NELS AND CARMEN SANT ROHOLT

written by Nels Roholt

Mother and Dad's first home on the homestead was a tent constructed of a wood plank floor, three foot high wood sides with a canvas covering the remaining sides and top. This was home until Dad built us a two room log house about 1909.

However, I, Nels Roholt was born Feb. 16, 1907, to Nels Peter and Freda Elizabeth Poulsen Roholt at the home of Uncle Henry Larsen. Ruel Skinner now owns the land where that home once stood. Mrs. Lundgren was the midwife. I was the first of twelve children. Mother and Dad raised ten of us to maturity.
I remember plastering the logs with chaff and mud on our new home. The inside walls were covered with oil cloth. Mother carried water from a ditch until mid summer when it ran dry. Then the water came from a spring under the hill.

My schooling started under the instruction of Mr. Eisenburg. The school was called Buttermilk because the one room building was moved from the old creamery located about three-fourths of a mile north of Thatcher central bridge to about one-half mile south of Dave Coomb's home to the top of the hill. I carried my lunch and water with me on my horse, about two miles one way each day of school. My second year the Buttermilk building was moved away to become a residence and was replace by a two room cinderblock building on the same location.

In 1916 Dad sold the homestead and bought a place in Gannet, Idaho, located up Woodriver Valley. While there we had a really hard winter. Hay sold at such a cost that it took all we had to save the cows. We lost our home and land.

In 1918 World War I ended, and we moved to Preston, Idaho, which was where my grandfather lived. There I attended my 4th and 5th grades in school. Miss Holland was my teacher, and she was one good looking young lady. It was hard to keep my mind on learning.

In 1920 we moved back to Thatcher. We lived in the same house that Keith Barthlome lives today. Sol Hale built that home and his son, young Sol, built Dave Barthlome's home. While we lived there I went to a red brick, one room school located across the road from Dick Anderson's home. Mrs. Ester Ziegler was my seventh and eighth grade teacher. There I met for the first time a little girl named Carmen Sant. I was in the seventh grade, she was in the fourth. After eighth grade graduation I attended Central High School which is still being used as the grade school in Thatcher. I worked on ranches in the summer until I married that little girl I met in grade school, Carmen Sant.
Carmen Sant was born the second child of Mary Townly and Albert Sant on Dec. 22, 1909, at Cleveland, Idaho on the Fawn Johnson place, about two miles from where I was born.
Albert homsteaded a place in Stockton, Idaho north of the Treasureton church house in 1910. The home was two log cabins joined together by a room in the middle to make a total of three rooms. Mr. Coker, Carmen's first teacher, boarded with the family. He also taught school in one end of the home. Carmen liked the kitchen end of the house better than the learning end and therfore, it took a couple of years and a location change to convince her she had to go to school.

Om 1917 her dad sold the Stockton homestead and moved to the old Brown homestead in Thatcher. Carmen rode her horse about two mile to Cove school. Her grade schoool years were spent there with the exception of a few monthes in Gilmore, Texas, when in the fourth grade her mother, Leona, took the kids to be with her mother when Dora was born. Carmen graduated fromthe eight grade under J. Stanly Harrison. Carmen's freshmen year of high school was spent in a second story room of the Dalton home in Grace with her brother Percy and sister Dora. They would go home weekends to get supplies for the coming week. The next three years she lived with the Frank Snow family to attend school, where she a Lavera (Toots) became almost sister and formed a lifetime friendship. Carmen graduated from high school in 1930.

Carmen and I first started to date at mutual at the old Thatcher two story church. Everyone rode horses and the boys would wait for the girls to get out of class so they could ride home with them. Carmen liked to dance, but I didn't have much talent in that department so we ended up going to a lot of movies. I would drive Dad's 1926 Star automobile. It was one of the first enclosed cars. We would go to the Bert Orr Theater in Grace. After the movie we would buy a 25 cent banana split at the drugstore. When the courting got serious I'd give her a box of chocolates. It couldn't get any better than that.

We got married in Brigham City, Utah on May 22, 1931. Our first home for one summer was the Sol Hale home where I worked for Joe Pond.

Then we moved to the Sant Farm from 1932 to 1936 while the Sants ran a dairy in Pocatello, Idaho. Our son, Gene was born while living there on Feb. 12, 1933.

Then we bought the Charles Goldbury homestead.
Times were at the height of depression and we made $30.00 a month. The first car we bought was a 1927 Model T Ford coupe. It never once made it over the Medford Hill without a push, which was Carmen's job. We even tried reverse, but even backwards we never did make it over the hill without Carmen. We later traded for a 1928 Model A Ford. There were no tears shed when my wife bid farewell to the Model T.
We had a few cows and three horses. The best of my saddle horses was a little bay mare. Her name was Tiny. Carmen raised a garden and lots of flowers every year. She canned all our vegetables and fruits for the winter. She even raised turkeys one year and bought a new Holloway Queen, Briggs & Stratton gas engine clothes washer for $75.00. When we finally got electricty about 1939, this washer was converted to an electric motor. We still use the tub of that old washer in the ditch to collect water for the cows.
During this time I was employed as temporary help for the Utah Power and Light Company. My beginning wage was 40 cents per hour. We lived well and life was good.

Our daughter Connie was born June 25, 1937, and another son, Gail followed on Sept. 12, 1940.
When Gail was three months old, Dec. 9, 1940, our house burned down. I was lighting the morning fire in the kitchen stove and the gas can I used to get the fire going exploded in my hands. We lost everything. We had just finished our Christmas shopping. Ther was no insurance. All of us got out of the house through the door except Gene, and I had to throw him out the window of his bedroom. He kept trying to come back into the house because he was still half asleep and it was cold outside. Everything was gone. Even the silver coins in Carmen's purse that had hung on a peg in the door, were melted into silver clump. There we stood in the snow in our night clothes, barefoot, and watched.
Eph and Bea Crossly were the first ones to come with help. They had seen the flames from their place. They had gone to Sants, and the Crossleys were quite concerned as they had gone to the fire looking for us and no one was home. Toots Henderson brought baby clothes and clothes for Carmen.

We then moved to the old Gulbransen home, about a quarter mile south of Sant home, while we built our new home.
With the help of Earl Wood, Melvin Hansen, and Utah Power we started our four room home with scrap staves from a replaced pipeline. We had puchased a couple of item from Sears Company before the fire and they were the only one to extend us any credit for the building material. So for about $600.00 credit we bought doors, windows, shingles and cellitex from them. Wendell and Sivell Smith helped us shingle the house. We moved into our new home on April Fools Day, April 1, 1941. What a great day! We were all together and home again.

We had a 35 green Chevrolet. The brakes froze up on the that car from the first frost to the following fourth of July. Carmen was going to do her Relief Society teaching one day during the frozen peiod. The road involved was known as the Lund Hill. She made the first of several curves, but as she was picking up quite a bit of speed, she decided that a clump of snow in the road was just the thing she needed to slow the car down for the last curve that was coming up. The snow turned out to be ice. The car and Carmen were flipped onto their tops. Harry and Jeanette Peteson, who lived nearby, were the first to the wreck and saved the gas that was pouring from the car into a pan. The school bus driver and some other people that happened by soon they had the old green car back on its wheels. As soon as it was refueled Carmen brought it back home. I pushed the big lumps out of the top and we drove it for lots of years just like it was.

The kids went to a one room school named Telluride until consolidation with the Grace School District about 1948. Carmen Leona, our daughter was born July 5, 1947.
We had 35 acres farm ground, cows, horses, dogs, and cats. Our horses were, Strip who Connie claimed, and the team, Floss and Chub. Leona's choice was Chub. We farmed with the team and put the hay up with a Jackson Fork. Leona and Chub ran the derrick, Carmen and Conne tromped, and Gene, Gail, and I pitched.

Utah Power & Light Company was good to us for the thirty years we were there. We were a happy family. Before we retired we bought a small home from UP&L and moved it to the home place. We joined the two houses, dug a well, and tore the outhouse down. We had it all. LaVern Gibson, my brother Virgil, and I did the carpentry in the home. It all tied together well.
We retired in Feb. 1972 and moved home. We still have our cows, a horse, a dog, and each other.