Leland Leslie Preslar

• GIVN: Leland Leslie
• SURN: Preslar¹²³⁴
• Sex: M
• Born: 21 Apr 1906 in Marsh Center, Bannock, Idaho, United States
• Died: 10 Jul 1986 in Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States
• Buried: 14 Jul 1986 in Kaysville, Davis, Utah, United States
• _UID: 828886950CD045A583D36CE0789E394E2A3B
• Baptised LDS: 27 Jun 1914 14 Dec 1990
• TEMP: OGDEN BIC
• Record last updated: 30 Nov 2013
• TIME: 11:40
• Notes:

  Social Security Number: 518-20-1709
  
  The state listed in the birth locality field is where the Social Security Number was issued. The zip code listed in the death locality field is the last place of residence.
  
  Death Residence Localities
  ZIP Code: 84403
  Ogden, Weber, Utah
  South Ogden, Weber, Utah
  South Weber, Weber, Utah
  Uintah, Weber, Utah
  
  LELAND LESLIE PRESLAR
  APRIL 21, 1906 to JULY 10, 1986
  I was born the second child of Leslie Wilson Preslar and Zoa Curtis at Marsh Center, Bannock, Idaho.
  
  Early memories:
  
  Dad and I went to get wood, I remember Bert Marley was out looking for his horses also, I was sitting on the running board, Dad hit a hole and I fell off and the running gears ran over my head. Another time Nell (my sister) and I ran away and went to Aunt Hat's and Uncle Bert's, Mom got on our ole work mare Fleet and rode two miles to find us, in snow that was three feet deep, it was crusted so we had been able to run on top.
  
  We were living in a hollow that was five to eight miles west and south of Arimo, Idaho. There was no road through the Gap to begin with, in order to get to Garden Creek Basin or behind the Gap you had to go over Rocky Pass. One Thanksgiving Day, it had snowed the night before, and a big coyote came by our window, bucking snow. Dad got on ole Fleet and went and shot the coyote. The pelt was worth five or six dollars.
  
  Another time I recall when we lived at the Hollow, Dad was loading the hayrack on the wagon, he had Mom crawl under and straighten the bolster, the prop fell out and cam down and hit Mom on the head. Dad grabbed her up and ran to the house. I can still see her legs kicking like a squirrel. Dad put her to bed. She had a headache for six months or more. There were no doctors close and she gradually got better.
  
  I remember Dad skinning a coyote on the, floor in the house once. Nell and I went out and wrestled a big load of wood in on a bet from Dad. We surprised him and got it in.
  Dad used to haul our water in forty gallon barrels from Garden Creek. We dug a well later, fifty feet deep. It was very good water.
  
  Once I was baby-sitting Wendell (my brother) in a baby buggy, we had a calf staked nearby. I tied the calf s rope to the handle of the buggy. The calf took off with the buggy and Wendell's red hair flying in the breeze. A lucky thing, the buggy wedged in the ole cellar, right side up.
  
  When I was seven years old, Dad and I got up at 2:00 a.m. and walked to Arimo to catch the train to go to a circus in Pocatello, Idaho. I remember Dad flagged the train down with a roll of lighted paper. We went to the circus and then went and bought a pony. I rode the pony back home 30 miles to Robin, Idaho. I got lost a few minutes in Inkom, a lady hanging out clothes helped me on my way. Dad and Wendell rode the train back to McCammon, and that was where we met.
  
  We had the pony a long time. Her name was Sister. She was favorite horse, she didn't have any bad habits, but she was hard to catch. If we had ole Colonel our dog along, he would heel her, and we could catch her anywhere. We got Colonel from Will Evans. We were promised a pup, and I remember when Wendell and I went to get him. He would waddle along behind for a while and then we would carry him for a while. He loved to hunt, if we grabbed a gun he was right there ready to go.
  
  There was the wood chopping incident. I chopped off Wendell's finger. I ducked under the ole granary and Momma ran to get Dad. He was out in the field mowing hay. He hurried and unhooked one horse, hooked it to the buggy and they drove ten miles to a doctor. The doctor said his finger would be stiff, but Mom told him to sew it on. Wendell worked with it and it was just like the other fingers.
  
  Dad, Wendell and I went to McCammon to get some groceries and we coaxed Dad into buying us a BB. Gun. We had to promise we wouldn't shoot cats, dogs, windows or people. Coming home we saw a big cat lying up in the lava rocks. We shot it. Then we ' accidentally shot a window and the gun got put away for a while. One day we were shooting sparrows and Dad was bent over by the wood pile. Wendell took aim..... Dad fixed the gun so it would
  shoot around corners.
  
  I was in the second grade, a kid sat in front of me - his name was Tom, his hair was uncombed and unkempt. I took a match and was going to singe it a bit. Whoosh! It went up in flame. I jumped up and started pounding his head. The teacher Myna Ross, gave me ten good licks with the ruler across the hand. I couldn't shoot marbles for a few weeks.
  
  There was a nest of honey bees up in a corner of the school building and someone was getting stung all the time. I caught a bunch of them and pulled their wings off, and turned them loose under the teacher's desk, you can guess the rest.
  
  This teacher's husband was a principal, Wilford Barlow. He had been drafted in World War I and had been killed. She had been feeling bad for days. We ate lunch in the school room. I caught a sparrow and put it in her desk drawer. She opened the drawer some time later and out came the sparrow. She screamed and started to cry. I guess I didn't have enough school work to do. I skipped a couple of grades cause Mom had taught me to read and write at home.
  
  I recall the time Cliff and I walked to school early, the janitor had left the door open and a skunk was inside. We threw rocks at it and it perfumed all over. They dismissed school for two days to let things air out.
  
  My favorite teacher was Mrs. Nailer she taught third, forth and fifth grades. She was the teacher when Nora Boran the county superintendent came for an annual visit. I was the student the teacher picked to go to the front and read. I marched up like a tin soldier and backed up and fell rear end first into the waste paper basket. I couldn't move. Well, the class roared. The teacher later told Mom what a comical deal it was.
  
  I can remember in the spring I got to go with Dad to Dairy Creek, behind the Gap by Bull Springs. We took a tent and stayed ten days or two weeks. They would shear one herd of sheep and then another. Dad and I found a little lamb and took it to find its mother. The herders would pay us five cents each time we would match two up. They finally gave us a lamb. We would help the sheep men get their sheep in and watch them shear the sheep. When they were done, they would run through the dip vat. They had a man stand with a stick to push each sheep head under the dip.
  
  One time Cliff Evans and I were down at Garden Creek throwing rocks, when a bobcat jumped out. We chased it up a tree. I threw a rock at it and knocked it out of the tree. We thought it was dead. We started to drag it home to show the folks, it cam too and grabbed Cliff by the leg. We killed it by hitting its head on the ground. I spent a lot of time with Cliff and Wendell.
  
  Many years later, but still while he was young Cliff accidentally shot himself. He jumped a ditch with a loaded gun and fell. The bullet went up through his right side and shoulder. They tracked him in the snow. This took place in about 1950, when we lived in McCaminon. The last time I saw him alive was at Garden Creek Basin, when Dad was doing some spring plowing or something.
  
  The government came out with a bounty on ground squirrel tails for two cents a tail. I remember as kids we were trapping them. We decided if we would just cut off their tails and turn them loose they would grow another tail and we would make lots of money. That year there were a whole lot of bobtailed squirrels.
  
  Once we were playing hide and seek, Wendell, Gene (a brother) and 1. I saw them crawl in this culvert while I was peeking. The culvert was up on a hill, and I removed the rock holding it. Down the hill the culvert went. Wendell tried to crawl out and his head was going round and round. It looked like a ball of fire.
  
  Dad, Wendell, Donna (a sister) and I were up a the ole dry farm. It only had two rooms. Donna had tried to make bread several times, but couldn't get it to rise. We could hardly eat it. So Dad brought Mom up to show Donna how to make bread. I was coming in with my horses, and Dad and Wendell with theirs. We each had six head. Dad started down over the hill with his horses, something really scared them and they broke loose. Then Wendell started down and the same thing. The horses went crazy. So by then I could see there was something amiss. I slowed my horses right down and crept up to where Dad was standing with his hat off talking to himself and cussing. Ms words were, "Would you tell me what in the hell that thing is over in the sage brush?" Mom was the culprit. She had taken another batch of bad bread and carefully concealed it in a badger hole. The sun had done the rest. When Mom was here to my place last time I saw her, she mentioned this incident and we all had a laugh.
  
  At ten I was following a hand plow, we had 160 acres 80 of which we put in. Dad took a contract to break up 65 acres of wheat grass, buck brush and sagebrush. Henry Nelson bought a place in Dairy Creek, and hired Dad to break it up. Wendell, Gene and I moved back in an old house to batch it on our own. We had two fourteen inch hand plows and one riding plow for Gene. He was too small for foot burners as we called them.
  
  We had a grill affair to cook on and good horses. We would come in hungry and have to build a fire to cook our meals.
  Charlie Myers lived close and he had his milk cows turned loose on the open range. These cows drank water from a trough not far from us. We'd slip out and get us a little milk to drink. Charlie hid and saw us do this. He suspected something cause the cows wouldn't come in. He asked us not to milk them, and said he would give us milk if we would come and get it at night.
  
  He asked if our little shack had a cook stove in it. It didn't, so he hauled us up to Bull Springs to get one out of another old shack. When we got our stove we were in heaven. We were there about a month.
  
  Going back a few years earlier, I recall an incident on the old dry farm. I was not very old. I had a broom handle and was teasing a big calf, by pushing it in the head with the handle. This went on for a few minutes and the calf got mad and knocked me down and was doing his best to get me with the short horns he had. Cy Marley was up on the barn helping Dad and he happened to see what was going on and came and chased the calf off.
  
  I recall once Dad bought two wiener pigs from Bob Cole. We raised them. Dad just couldn't bring himself to butcher them. They were too big to load, so Wendell and I drove them to be butchered. We had to pour water on them as Dad drove along with the wagon. When he finally butchered them they were terribly fat. Dad also had a mud hole fixed for their convenience.
  
  I was with Dad once looking for Wendell who had run away. We were on the train, and it stopped at Glennsferry. I remember Dad had on a sheepskin coat. He quickly got up, threw the coat on my lap and got off the train. In a few minutes he got back on the train with Wendell. Wendell had run away with Bill Groupe and another fellow.
  
  When Dad and I had started out on the train, he had gotten us a ticket to Pocatello. When we went to go beyond there, we had no ticket. I remember Dad gave the conductor some money and we went on to Glennsferry. After he got Wendell, he got us all a ticket home. Some time later Dad bought Wendell a new suit of clothes to see if he would stay home ... but the bug hit him and he took off for Reno or some place and gambled off his new suit. Chris Jensen had a boy about Wendell's age, this boy was supposed to have heard something Wendell said and was mad and had made the threat he would lick Wendell first chance he got. Well, Wendell afforded him the chance and down over the hill they went. The Jensen boy got a licking. Wendell was quite husky and quick with his fists.
  
  We will call this the hair cutting party. Gene England, Norman Farr and Morris Woodland caught Wendell and some other boys his age, playing ball. They decided to initiate them, being they were fresh-men. They really gave them 'a neat hair cut. Dad and J. B. England caught the older boys and clipped a large X on their heads. They had to have all their hair shaved off. Gene England's mother had a fit and said she could guess the SOB that did this to her Gene, Les Preslar. There was more talk of cutting hair - Les' perhaps, but Ed Henderson advised against this. Bill Hatch had suggested to cut Dad's hair sometirne later, when we boys were at basketball practice. We had boxing gloves there, Bill and Dad got to sparing and Dad knocked Bill clear off the stage and cut his eye. That was the end of that!
  
  Gene had an old bicycle frame, but didn't have any wheels. So he put press wheels on it. Press wheels are made of steel. He pushed the bike up on the same hill where Mom had put the bread in the badger hole. Well, Gene came off the hill, and it skinned him up something awful.
  
  In 1929, Byron Evans and me went to work in the Harmony Mine in Salmon, Idaho. I was 23 at the time. We worked two different winters. In 1930 the depression came along and the mine had to close, the owner's couldn't pay us. Byron and I stayed on and they promised to pay us later. When spring came we borrowed 50 dollars to go home on. Then about 3 months later we got a letter that our money was available. We drove up and each got 300 dollars. The workers who took leans against their equipment had to wait 18 months for their pay.
  
  The next four years I farmed with Dad, then I bought Henry Henderson place. Leone cooked for me while I was living there.
  
  Hato Armstrong took me to Pocatello, where I bought a 29 Ford Coup. When we were on our way to Pocatello, we passed the Parkinson place and Hato said a cute little girl lives there. About 3 or 4 months later I went to a dance at Robin. Donna Parkinson and Mary Infanger were there. I saw who the "cute little girl" was and stopped by her home later and asked her for a date.
  
  We dated through the summer. One day I took Donna and her mother, Geneva to Pocatello. We needed to go to the court house. Geneva suggested why not get married. So we did, the date was February 20, 1935.
  
  Our first home was on the Henderson place, not luxury to say the least. We had an old rocking chair, that had a broken rocker. I remember Mom came to see us and sat in that chair and ended up on the floor before we could warn her.
  The next February, Carol Lee was born on the 26th. We were living in the old place where Gene and Afton lived. Some years later we referred to it as the place under the hill.
  Robert Lynn was born 21 months later in October the 4th day of 1937. Then Steve came along on December 13, 1939. Bonnie was born March 1, 1942, all while we lived at the ole place under the hill.
  
  I was running the farm when winter set in so I decided to come to Utah and get a job at the Navy Base in Syracuse for the winter. Gene and Afton were living in the old Strong house in Kaysville. I stayed with them until January when Donna moved with the children to the same Strong house. I bought it and Gene and Afton lived up stairs. They had two kids by then, Morris and Marilyn.
  
  Robert got the measles when he was five. He was never well after that. He had such a high fever. He was sick from springtime until July 11, 1943, when he died. The doctors thought he had rheumatic fever at first, then they thought he had leukemia but his blood never showed that. We never really knew what he died of. It was war time and they had poor people working in the labs, the regular people were in the service helping. Donna was pregnant at the time and lost the baby, a girl. Donna was only 5 and a half months along. The baby only lived an hour.
  
  The following year on November 18, 1944, Wanda was born. I bought a place with 5 acres in west Kaysville. The place was later known as Grandpa and Grandma Preslar's Place. We moved there and Linda was born January 28, 1947. On the 21st of March of that year, another tragedy occurred. Carol Lee was killed in a car-train accident one mile from home on the railroad tracks. A passenger train hit the car and killed all 6 children riding in the back seat of the car. Wilford Webster had picked up the neighbor kids to take them to a movie in Kaysville. Carol Lee, David, Sterling and Hal Barnes the three boys were brothers and all the children in the family, a sad sad thing, Joann Webster, Carol Lee's best friend and a Sandal boy who lived a ways from us were the six children killed. Mr. Webster and his daughter and son, who were in the front seat all lived because the train hit the back of the car. I was the first to arrive at the scene. The ambulance arrived quickly and took the three who were alive to the hospital. I started to look for the others. I found Daniel in a ditch and Carol Lee down in the field. This was an awful time for our family, what with losing Bobby and the baby in the same year, and then Carol Lee just a few years later.
  
  We sold the place in West Kaysville to my parents and they moved down from Robin, Idaho. We moved back up to McCammon and rented and ran Dad's dry farm.
  Next I bought a place in Lava Hot Springs. It had 80 acres. I farmed it and part of Dad's dry farm at Robin and behind the Gap.
  
  While I was out deer hunting one year, I got worried about Donna and come home early, just in time for Val Jae's entry on October 22, 1949. Then on January 12, 1952, Kent was bom. With the children that had died, having these two boys, it ended up three boys and three girls.
  
  We lived in Lava for five years. These were pretty good years, no deaths and life went along pretty normal. Gene and Afton lived up in the Bitter Root Valley in Montana, and I got a whim to move up there. So we sold our place in Lava and moved to Montana in May of '55. We bought a small farm in Darby, Montana. This was a nice place. It had a built-in garden with gooseberries, strawberries and rhubarb. The scenery was just beautiful. We had three wild geese take a liking to us and we enjoyed them more than any of the other pets we had. They would come up and peck at my buttons and talk goose talk to me. Dad caught them on the Snake River right after they were hatched and he gave them to us. They turned out to be fun pets.
  
  Our stay in Darby was fairly short, I didn't want the place because I could see I wouldn't be able to make a living there. So I sold it that summer to some people from Utah named Hatch. We moved to Stevensville in the fall and rented a house. I went to work for a guy named Shaw in the real estate business. This turned out to be a mistake. The man was not real honest and he didn't pay me for some good sales I made. We were only there for two years and Donna was glad when we moved again. She felt like we were just going down hill and losing what little we had.
  
  In 1957, it was back to Utah. I tried going to California for a job but wasn't successful, so I returned and went to work at Hill Air Force Base. Times were hard. Donna was working and it was all we could do to raise five kids. Wanda was living with my sister Avalon and her family at the time. Steve was living in Lava and going to school since he didn't want to live in Utah.
  
  I worked at Hill Field for 26 years doing several different jobs. I prided myself on always being on time...except once, when I rode in with the Boss!
  
  I loved to fish, so Donna and I would load up the camper and go often. Donna didn't like fishing that well. When she learned how and started catching big fish, I quit fishing.
  
  Illnesses I had:
  Earaches
  
  Chicken Pox
  
  Measles
  
  Mumps
  
  Whooping Cough
  
  Scarlet Fever
  
  Favorite foods:
  Take hot bread and butter, go to the spring and get a big handful of watercress for the top.
  
  Mom made great stews, and I can remember how they smelled as we entered the house from school. Sometimes it was a big pot of beans and I liked that.
  
  Favorite books:
  Little -shepherd
  
  This is Dad's history as told to me, Bonnie his daughter.
  
  Dad died July 10, 1986, of kidney failure. During the later years of his life Dad worked in his yard, where he raised a nice garden and had beautiful roses. He spent one week in the McKay-Dee Hospital and one week in an extended care facility where he died. The doctors said his prostate gland was about the size Of a grapefruit, and this was at the bottom of his kidney problems. Mother had tried to get him to see a doctor about this for several years but he refused. That pioneer spirit and self-reliance talking.