|
a.
|
Note: . BIRTH: Personal knowledge of Richard Oliver Barnes, Birth Certificate Funk Family History in possession of Sandra L. Lamb. It includes hand-written dates by Elizabeth Funk Barnes, mother. DEATH: Social Security Death Index, Richard Barnes SSN: 525-42-6916 Last Residence: 89021 Logandale, Clark, Nevada, United States of America Born: 11 Jan 1906 Died: Jul 1982 State (Year) SSN issued: New Mexico (Before 1951), died of heart failure at the Dixie Pioneer Memorial Hospital in St. George, Utah. BURIAL: Cedar City Cemetery, Iron County, Utah. Buried next to son-in-law, Phillip Klingonsmith and granddaughter Pamela Joanne Klingonsmith. (Find A Grave.com) 1910 CENSUS, Farmington, San Juan County, NM, 11 May, 1910, Roll: T624_917, Pg 13B, Dist 191 Son: Oliver Barnes age 4, M, born in Missouri 1920 CENSUS, Farmington, San Juan, NM, 21 Jan 1920, pg 11A, Dist 116, Fam 101 Son: Oliver Barnes age 13, M, born in Missouri 1930 CENSUS Dist 14, Farmington, San Juan, NM 4 Apr 1930 Roll 1398 Page 2A Family 36 Head: Richard O age 24 Male, 23 @ first mar, birth Missouri, Parents birth Missouri Wife: Zella age 18 Female, 18@ first Mar, birth Wyoming, Father Wisconsin, Mother Canada (Eng) Child: Theador Oliver age 2/12 Male birth NM, Father birth Missouri, Mother birth Wyoming. Note: This child was not the child of Richard, but he agreed to marry Zella to give the child a name. 1940 Census: Shiprock, San Juan, New Mexico; Roll: T627_2450; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 23-21, Dated: 13 April 1940, Family #133 Richard O. Barnes, age 34, head, born in Missouri, baker for government, 5 years previous in same place Nellie K. Barnes, age 33, wife, born in Utah (not correct, born in New Mexico), 5 years previous in same place Richard K. Barnes, age 2, son, born in New Mexico, BRIEF HISTORY My Dear Friend, My Father - Richard Oliver Barnes - by Sandra Barnes Lamb If I were to describe my father, I would have to begin with his hands. As a child, I used to love to have him rub my back as his hands were very rough from the many years of working with gasoline and oil as a mechanic. He didn't need to scratch, just rub and it felt so good. He spent 32 years in the Springdale Garage, where his talents with repairing automobiles earned him many, many dear friends all over the United States as they would come to visit Zion National Park and would have car trouble and he would help them. Many friends would come back or correspond with Dad for years because they enjoyed his friendly personality as well as his skill for repairing The amazing thing about his hands was that they could do almost anything and he was self-taught. He not only was a mechanic, but also a plumber, welder, electrician, watch repairman, and machinist and musician as well. I loved to listen to him play music. He would spend hours listening to a record and then play it on the mandolin. He couldn't read music, but he could put the music to an instrument and "make it talk." Not just one instrument, but many: a piano, mandolin, guitar, banjo, saxophone, violin and harmonica. Many times in the evenings, Daddy and his friends, Wendell Seegmiller, Eldon Russell, Garth Justet, Rusty Jarboe and many others that I can't remember, would gather together in his garage in Springdale to have a "jam session". They would open the big doors wide and neighbors and especially tourists would come by and listen. Often a tourist would want to join in and as Daddy had many instruments, they could usually find something they could play. Lorraine Seegmiller used to sing a lot with them. On several occasions, Daddy would record a tune and then add another instrument and another until it sounded like a whole band. His hands were extremely strong. He could break an egg placed end to end between his fingers and the heel of his hand without any effort at all. That sounds like a rather simple thing until I tried it one day. I have since asked many men to also try it and very few have been successful. His hands were gentle with people and animals. He had a big tom cat that loved to be with him and watch him work in the garage. He would climb on the fender of a car or under it, wherever Dad's hands were working and sit and watch. As he would sit and do paper work in the evenings, the cat would be there watching his hands, just waiting for the moment for Dad to reach over and stroke him gently. Daddy was good with horses. He had a couple: a mare named Snippy and a gelding called Prince. For many years he owned a 600 acre ranch on the East Side of Zion and had a few cattle on it. He would accompany Grant Woodbury on cattle drives that would take a week or so during the fall of the year, to move the cattle from East Zion to the plains above Rockville Mt. He could ride well and rope beautifully. His hands were "deadly" with guns, whether they were pistols, rifles or shotguns. He just didn't miss. At very young ages, Dad taught his children how to handle firearms. A real treat was to go with him to the trash pile to empty trash and take along a rifle and target-practice at bottles, cans and junk or even the rocks on the hillside there in Zion. I recall on one occasion Daddy and I were returning from Zion and saw a porcupine crossing the road by Sylvia Gifford's house. We hurried on home, got a pistol and went back to get it. He let me take the gun. I shot the porcupine in the back only, wounding it. To my chagrin, the porky turned and started coming at me. At the sight of his charging me, I panicked and threw the gun into my Dad's hands and started to run. He killed it of course and nearly killed me with his "Scotch Blessing" for being careless with a gun. He was meticulous in caring for his guns, cleaning and oiling them. That was one thing he refused to neglect -- after using them, he always cleaned them. We three children, Richard, Connie and I developed a love for guns because he patiently taught us to use them properly. However, on one occasion, at 16, Richard forgot to be careful when cleaning a pistol and shot himself in the leg, for which he had to spend many weeks in the hospital, on crutches and even still suffers from the damage. Sometimes Daddy would sit in his garage and target practice with a BB gun at wasps, flies or ants. He rarely missed. Summer time would bring caterpillars in the trees, and they would make tents among the leaves. Daddy would shoot the tents out with a shotgun and burn the caterpillars with a propane torch weed burner. Another occasion I recall was when Daddy took my brother Richard, and one of Richard's friends to Shonesburg to do some rabbit hunting. He also took my sister, Connie and me along just to enjoy the fun. It was summer time and warm. Shonesburg is a ghost town along the Virgin River between Springdale and Rockville, and all that is left of it is a few foundations of the old buildings. Daddy warned Richard and his friend to be careful for rattlesnakes would likely be under the rocks, and especially the old rock foundations. Richard jumped up on the wall and then down into the circle of the foundation walls and much to our surprise, the rattlesnakes appeared, not just one, but several. Daddy hollered for Connie and me to get back in the car, which we quickly did, and then he proceeded to shoot the snakes so Richard could get out. This was really scarey. Many times we would to go East Zion or Rockville Mountain and hunt rabbits or quail. Daddy loved to hunt deer also. But he wasn't much for romping the hills too far because the farther you hiked, the farther you had to carry a deer back. Mom would tease him that if the deer didn't come and jump over the fender of the car, Daddy wouldn't shoot it. But he always came home with a deer. I hated deer meat though, and most of the family wasn’t very fond of it, especially when he killed a buck one year and it had an awfully strong wild flavor. When we complained so about the smell, my dad wasn’t as excited to deer hunt and bring home a deer every time. In the fall of the year, the Springdale Lions Club would hold a turkey shoot. Actually they didn’t shoot turkeys, but would shoot targets, and whoever was best at hitting the targets would win a turkey. Most of the time, they were frozen turkeys, but once in a while they were live turkeys. Daddy always came home with one, and most often several turkeys. We would keep just one and he would give the rest away to a needy family or to someone who lost at the turkey shoot. I remember one Turkey Shoot when Connie's friend, Jerry Attebury challenged Dad to see who was best at shooting clay pigeons with a shotgun. Jerry was a crack shot with a shotgun. All contestants were eliminated but Jerry and Daddy. Neither could miss and Jerry was determined that "an old man" would not beat him. The contest went on for quite a while, but Dad finally did win. I was so proud of my Dad. Dad taught me to use a rifle and I loved to target practice and hunt with him. I especially loved a 22 rifle that he gave me. I never enjoyed hunting animals, but I would never refuse to go hunting with him. It was just good to be with my dad. Not always in my dad’s life were his hands rough from mechanical work. Long before I can remember, his hands were soft and white from working as a baker. He learned the bakery business from Humphrey Weldon, his oldest sister's husband. The “WEL-DON BAKERY” was in Farmington, New Mexico. He and his brother Omar worked for Humphrey. This was the first regular job that he had and all the money that he earned went to support the rest of the family. All of the children had to work to help their mother and family survive. Another bakery where Dad worked was in Shiprock at the Indian School after he and Mom were married. On the left is a picture of my brother Richard and Dad. Richard would often go with Dad to work at the bakery in Shiprock and loved to put on all the things that his dad would wear including the apron and hat. Notice his sleeves had to be rolled up just like his dad’s. One time I had to make a cake for a class in mutual. I made the cake but didn't know how to frost it or decorate it. Mom was not home to help me, so I was desperate. It was about then that Dad came in the house from the garage to rest for a bit and noticed my dilemma. It was also then that I found out that he knew what to do with cakes, for he not only showed me how to frost it, but also made a bag from waxed paper and cleverly decorated it as well. I was amazed, for I didn't know he had been a baker. For a while Dad was also at the Indian School in Toadalena, New Mexico, where he drove the school bus in the morning and during the early morning and daytime was the baker for the school. Above is a picture of the bakery at Toadalena. The Indian School still exists today, but it is a modern school and there is no bakery there now. Daddy was born on January 11, 1906 in Brunswick, Chariton County, Missouri to Charles Delaney Barnes and Elizabeth Funk. He lived on a farm near Brunswick, Missouri, but could remember little about it since the family of seven children including grandparents, John and Nancy Jane Jessee Funk moved to Farmington, New Mexico when he was but two years of age. In talking with him about his early memories, he said he recalled they had two big, gray horses and that he got into trouble one day crawling through the fence to go into the pasture where the horses were. Memories of his father are dim as his father was killed in July of 1909. He remembered his father bringing home a little red wagon for him and seeing his legs and feet, but could not recall his face. Dad was playing in an irrigation canal the day they brought his father home seriously injured from a fall from a horse-drawn buggy. His father and his Uncle Bert Stewart, had been working cutting hay. They were returning home after work and were driving a team of young, barely broken horses, when the first car in the Farmington area came by frightening the horses who bolted and stared to run. Bert Stewart was driving the horses and he jumped from the buggy, throwing the reigns. Charles, Dad's father, attempted to jump, but lost his footing and fell backwards, his head hitting a rock. He lived for three days after the fall. For several years, Dad lived with his grandmother, Nancy Funk. While living with her, she bought him his first suit of clothes. She gave him a $5.00 gold piece and told him to go downtown and buy himself some clothes. This was “quite an event” he writes. He remembered wearing her high button-top shoes to school in the sixth grade because he had no other shoes. In a very sketchy and brief history that dad wrote of himself he said, “By the time I was eleven years old, I earned a living for my mother and younger brother (a living such as it was) not a very bountiful one, you can be sure.” What could an eleven year old do to support his family? He worked as the master of the towns herd of cattle. Farmington was a ���little stinking town, but everyone had a milk cow,” he states in a tape recorded history. Before school he would gather the milk cows after they had been milked and drive them over a mile to pasture and then round them up and take them back home again after school. He was paid $1.00/month/head. Because times changed, he only did this for a year or so. The pasture to where he herded the cows was partly a swampy area, and there were a lot of water snakes. He loved to pick up the water snakes by the tail and snap them like a whip and their head would pop off. Water snakes were harmless snakes – didn’t bite. Richard learned a lesson about snakes one day, when he went with his brother, Tom, to the sheep herd where he worked. Tom was building fences that day, and as they were going along the fence line, Dad saw a snake on the ground and he jumped down out of the wagon. Tom hollered “What are you going to do?” Dad replied “I’m going to stomp on his head.” Tom bailed out of the wagon “right real quick” and stopped him. “You don’t do that with rattlesnakes.” The jobs he had as a boy were numerous: “I can remember loading freight cars with boxed apples. I worked for Frank B. Allen in his garage, drove a model T Ford station wagon to the depot for drummers and their baggage for Mr. Allen’s Hotel.” (A drummer is a salesman). This Mr. Allen was the town’s well-to-do man.” He overhauled his first automobile engine at 12 years old. “While still quite young, I played the piano in Mr. Allen’s theater. (Incidentally it was a player piano) and later I operated the motion picture machines. (Oh those good old Silent Movies).” To continue his written narrative he said: “In 1918, I came down with the flu (and typhoid fever) and nearly died. Lost out in school and went to work in the bakery. This I kept up until about 1940, when I went to work for the government.” At age 18, he went to Texas to work. He worked for the Pyro family who owned an oil company. He cleared timber off of the land with an axe to make room for gas tanks. He didn’t stay there long, only several months and then came home. He had a girlfriend named Esther and they went to Durango,. Colorado to find work. That relationship did not last, and he went to Silverton, Colorado, where his sister, Bessie lived. She was living with a man who made bootleg beer and so he started delivering bootleg beer for Henry Taylor.
Note: Family records of Sandra Barnes Lamb, daughter
|
