask them, and they would laugh, but they wouldn’t tell me until finally I managed to get one buck there alone and ask him what my name meant, and he told me. This was what he said: “Me see big pond of water. Pretty soon wind come.” Then with his hands he went like the wind making waves on the water. “Pretty soon sun come, shine on the water.” He pointed to my hair, and I did have blonde hair, and I combed it in sort of a marcel type style, which made it kind of wave like the wind would make waves on the water. So that was what my name meant.
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Go to Part 9.
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