(1920) Grant, ID, The Beginning (dad is 3rd from right)
I, Kenneth Parley Ellis, shall try to tell my life history. I was born on a cold morning at 4:00 am, the 5th day of November 1920, in our family home. I was delivered by a country doctor by the name of Joseph Tucker a very humble man. I was born of very righteous parents. My mother’s name was Ruth Emma Balmforth, a first generation American from England. She was born in Lehi, Utah. My mother’s mother was born in York, England and her father came from Salt Lake City, Utah. My father’s name was Parley Edmond Ellis also a first generation American from England. He was born in Plesant Veiw, Utah. My fathers father was born in Melksham, England, his mother was born in Bath, England. I remember very little of my childhood, except when I was a year and a half old, someone gave me, what they called a kiddy car in those days. It was like a tricycle without peddles. And I remember riding that; my mother says I couldn’t possibly remember that young, because it was broken before I was two years old. But I remember it very clearly. We lived on a farm and did all the work that farmers do. I received my training in how to work, even before I was old enough to go to school. I learned how to ride derrick horse. By the age of six I was, riding derrick horse for the farmers in the area. I got five cents a day and a year later at seven, they upped it to ten cents a day and I was still doing the same kind of work. Learning to work is a wonderful experience; it does you good the rest of your life. My Father was not a stern man but he believed in getting things done and he was very thorough. My mother also was very thorough. She was a very good house keeper a good cook and helped in the field with the rest of us. We didn’t have enough land, (we only had 40 acres) so we had dairy cows and we had to herd them in the railroad track and in the roads. So I would start out right after milking in the morning, when I wasn’t working in the hay, and herd cows all day long in a two or three mile stretch of road and bring them back for milking time at night.
I entered school in Grant. The elementary school at that time did not have a kindergarten, so I started right into the first grade. My mother had taught me to read and write before I went to school, so I only stayed in the first grade for a while and I was advanced to the second. I received all of my elementary education in Grant.
(1927) Youth
I remember we got our first car when I was seven. It was a 1920 Dodge soft top, but there were very few automobiles in our area. I remember one time when Velma was 8 years old and I was 5, we got that old Dodge started (It took about all we had to crank it) and Velma steered while I operated the foot peddles and we drove it up and around through the pasture and through the irrigation ditch and got it headed back toward the garage and I hit the brake just in time to keep us from hitting the garage. Dad never did question why the car was facing the opposite direction from how he left it. I also remember going to church, up until that time with the horse and buggy. My folks were quite active at that time. And when I was nine, my father got his feelings hurt and they quit going to church for a time, but I kept going. When I was eight years old, I was baptized by a man named Noel Johnson and when I was eight I was able to work other times than just in the hay. I thinned beets and weeded beets and potatoes and I ‘d make twenty five cents a day and I saved up a little bit, in fact when I had six dollars saved up, my mother decided that we should put it in the bank. So we put it in the bank and that was in 1929 and the bank went broke and I lost my six dollars. The folks lost all of their savings also. In those days during the depression, which started in 1929, a fat steer would bring $20.00 and a fat hog would bring $2.50 and our potatoes sold for twenty five cents a hundred if we furnished the sack. Times were tough but we got by fine because we lived on a farm and raised our own vegetables and some fruit and my mother was a great one to can vegetables and fruit so we did quite well.
If you had a $100.00 in the fall, you could afford to farm the next year, but a lot of people lost their farms. On three sides of us, the farmers lost their farms. The desert began about two miles from our place. And my father used to break horses for a living. He got $2.50 to break a horse to ride or to pull a wagon or whatever it was. But he’d take the horse and go out on the desert and hunt coyotes. And he couldn’t afford bullets, and we didn’t have a gun anyway, so he had a long leather strap with a big nut off some machinery on the end. And he’d ride the coyotes down and hit them with this weapon and kill them. He got $5.00 for the hide and $25.00 for the bounty from the sheep men in the area. So we’d get $30.00 maybe even $60.00 a month that way and we lived quite well. We actually put money away.
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