Sketch 14 - From David Pratt

FAMILY HISTORY OF PRATT/SHIRK LINES

SKETCH 14: Two Tough Hombres (Based on Richard’s memos 63 & 65)

At wheat harvest time, Ben Pratt and Roy Peterson would often travel and work with the threshing crews.  “The grain was poured into gunny sacks, each weighing 120-140 pounds.”  The crew would test each other’s strength by getting down on all fours and with sacks of grain on their backs, they would crawl to a finish line some 10 to 12 feet away.  Ben “won with eight sacks on his back.”

Roy had trained his riding horse to allow him to get underneath and then straighten up until all four hooves cleared the ground.  Ben would sometimes bet the rest of the threshing crew that that old Swede could lift a horse completely off the ground.  If they bit, Grandpa Pete would crawl under his horse and do his thing.

Later in life, Ben came home for lunch to find a neighbor lady crying on Mom’s shoulder.  Seeing some of her bruises, he asked Mom, what the matter was after the woman had gone home.  Mom said, “Oh, Ben, didn’t you know that her husband beats her?”  Dad was so mad, he went next door, grabbed the man and let him know in no uncertain terms that if Dad ever saw the woman in that condition again, the husband would have to face Dad’s full wrath.

Christian Leroy Peterson was born in 1877 in Sevier County, Utah.  His mother was Swedish and his father was Danish.  Roy hired on as a cowboy to support his family when he was 13.  He “punched cows” all over the Southwest and spent four years in Mexico.  He could speak Swedish, Danish, Spanish and had a “working knowledge” of Navajo.  He later worked as a hunter for the Southern Pacific railway as they laid tracks across the country.  “He spent each day killing wild game to feed several hundred men.  Mostly deer, elk antelope and bear….All he had to do was shoot and bleed the animal and mark it with a flag and the butchering crew and their wagons did the rest.”  His favorite rifle was a .25-35 which he claimed had better stopping power then the traditional .30-30.  A loaded .25-35 was always kept behind the kitchen range on the Colockum.  Leroy got in trouble for firing it out the open kitchen window when he spied a varmint in the barnyard.

“Grandpa Pete was a large man and very large boned. (Photos 28-29)  I remember his thumb appeared to be as large as my wrist.  He stood 6 feet and three or four inches tall and weighed well over 225 pounds.  He always wore a very big black Stetson hat called a ten gallon hat….[In the desert he would open his canteen], dismount, pour two or three quarts of water in his hat and give his horse a drink.  Then hurriedly put his hat back on and enjoy the few drops left in the hat falling down on his head….

“The strongest word I ever heard from him was a simple ‘DAMN,’ and that but seldom.  Usually when he was aggravated he just gave a little grunt.  And I do it to this day.”

Grandpa Pete loved horses, and I’ll tell you more about horses and how he made cowboys out of my brothers Richard and Leroy next time.