15 Howard Huddleston.md

#The Life History of Howard N. Huddleston

Richmond, Indiana, was my birth place on June 18, 1902. I have no memory of anything previous than at the age of one year, my story therefore begins here. I was born far before the medical practice of Cesarean birth, and my mother, Edith Karen Cadwallader Huddleston, who was not over five feet tall and having small bone structure, was in labor with me for over three days. After my arrival, Dr. Blossom advised that I would have to be layed on my left side to live. My mother took this advice for she said she had gone back to the crib many times day and night.

While I was yet in diapers and crawling, my mother told the story of when I had come up missing, and upon searching for me she said she heard a noise in the stairway. So opening the door at the base of the staircase, she found me about half way up the stairs with a paint brush and I was putting it in my mouth and trying to paint the risers of the steps.

Of course without realization, at the age of less than one, I now count it most Important for a happening which was made so vivid in my mind. My father, Walter Murray Huddleston, who had for the first, and I know now, the last time; walked in from the alley entrance into where my mother, my sister Gertrude, and I were seated at breakfast in that small kitchen of a big double house on D Street in Richmond. He made a most impressive event as he picked me up from my highchair and thrust me above his head and caused my feet to touch the ceiling. I can still visualize his face as I then looked down at him. I can remember the thrill when he thrust me so high it took my breath away. I still remember the color of the walls and ceiling to be a light green. I know now that this was his good-bye. For he then left us; mother, sister, myself and my grandmother Cadwallder who was then living with us.

This made a decided change in my life, now looking back, for my mother had not been really close to me now, and I saw very little of her from then on. My grandmother Cadwallader was taking care of me and my sister Gertrude. Gertrude was two years older than me, being the first of the three children born before me, a boy and girl who died at birth.

I also recall having suffered a displaced arm at the elbow as my sister attempted to pull me up from the floor. It had to be reset by a doctor.

About the next thing most outstanding in memory, was the big four-wheeled carriage that my grandmother had several times put me in and would always ask where I wanted to go. Now, I had not walked, and I was just learning to talk and my answer to her had always been,”See ‘chine.” Meaning I would like to go again just across the street to the freight yard, which was a very short distance from the old Garr Scott Factory where they build the old threshing machines. They were pained red with the trimming and the lettering a bright yellow. These colors were the reason for my desire to go and see and I was never content until I had reached out and placed my hand on the painted surface. Looking back at the many things like unto this, I have become quite certain that the artist is truly born to be.

One evening, my Uncle Frank Huddelston, my father’s brother, who resided in Richmond at the time, passed by our small front yard and asked me the question, “what do you think of your new dad?” I’m sure that I was no more than three years old then. My mother had been entertaining a Mr. Ambrose F. Summerfruit, who later did become my step-father. But in answer to my uncles question, I remarked, “Well, they aren’t married yet.”

At the most likely age of about three and a half to four years old, they started me in a kind of kindergarten which was being held in the Starr School just at the top of the hill across E. Street and the corner of Ninth. I remember being quite content when the teacher passed out a little dab of putty to everyone there, and showed us how to roll it in our hands into a ball about the size of a walnut. She then furnished us color and I remember painting mine a bright yellow. Then the teacher thought we needed some exercise and she told us to stand up and take up our chairs, which were quite heavy; for they were made from hickory wood and a cane bottom. We were supposed to pick these chairs up and march around the room. I refused, and did not march with them. I sat in my chair and watched the rest of them who were bigger than me. I still recall seeing the hickory chairs after I had gown up; for there were two of these same chairs in my own home.

Ambrose Summerfruit came several times to our home with the effort to win my sister and me over. He would bring his big bicycle and seat us one at a time, on to the handlebars and take us for a ride. I don’t recall that I ever enjoyed any part of it. A short time later, my mother placed me in the same carriage I had spoken about before, and pushing the carriage they, mother and Mr. Summerfruit, walked across the Doran Bridge which hovered over a portion of the Garr Scott building. They had bought me a small cap which I had taken quite a fancy to. It was light yellowish brown, imitation leather, with a green cloth shading under the bill. And as we started to cross the bridge, a puff of wind blew my cap off and over the side it went. I guess I set up quite a howl of disappointment, yet I was somewhat comforted when he promised that when it was light he would go and find it, which he did. I placed my confidence in him for the first time and I thought he was a pretty good guy.

I don’t recall any marriage ceremony, but I’m sure there was one. I do remember an evening when a spring wagon which was drawn by a single black horse, they called Old Bob, came to our home. I remember seeing grandmother, where we left her at the house, seated by the old base burner. Mother and my new step father started with a few small furnishings out to the country place, where I was raised. The house was just about four hundred yards down stream from the little saw mill pond owned by a Mr. Miller, which later became Richmond’s Glen Miller Recreation Park. I was totally bewildered about where we were going and as the horse went along, it gradually became dark. As I laid looking up at the sky, I noticed the moon which appeared to be moving; I spoke up saying, “The moon is moving!” I remember how my mother laughed.

I must have been asleep when we arrived at the big ten room house. I had been carried in and put to bed on a cot which was very thinly padded, but I slept through the night. Upon waking quite early in the morning, I crawled out of my bed and experienced the surprise and terrible feeling of being totally forsaken. The room was completely bare other than the cot. I was as naked as a Jay-bird. I went out through the big double doors only to find another big empty room. And on into another, also being completely void of anyone to console me. I guess I will never forget that which seemed to be a tragedy. Finally, I heard a noise and some voices. I opened another door into a very small room more or less a vestible directly off of a high back porch; An entrance to a staircase which led to the basement. There my sister and mother sat having breakfast.

My mother was inclined to show partiality to my sister, Gertrude. I t seems that even at that age, about four, I was able to observe that I was anything else than the apple of her eye. I don’t think I will forget how she made a dress covered with the gold stars she had hand made, concentrating so much on how she would present Gertrude as one of the dancers on the big stage of the Colosseum; on Ninth Street in Richmond, which burned in a or around 1925. This is where my mother had many times put on her talents in Elocution which she taught. On this same stage; an outstanding happening occurred which I shall never forget. My mother had made a kite and had drilled me in a performance which I was to take this kite and in running out onto the stage, I was to call out: “March comes with wind and noise, Here’s a kite for all the boys.” I guess I resented any thought of giving it to all the boys, for I felt it was mine. I deliberately refused and try as she may, I would not say even one word. She then, with her very strong voice, took the kite and dragged me across the stage and holding the kite, she called out the line. After that I was total let down in her mind. In other words, most conclusively, it has been found that in my horoscope which declares that one who is born in my period; is seldom to be understood.

In getting back to the place where I was raised by my step-father. The big house had previously been occupied by a family by the name of Edsal. It was located nearby a small pond fed by the stream from the mill pond and at that time was mainly used as an ice pond, for on the bank just above it had been erected a large store house used for storing ice. This was the only ice furnished to the town prior to the ice manufacturing plant promoted by Mathers Brothers Ice and Coal, located on F Street, which had become necessary after this big ice store house had burned down. When this fire occurred, I was at the age of about five or six. This fire was the first I had ever witnessed and I thought the whole world was on fire. I became frantic and I still recall my terrible fear.

One day, early in the spring, my sister, in play placed a rope around my neck and under my arms and said, “Let’s play horse.” After quite a run, it broke loose with a spring shower which was shortly over, and being somewhat fatigued and more than likely thirsty. There came, what appeared to our young minds, a stream down through what had been used as a cow pasture. My sister said, “Look at the stream, let’s have a drink.” We both drank and within twenty one days, which is the incubation period for typhoid, we had both developed the fever. Within that period we had been put to work, doing cleaning and raking the yard. Not knowing really what was coming on to me, I recall being quite chilled. I put on an old over-coat of my mothers, and I remember going into the wood shed which had been used to saw stove wood. In this shed there was an old fashioned saw buck stradling badly cut and chopped log where many limbs had been severed with the ax. I had quite often entered just to go in with a hammer, for I had found that I could make many different tones on the cross cut saw on the side of the building. But this time, I entered under the effect of the fever and chills. As I opened the door, this chopping log seemed to beckon me among the chips and rested my head in the great gap which had been hewn out by the ax. I was found there unconscious. I knew not when, but supposedly the same day, I aroused just long enough to observe a man in white uniform trying to get me into, what which learned later, an ambulance. I had a gown on which was furnished by the hospital and to me I was most sure it was one of my sisters dresses. I remember protesting and refusing to wear it. Then I fell back into the coma. I knew nothing until much later. After my treatment and when my fever finally broke, I began to notice and recognize that my sister and I were in the same room. I was attended by Dr. Marvel, who had about the time I had begun to recover from my fever; which had been so high that I was at one time reported to be dead; stood at the foot of my bed and in joking with me, quacked like a duck. He said quacking was the only sound that he had been able to get out of me. He would always greet me with the question, “How’s my little duck this morning?”

Previous to my sickness, I had made my first attempt to paint. Having been impressed by the story and news photo in the Item News paper of Indianapolis about the sinking of the Titanic, in which hundreds of people had drowned after the ship had struck an iceberg. Before the rescue ship could reach them, it had sunk. The little picture I had painted in water color was a reproduction of this ship sinking like the news photo had shown. I remember that my mother brought this picture to the hospital and showed it to all of the staff. They had passed it around and praised me so in thinking it was very good. This was the first inkling of my art ability. I recall the day we left the hospital. They were mowing the lawns and the trees were in full leaf and the sweet smell of spring was in the air. When they picked me up they lifted me under the arms and I screamed out with pain, “Oh! My boils.” I had gotten boils and infection under both of my arms; which followed on for a number of years. At one time I had counted twenty-nine on my back and shoulders. (Howard became ill during the time of the sinking of the Titanic, April 14, 1912 and he would have been 10 years old).

Now going on six years of age, they put me in a school, District No. 6. It was located very close to the Richmond Pumping station, which was the only source of water at that time. It was an old building with one room and an old pot-bellied stove and an American Flag in the corner. I remember a very large book of maps which sat on a pedestal, and the ornamental cast iron seats, and desks which ranged from primer-class size to the fourth grade size. Over the door of this little school, someone had hung a horseshoe for a good luck symbol. It had been suspended with two strands of bailing wire. I remember two boys, Harry and Walter Goodwin, who lived almost directly across from the school. The older boy, Harry, had many times previous, when recess was announced, when coming out with the rest of the children, would give out a yell and run and jump up and would catch the horse shoe and swing out then drop out on the concrete side walk. I was present on one occasion when the school teacher, Mrs. Fisher, cautioned him saying, “Harry, one day that wire is going to break.” It was only some days later that it happened. I was just close enough that when his head hit the concrete step, I saw him laying shivering in unconsciousness and blood was running out of his mouth. The younger brother, Walter, who was about my age, went running across the road and called out “Harry’s killed himself.” His mother, a very large woman came running across the road with dough up to her elbows and her arms wrapped in her apron. I saw no more of the episode, for school was then taken up. At a much later date, long after I was married, I met Walter and recalling the day he told me that Harry was never right from that accident and he had now passed on.

After two weeks or so the entire group was moved to a new school which had been in the process of being built with two rooms and four grades in each up to the eighth grade which I eventually completed. I remember one of my first fights. A Kenneth Sells, who would have a marble game with the rest of us boys, which we always held just in back of the school on the cinders from the furnace that had been leveled out. One day, for no particular reason, Kenneth kicked the marbles out of the ring. I chased him and tied into him with the result of a wrestling match. I came out of it with one black eye. The teacher caught Ken and questioned him and he was then expelled from school.

In the spring of my seventh grade year, being about 1914; Mr. White, my teacher, came into the room looking very stern and said, “the crisis has come; we are in war.” (We, in the U.S., had not yet gone into ward but it was in Europe and we were preparing ourselves in case we would enter.) I had, at this time, been helping to assemble and old two winged Jenny air craft that had been salvaged from the war. I had noticed a truck loaded with the separated parts and I watched it being unloaded just across the river in a stubble field. This was in the days of the Barn Stormer and the pilots from the war who had been said to have “flown by the seat of their pants.” I watched the planes take off and land, coming dangerously close to the telephone lines and wondering how long it would be before there would be a mis-hap. I can remember a man who flew over Richmond after night on several occasions with some lights and fireworks which which many of the towns people watched with amusement.

Now being out of school, I needed to get a job. The East Yard of the Pennsylvania Railroad had been started in a project with track running parallel to the main line laying between our location and Glen Miller Park. he main line which runs closer to the park tunnels were being build over the stream that drained from the Miller saw mill pond to the ice pond to carry the track from the hump where dispatched trains were made up in process of their destination.

I applied for a job to a man by the name of Tom Prue, who headed the construction. He wanted to know what I had in mind to do. I replied, “ Perhaps water carrier.” But I hired in for $1.50 a day. Tom Prue was a heavy man about two hundred pounds and slightly above average height with a jovial disposition. He was graying at the temples and dressed as though he would take on a roll of a circus manager. He wore a white vest, white spats and had a big gold railroad watch and chain hanging from his lower vest pocket. I supposed this is why he asked me if I wanted to water the elephants. I had worked in circuses many times and had been water carrier t the elephants and helped the roustabout. We worked with several crews hauling cinders, grading, filling and building in track and concrete runs and foundation for repaired track an the round house. I worked two years in all. The second year, at the age of sixteen, we had been called to work the main line replacing small rail with hundred pound rail and sodding banks. There had been two groups, one under Tom Mulvahill and the other, under Frank Shippley. We had just previously been working on the hump and as water boy I had been called to help Shippley measure off ties to be sawed and spliced to make up rope length for the graduating width of the switch track which diverted each car to the proper track to make up the train.

While we were still working main line, two crews had been put together of sixty men. The men were strung along the north side of the track for close to a quarter of a mile, sodding and grading bank. I had watered from the springs, east to about half of the men before my water in the two buckets had been depleted. After returning from the spring, I deliberately bypassed those who had been watered in my last trip around. Yet many called out to me, supposedly for water. I looked down, failing to keep in mind the instructions given me on how I should walk main line. I was to always make sure that I would be facing the locomotive, east or west. I was in meditation, mostly to water those who had not been watered. I was not alerted that their calls to me were warnings, until my boss, Mr. Shippley, who had never been know to take a drink of water until all the other men had been served, now called to me and I just barely had time to look his direction as he pointed to the on coming train. The wind was against it and I could not hear the whistle if there was one. I can only remember the round front end of the locomotive which came at me and enlarged so fast before my eyes. With the two heavy buckets of water, I had no time to think and I don’t recall thinking or making any decision, and I don’t know how I got out of the track. The only ting I do remember, is that I was lying close enough to the rail that the water from my buckets, as they were both demolished by the train wheels, and the heat of the steam from the cylinder of the train burned my skin. Old Lou, an old gandy dancer who had taken interest in me, picked me up saying, “Waterery boy, I thought that was the last of you!” How did you know to jump?” The answer never came for I was speechless and in a state of shock. In the split second timing, that was left, I suppose some Devine assistance had come to my rescue. For I do believe I was actually lifted from that track.

While on the railroad, I had been running with one boy by the name of Lance Newman, who had been carrying water for his dad’s group Bill Newman. He had been putting away tools in the evening and making like shoveling and tamping ties and was receiving a man’s pay of $4.50 per day. As Tom Prue came down the track, I approached him with the proposition declaring I was able to do the same as Lance. He asked, “Can you lick him?” I said “sure.” At this, he set up a schedule to meet at the spring in the park where we both were carrying water. That afternoon, I managed to get there the same time as Lance. There he sat in the shade, we both filled our buckets and as Lance passed me, I grabbed him and in the wrestle we went. In a short time I had him down with a double hammer lock. As I looked up, Tom said, “Alright, tomorrow morning, you start drawing the rate asked for.”

It was now at the age of sixteen, that the recklessness of the men who tossed a rail which bounced and landed on the foot of Mr. Shippley and broke two of his toes. In realizing the would be layed up, he said, “this will lay me up and I have no man capable to carry on in my place unless it would be the water boy.” At this, I took over continuing to make up the splicing and getting the proper length and completed the hump track in his absence.

By now I was becoming a man, I had learned to earn my own way, fight the odds and seek opportunity for myself. I had for sometime, longed to go into the west which was spurred by adventure, and the lure to hunt big game. After spending a greater portion of my earnings to send my sister through college and a new washing machine for my mother, I had bought myself a good 22 rifle and a bicycle. My step-father resented these acts for he had never been able to provide more than a scant living. My mother had tried to hold a rule of good etiquette at the table. She had failed with either of my step-father and my two half brothers, Robert and Russell. This was the reason for the episode which built up to the cause for me to leave home.

One of my half brothers followed the example set by his father and reached across the table with the butcher knife and stabbed a loaf of bread and dragged it to him, rather than asking for it to be passed. I called him for it and my step-father went into a rage. After a two week period of not even as much as to speak with me, he threatened to take possession of all my money and I declared to him that he could take no part of it and I would show him so even through a court of law if necessary. He challenged me saying, “If you have another word, I’ll take you up from the table. I suggested, “Maybe you’d have to try that.” Even though he was over six feet and much heavier than me, I had become toughened with my work on the railroad and I knew my strength. We were seated at a one leg-centered table. I reached under the table and caught hold of the center leg as he took hold of the back of my chair. He porceeded to lift me, which resulted in upsetting the table and spilling the contents of the evening meal. t that point, I stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders and backed him in the coner of the room. Mother said not to hit him and I answered, “there is no need to hit him, for he has already beat himself.” He had broken out in a cold sweat and we seated him in a chair. I went about strapping my gun to the bicycle and proceeded on my way west. I was then past the age of seventeen.

It was a long hot ride twenty-three miles west through the city of Cambridge, to Dublin where I knew two uncles lived. No one was at home at my Uncle Franks, so I crossed the road to my Uncle Ed’s. When I told him I was headed west, he said, “Your journey will have to be delayed; I have just been looking for someone to help me pour a cement floor in the metal garage I built.”

Of course I was hungry and at the dinner table he made a poposition that he would help me take a course of sheet metal drafting at the Scranton, Pennsylvania Correspondence and offered to make a drawing table. I had advised him that I had already had drafting experience and tools for I had just completed a course of mechanical drafting with that same company. So I stayed on for I never turned down an opportunity to better my skills. The next day, I went to work in his shop then known as “Huddleston Brothers Sheet Metal” where three uncles; Orie, Ed, and Frank had consolidated. Before winter that same year, I got pneumonia. I was terribly sick with a high fever and I came very close to death. He seemed to have very little concern for me and in every action and remark convinced me that he had lost interest. I continued the course and finished as soon as I got well to work.

I had now moved to the youngest of the brothers, Uncle Orie’s. In the home of my grandfather, Samuel Brown Huddleston. Grandmother Huddleston still lived, but grandfather had already passed on. The stay was not long there. After I had become curious about a letter that had come, I recognized the handwriting and was most certain that it came from my father, who I had been told died in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I never had any confirmation of this nor did I believe it. Upon asking to see the letter, my Uncle Orie ordered me to stop my talk and threatened to get an officer and arrest me. He suggested that I go to my Uncle Frank’s in Dublin.

My uncle Frank had me fix an upper room in their house at my own cost and I did so. It was to be my room and I was to pay my way by helping to build and rehabilitate an old building. While staying there, I became acquainted with a boy from England; Reginald Dale. He was quite a talented artist. We became quite good friends, we hunted and fished and buddied together. My art inclination had been sharpened and the two of us began to work at it. This was the start of what I now have become.

There came a day that a tent meeting moved in where many carnivals had set up in the middle of Cambridge. The church known as the Holy Rollers revival. I had met Reginald in the town that evening and had mentioned that I would like to go to this meeting. I had tried to become a member of the Methodist Church in Cambridge and I had joined. My Sunday School teacher, Mr. Robert Fancher, who was the only source of this type of teaching that I had experienced. Reginald agreed to go with me to the tent meeting. I seated myself fairly close to the temporary stage upon which stood an improvised pulpit. The evangelist directed the singing, having us use a few books and verses passed among us. As we sat and listened to the singing and when the preaching service started and was very short, which had been known to be typical of their method for they were to work up the emotions of the people and have them come forward and recognize them as a church. I knew the first man that got to his feet just after the evangelist called out, “Look up when you pray, God can’t hear you murmering in the sawdust.” At this, the man, Tom Eliot, who was big and tall and worked in the foundary where I was now working and who was known for the many times at revivals where he had promised to follow and never did. His confession was, “I have sworn and beat my wife and have drank and sinned and I’m going to quit it all. About that time a heavy middle aged woman got out of her chair and lifted up her arms and called out”Lord, send us down soldiers to help us fight our many battles.” This disturbed me to where I was undecided. I had an urge to go, but I was not sure if there was anything for me. Until Robert Fancerh, my sunday school teacher, came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Now, Howard, if you feel like you want to go up, I’ll go up and sit with you.” It’s only a short time and I will have to meet my train.” His job took him to the depot on the high grade. I went and I felt nothing, and I said nothing.

I merely stood up and brushed the sawdust off my knees and hurried out the side entrance. I had forgotten about Reginald, when he came upon me as I headed for town. It was then, that he told me that he had been, since in England, converted through a sister Speed, into the “Mormon” faith. This upset me greatly, for I had only memory of the so called “Mormons”*who had nothing spoken in favor of them. The only impression I had of them was of a people who had done most things wrong and therefore had not existed any longer. Now, to find my best friend and artist companion, declaring he was one of them. Yet stayed on together and I got acquainted with his family; mother, sister and two brothers, who through the aid of their Uncle Lolly Dale, who had been established in the oldest country store in Cambridge for years. He had gone bond for that family and made it possible for them to come to this country after their father had been killed in World War 1.

##Orpha Moore 1

Time had passed now, and both Uncle Ed and Uncle Frank had died. The business had fallen to Uncle Orie. He ventured to exploit the business far in excess of that which was possible for him to earn. I suspicioned that he had used the money that my father was sending to support my sister and me. Of course he denied it but from his actions I was quite sure I was right. He had taken up drinking to an excess and was losing his business very fast in the new location. I left him and took a job in the Rouch Cigar Factory in Cambridge which was a branch to the one Indianapolis. After learning to roll a cigar in a short time, I became the top roller. Turning out 1200 cigars in an eight hour period. Netting $35.00 per week, piece work. The process was to have a bunch breaker seated at a table making and rolling moistened tobacco which was known as the bunch. This was placed in a wooden mold to dry after which I would roll on a wrapper. My bunch breaker was Mrs. Orpha Moore, wife of Samuel Moore, who became later my in-laws. After I had turned down a girl from the factory, Mrs. Moore had asked me if I would like to write to a boy that had worked there when I had first started and who was now in the Navy. She invited me to come to her house on a Sunday, that I might obtain his address. I went and found the place on Chruch Street in Cambridge. We talked shop for quite some time. Intermittently, several times she would motion out toward the dining room. I didn’t know whether it was a pet or what. Finally, in came a bashful golden haired daughter, dressed in blue silk; that she had never mentioned. I had no idea then that her intention was what it proved out to be. Before I had finished discussing the reason for turning down this previous girl and also complaining about my stay where I was renting, she made arrangements for me to take a small bedroom and live with them. It appealed to me and in a short time, Mrs. Moore proved to be more of a mother than what I had ever known. e attended movies, walked the moon lit streets and I became quite fond of Marie, the daughter. The Moore’s had accepted me like one of their own. Mrs. Moore became disabled to work for she found that she had cancer. I escorted her to Richmond to the doctor for treatments.

##Marie Moore

Shortly after, a local theater proprietor, knowing of my artistic ability, asked if I could take an old drop curtain from the Hurst Opera House, in Cambridge, which had long been forsaken except for an occasional medicine show. I was in the act of repainting on this small stage when a man who came from Omaha, Nebraska to install a drapery setting and an advertising curtain for the same theater. In noticing my work, Mr. Hatfield, the man spoken of, said, “Kid, where did you learn to handle fresco like that?” I replied, “What’s fresco?” “To me its only water color.” He then advised me that termpera, meaning water base, was fresco and had existed long before oil. He suggested I make a small example of my work and ability and that he might take it back to the old man, meaning, N.C. Chivalier of the Star Scenic Studio, 19th and Fanam, Omaha, Nebraska. Mrs. Moore was quite upset to see me go. *See Joseph Smith History

She made the remark which literally came true and I shall never forget, saying, “You’ll never darken my door again.” The treatment that they were using in that day scattered the cancer througout her body and in less than one year, I received a letter from Marie telling me that her mother was so bad in convulsions and had to be quieted with a strong medication. I knew she would not have long to live.

I had been making good with the studio, for I had started from the bottom at $12.00 a week just to clean brushes and sweep floors and in less than a yar, I had worked up to top artist making $45.00 a week. I had taken a room at the YMCA and I chose a restaurant just a short distance from the studio. They had issued me a card which they would punch each time I would have a meal. I soon got wise to an idea that if I were to bring a lunch, I wouldn’t go at noon but could start painting on the set where the other men had left it. They would take the elevator and would go to lunch leaving me free to study the method. I followed so close for five weeks and no one had detected what I was up to. But one day, I had failed to hear the elvevator door open they all walked in on me. Mr. Chivalier said, “You’d better come into the office.” I think he said this mainly to satisfy the other artists. But I too, thought that I would be dismissed. He merely asked me how long I had been doing it? I told him for five weeks. He then replied, “If not one of us was able to distinguish the difference in the work, you would have had to continue painting drapery and I will have to raise your wages.” Bill Donahue, who was the main artist painting the secenery on the add curtain, was not too happy, believing that I should have been fired.

A short time after that, we had received the job for a very large theater in Lincoln, Nebraska. The perscenium Arch opening measured forty by sixty feet. Our frames were only big enough to do one half the add curtain which closed that opening. Upon this the scene was to be painted which was always left up to the artist to paint what he saw fit. We proceeded to make the entire set, cutting each section from the large canvas such as borders to mask off the ceiling all in simulated hanging drapes. Next, the side tabs and the legs, which protruded from the side tabs varying in length. The farthest back making possible for entrance onto the stage. The add curtain would have a Lambrican design with flowing drapes simulated with gold tassels hanging from a cord. The edging was simulated with pom-poms hanging around the entire lower edge with pleats toward the bottom and many different shaped and sized advertising space upon which the copy would be submitted and had to be written in by a sign painter. At that time, I had the desire to learn sign painting which was postponed for the time. The installer of the curtain, Mr. Chivalier and Bill Donahue left Wally, another helper, and me at the studio. We were instructed to prepare a canvas to do a scene to show what ability we have for Mr. Chivalier to observe on his return. I had not been in the Rocky Mountains before, but the man who ran the elevator suggested that I paint a scene of the Rockies. By his dictations I did so, although, I doubted my ability to make a success for all of my work had been done of eastern scenery. Upon the return of Mr. Chivalier, he asked for our paintings. My picture was depicting mountains, stream and trees. To this day, I don’t believe it was entirely western. Never the less, it was good enough that from then on, I was privileged to do the add curtain scene and this made me evened up as the top artist.

WEDDING PHOTO- HOWARD MADE DRESS

I went home in time to attend Mrs. Moore’s funeral. I had left quite a few valuables in Omaha that I never did retrieve. I had gained a home with the Moore’s and had learned the needs of Marie, and found the inability of her father to understand her needs. She and I made a trip to Covington, Kentucky and we were married on 17 April, 1923. We started housekeeping in the upstairs room of my mother’s place in Richmond, which was very poorly furnished. I was needing a job and the east yards in Richmond had been totally completed with the big round house and there had become a strike of the workers in the round house and there on the repair yards. My close neighbor was working there and when they struck, he had taken a job at Vulcan Springs but I had found an advertisement on the railroad and answered it to a Mr. Gus Paflin. He asked me what my trade was and I told him a pipe fitter. He hired me so quick saying I’d start to work in the next morning on an hourly rate of seventy-five cents. As I had never drawn more than forty cents hourly, anywhere, I feared that I was not qualified for that high of rate and said,”all the experience I’ve had is with an uncle, fitting water wells.” His answer, “Well, pipe is pipe.” “You be on the job in the morning.” We were now able to better furnish our room and I bought my first car, a 1924, Ford Touring car.

In January of 1924, we went to Indianapolis and stayed with my Uncle LeRoy Huddleston. While I was there I painted my first portrait of a four year old boy. For payment, I received a practically new suit of clothes. At a later date, my uncle had decided I should take a painting that I had done in water color down to Lieber’s Art Store, there in Indianapolis. When we got there we had to wait some time before the man could come to talk with us for he had been busy selling a painting. A very small well dressed little woman had been going back and forth across the gallery trying to make up her mind on which one of the two paintings she wanted to buy. Finally, She chose one done by A.R. Franklin. She reminded the proprietor that as she had told him previously that she would have to pay for it in two payments. The first one was $108.00. At that time, I failed to see any particular value in the work of art she chose. Then the salesman came to us asking, “what can I do for you?” I unwrapped the painting which I had taken and right away he seated himself on a bench and in trying to impress, with his hands upon his chin, his elbows on his knees and a scowl upon his brow. I thought he was never going to make up his mind or have anything to say at all. Finally, he asked the question, “Who was your tutor?” Meaning who had I taken art lessons from. My uncle advised him that I had not been taught by anybody but had done it on my own. At this he declared several things wrong with the painting and finally ended up with saying, “My best advice to you is to get under some good tutor who had renown, then your work will be worth something.” At this, I was not pleased. Without taking time to rewrap the picture, I said to my uncle, “Let’s get out of here.”

In February of that same year, I had decided to go into Dubuque, Iowa with a man from my uncle’s neighborhood. I remember it was very cold with snow on the ground. The morning after arriving there, we searched the paper for employment advertisement sections. We were attracted to an ad for a salesman to sell Hamilton Beach Vaccum cleaners. This we tried for three weeks but found it to be unprofitable. I then had met a young man from the office of the Apple Higgly Co. Which was a small business just started in making electrical stand lamps and they were in need of someone with an artistical ability. I seemed to fit the job pretty well. I applied my artistry to quite a number of shades. Not forseeing the future, I sent for Marie and had her take a train and meet me in Chicago. From there we both took another train on to Dubuque. We lived there through the winter but Marie was pregnant with our first child and was terribly sick all the while we were there. Besides that the people were so prejudiced that we couldn’t get to know them very well. We went back to Cambridge City.

Soon after getting home and re-established, I took a job at the Mal Gray Foundary. My job there was to haul in sand, brick, and cut sand on all the floors. Then I was to mold an annealing pot and then at pour off time, as fast as the molds were poured and cooled enough, I had to dump one or two floors. Then I was to follow through hooking out the casting and piling them. This I was to do to complete my day. I was not too happy with this job, knowing I had sufficient talent to earn a better wage. One day my boss Mr. Thompson, stopped me as I was hauling a wheel barrow of sand. He complained about me not having it loaded to the brim. As I had figured to load lightly so that I might be able to get through the sand with the iron tired wheel. But as he made the remark, “What are you doing running through with that little jag?” I porceeded to dump the entire measure on his feet saying, “There’s your wheel-barrow, sand, and your job. I quit!”

After moving from Richmond to Cambridge City, to live with Marie’s father on Church Street, our first child was born, September 4, 1924. We names her Sharlott Coleen. I had built the cradle for her and it was made with open-wire bottom and springs with a cotton mat with a crochetted edging and a tasseled fringe done by my own hands. Sharlott died soon after birth, for Marie was in labor for three days before. The reason for the child’s death was unknown. Marie also miscarried in the summer of 1925.

I now took my little runabout Ford and built onto it back bows like a covered wagon, and covered it with cnvas and made just enough room to sleep in it. Marie and I headed out for the north area of Indiana, painting signs and stage scenery which was a hold over from the knowledge and experience while in Omaha, Nebraska at the Star Scenic Studio. Coming though Winchester, we had parked in the center of town for supper. Coming from the restaurant, we found that we had gained a self-appointed guardian, meaning a German Police puppy. He laid underneath the truck and even though he came to us very friendly, he would bark and snarl at anyone else passing by. We accepted him and took him along. We called him Chester. Coming home in late summer, Chester had grown to be quite big and had become quite a menace to the neighborhood; especially to one old negro man who was a retired chef of the Pennsylvania Railroad. I gave Chester to a farmer.

We held a home cottage meeting at Reginalds home many times. Sometimes we were accompanied by the two missionaries of the Mormon Church which was being sent out periodically to gain converts. It had now become time for us to be scheduled by Reginald and one missionary named, Dyke, for baptism of Marie and myself. The scheduling was a surprise to both of us. Yet we complied and the next day, May 4, 1927, we were taken out along a branch of the White River which ran through Cambridge and were baptized. The water was very cold and Marie hesitated, but followed and we were recorded as members of the Mormon Church.

Deloris was born June 20, 1926 and Beulah Althea was born Sept. 28, 1927. Deloris died November 17, 1927 by getting hold of strictnine tablets that had been thrown away. Wanda May was born August 21, 1928. We moved to Ft. Wayne, Indiana and took a job at the Auto Renewal Company. One child was born there, Joan, December 28, 1929. I had started to buy a small home and made one payment only. I received a telegram asking me to come back to the Davis Aircraft Company, where I had previously worked, to restore and rebuild the burned planes that had been burned in a fire. They had lost twelve to fifteen planes. Not being too well satisfied with the house; I complied. We moved back to Richmond, where I applied my sheet metal knowledge as well as my painting ability to doing the wings in striping and monograming and lettering. I had become a sign paintor as well. By now, My father-in-law had sold his house and had gone to the Odd Fellows Home in Greensburg, Indiana, where he died on 4 March, 1930. While I was working at the Davis Aircraft, Norman was born, March 11, 1913.

Now looking back to what my life has been, I take much pride in recognizing that I had been destined to be born in the location of Richmond, in the state of Indiana, at the time when industry of this great nation was in it’s infancy and also noting that my background stems from people who were ingenious and mechanically inclined. They were some of the very first wheelwrights of that area, carriage makers, the first auto painters, sheet metal workers, and builders, of all sorts. These with my outward look constantly being alerted to a chance to further my learning capacity bringing me into an understanding of why I have been priviledged to work in many different fields. I have become skilled in all lines of maintenance which now proves to be very benficial in the upkeep of my present belongings. The city of Richmond was one of the geographic locations where many things were, and still are, manufactued and sent all over the world. Things such as, The Garr Scott Factory, which made the old steam threshing machines, the Reliance Foundery that made moulders of railroad parts, International Harvester, Wayne Skate factory, Starr Piano Factory, later the F.& N. Lawnmower factory, the Richmond Baking Co., B.B. Glove Factory, Perfect Circle, Piston Ring Factory, Avco Factory, Davis Motor Co.-then known as the Davis Aircraft – then later the Davis Lawnmower Co., the Atlas Underware Co., Vulcan Springs, Motor Boy Lawnmower, Crosley Manuafacturing Corporation, and the Metal, Hoffman Sheet Metal, Johns Manville Corporation, and the Hastings Candy Factory. These manufacturers have always been part of the industry since the beginning of the mechanical age.

Having bought the rights of the unfinished monoplane, which had only been partly developed by two boys of Troy, Ohio, Mr. G.W. Davis of Davis Motor Company of Richmond had hired several people according to their skills, welding and general assembly including me. We started work to develop this one winged monoplane described as a high lift wing with a centered section fuel tank and a thrity-foot wing span and sixteen-foot fusilage. With my ingenuity they had practically depended on me to form devices, gigs, and method of creating many rib sections for the fins which were tempered steel sheets cut into tapering strips and formed by hand over a die. The door, head rest, gas tank, and all the cowlings, I designed every part other than the tubing. All these pieces numbered 170 seperate sheet metal parts which I had designed and brought into production. I would then mask off the plane, which had been covered with a fabric of light weight and closed texture weave and diped with a fast drying prixlin material which would tighten up like a drum. It then would be coated twice with lacquer, for straping and following up with the monogram which I also designed carrying the name of Davis Aircraft. I also did the wing lettering black on silver in thirty inch letters visible at a high altitude from the ground. After I left the plant, I made scale model including all the working parts which was photographed by the Paladium Item news Paper in Richmond. I also made five smaller crafts made to scale taken from well known planes which were World War fighters. This particular small plane was first motored with a sixty horse power Lambert, four cylinder radial motor. Pat Love, who was the test pilot, after several months flying and trying to develop this craft into a two seated training ship with a duel stick and controls. The day came when Pat came into the shop and called to me, “Huddleston, clean off your bench!” At this he picked up the sixteen-foot fusilage frame structure which was welded of various sized steel tubing with londrons and cross members, and such. He put this up on my bench which I had swept off onto the floor. He grabbed the hack saw and severed the whole thing. Then he went to the rack and picked out tubing that would just fit inside of the four longdrons then he called out the welders which were three and saying, “If you men think you can weld, weld that together, I’ve got to fly it!” At this the men looked at one another, and with amazement and some remark was made,”He’s fixin to kill himself!” Anyway we all went to work. I had made some adjustments in sheet metal parts in a week or ten days, we had the construction nearly completed and in doing, finding that the additional length had increased the aft weight seventy-five pounds more. His first flight caused the plane to fly with the tail section dragging very low. He circled the field once or twice and while we watched, he dove out of the sky almost straight down from about 7,000 feet, leveling off just in time and landed. Without a word spoken to anyone, he just lit a cigarette and jumped into his car and drove away.

The next morning he told several of us how he had ordered a ninty horse power Kenner Motor from Cincinnati which came in a few days. We went to work and installed this motor and I had to revamp the motor cowlings again. This proved to be just what this plane needed, more power and whip stream to carry the elevator and give more control. Even though the ship now was working out to a fine point in excess of what was required for a training ship, yet, the men who had the say so held back on licensing the plane. Apparently, they had a disliking for Pat Love. I guess I was the only man in the factory who really did understand this problem. Pat had flown in many combat flights with many ace pilots and had survived many dog fights. He held one scar where a bullet had come through the floor board and layed his face open from his chin to the temple. This had only sharpened his Irish temper to the extent to where no one seemed to understand him. Many times, he had shown it evident that he had no use for anyone who was likely to show fear. They had been hiring young men in the summer months from Earlham College and they would come up to Pat to ask anything necessary pertaining to their work. They would show evidence of fear in the way they would apporach him and many times I had heard his loud voice calling, “W-H-A-T?” I always knew that some feeble question had been asked of him for this was always the way he answered. Yet this never became a circumstance between him and me, for I was somewhat like unto him. Therefore, we understood each other and got along.

The inspectors, in order to hold back the license, had required that a sand bag test would be tried. I, myself, had assisted in tying five to ten pound sand bags on the aerolon, elevator, and rudder. The evening when he had taken this ship up with this extra weight which was to similate an ice-clad condition which had proved fatal to many planes many times. Still, he was willing to put this to a test. We watched him gaining a height of some 10,000-12,000 ft. He flew the plane around the field and we could see evidence of how sluggish the controls were. Then he began to dive and pulling up suddenly and whipping off the sand bags. We could see them fall. He made several attempts at this. Yet apparently, the elevators were still holding the extra weight and this made it more difficult to keep balance. He had now maneuvored over the area of the river and gained haeavier atmosphere and it looked like he had crashed for he disappeared behind the horizon. People began to get into their cars including the inspectors. We all believed that he had crashed. Yet, before anyone had left the lot, we could hear the motor and up out of that river bottom he came and he didn’t stop until he got to a great height and dove and did a barrel role and and inside loop then an outside loop showing evidence that he had thrown off all of the sand bags and proving the ship quite worthy. Again, he took a long dive toward the field much steeper than I had ever seen anyone approach the field. He set it down and again, without a word, he lit a cigarette anad jumped into his car and drove away. Still the inspectors refued to license the plane. I had noticed there was somewhat of a stalemate between Pat and Davis. Yet Davis was not testing this plane and making the necessary changes at the risk that Pat had made and I learned from rumors that before the First World War was over, Love, had been grounded for sometime because he had been over conficent in his flying. He had flown several times and underneath a bridge. Even though each time was successful, the Airforce saw no need of such a risk of man and equipment, therefore, they grounded him. About this time, Davis, knowing that this plane was not going to be licensed as long as Pat was flying it, rigged another plane with forty-five gallons of auxillary fuel for a cross country flight from Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio to Denver, Colorado. During this time, Davis flew to Wright Field and got the plane licensed and was back the same evening. When Pat came in, only to find that this had been done, he automatically quit. Pat left Richmond to take a job with the American Eagle Rock Company in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He had tested a plane that had been know tokill three test pilots for it had a tendency to go into a flat spin which no one had been able to live through. He tested this plane on a Friday and on Monday of the next week, the plane that he took up evidently had not been corrected for it went into that flat spin and even though this company had required that he have a parachute, he didn’t use it, for he had always declared that as long as the plane had two wings he would never take to the chute. The word came that he had crashed and the entire motor had buried itself into the dirt. The doctors report was that there had not been one bone in his whole body that was not broken or mangled. Still he lived and hour and forty minutes before he died.

In 1931, upon the hill above my mther’s place was the Border wrecking company where I painted a sign straight across for a 1925 For model Roadster. One tire looked very bad and I picked up a set of connecting rods and threw them into the back trunk. My brother-in-law, Oliver Morton, had a tire shop and did vulcanizing. He looked at the tires and said “You might get to Indianapolis,” which was seventy three miles west. Still, without work, and plenty of time and little or no money, I took my two half brothers, Robert and Russell Summerfruit, and we headed west. We made it to Montrose, Colorado. My two brothers took off afoot aiming to go to California and try to locate an uncle. Before Robert and Ressell left me, on our way and coming through Kansas, the car showed evidence that the connecting rods were going out. Knowing that I had picked up four very rusty connecting rods and pistons, Robert asked, “What do you want to do?” I told him to just drive as far as he could. Along about two o’clock in the morning, he woke me, for Russell and I had been trying to sleep for some time. He said, “this is it!” So we stopped and all three of us found a place in the bar pit on the right side of the road and soon fell asleep. The next morning, come day light, I decided we had better make some repairs. As we approached the car we suddenly realized that we had made our beds in a rattle snake den. There were several holes in the bank where we laid and three large rattle snakes snaked on the highway. We then went to the car and took the pan off the car and droped the pistons and cylinders out. I gave Robert a hammer and told him to knock out the wrist pins. I hadn’t instructed him to save the pistons for we only wanted to change rods and the bearings. Before I knew it, he had broken one of the good pistons, V-shaped section reaching past the second ring groove. I called out, “Be careful, we have to use that piston.” He was under the impression that we were going to try to use the old rusty pistons that I had brought along. But they would not even turn on the wrist pin. I said, “Never mind, just bring that pan of oil and take care that you don’t spill any of it. For that little bit of oil has to run us until we get to a station.” We walked about a hundred fifty feet to where I had seen one lone concrete post in the fence that ran along just above the bank where we had slept. With the motor oil applied to the corner of the post, I ground very carefully, the edges of the broken piston. We assembled the parts including this broken one. And now with the new bearings and very little oil we made our trip as far as Montrose. I hesitated to cross the mountain range for my doctor had told me I had a leakage of the heart and couldn’t take the altitude. After a week stay, I headed back. On my way out, a young man who was thumbing his way east, approaced me and said his home was in Kokomo, Indian. We then decided to cheapen the trip by taking off the entire body of the car and build a platform on the chasis and boxes for the seats. He claimed to be a race car driver. I was soon convinced of his ability, for on Sunday the highways were quite crowded, but he seemed to get through and around traffic better than anyone I had ever seen. The old ignition coil system was failing with age and while he drove, I had to continuously tap the boxes to keep the spark flowing. The old tire, told of before, had not gone far until we had a slight blow out through the one hole which had shown up in the tire before we had started. We made repair with another innertube and had found a boot which was no more than a patch of rubber that had finally worn through causing the blow out. I must say that before we got home we had moved this boot four different times. After two day of travel, we came into Richmond. Within one mile from home we ran out of gas and out of money. I called the man who I had obtained the car and asked him if he had remembered my venture to take a chance on a trip and told him I was back in town stranded. I asked him if he would come and take me home. He complied and in a short time he came and towed me home. Anyway, I had seen the west and I had disproved my doctor’s theory about not being able to take the altitude for I had climbed to the height of Monarch Pass and 12,000 ft on Look Out Mountain. I had never felt better. I knew then that the west was the place for me and I then resolved to eventually return at the first opportunity.

Still using the same old Ford, I was now working in Davis Aircraft again and driving back and forth to work in it. One evening, on the way home, I got within a mile of home and ran out of gas. There were no stations close and I went into a Quiggly drug store on nineteenth and E. Stree, Richmond. I asked the proprietor what he had that an old Ford could run on in place of gas. He said, “All I have is raw benzine.” So I bought a gallon. It didn’t only work to my surprise; but that old Ford did more tricks than it had ever been invented to do. I even feared that the ignition system would burn up but nothing seemed to harm it.

I traded the old Ford for a 1921 Dodge and built it into a housecar with sleeping facilities. Reginald Dale had said, “If you ever go west, stop and take me with you.” I did so and found that he had moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, and was living with his brother. After going that far I was delayed for a week waiting for him to make up his mind about going. He was under the impression that he was about to be married to a girl who was not a member of the Mormon Church. We came on west and each morning, Reginald would not feel right to start without a word of prayer and asking for safety on the way. But one morning we neglected to take time and before noon of that day, on a strip of road that was being built, we ran off onto soft shoulder which had just been built and the car and all merely hung in the balance. The olnly help in sight was a truck driver who was just unloading a pile of rock from the crushers. He said he would be glad to help, but he was on a time schedule and was due back at the crusher for another load. Yet he did oblige us and came and dragged us back onto the road. We continued to a northern route where we had learned that Robert, my half brother, had taken work for a rancher at Big Sandy, Wyoming. We hunted out the trail from Rock Springs, north and enquiring our way we finally located him. We spent a week or so at the ranch house of Mr. Richie, where Bob worked. Now, coming on down toward Utah, we had by evening decided to stop at a spring house where milk had been gathered from the farmers to be picked up by the truck each morning. Our youngest child, Norman, who was only one year and a little over. I noticed the lights in a barn just across the way and took a pail to see if I could buy milk for- I knew it was milking time. The farmer filled my pail, and would not accept my money. Upon returning to the car, I saw a woman approaching us from the house just down the road. She explained she had just been reading or had some source been advised that there would be people who were converts to the Church that would be seeking to make their home in Utah. She asked if we were members of the the Mormon Faith. In finding out that we were, she returned to her house and came with a basket of provisions for us. After which we continued on. By mid-afternoon the next day the bearings on the right rear wheel was entirely gone. We had noticed our destination making it Salt Lake City. When we arrived, I went into the Mormon Museum and asked for one of the twelve apostles. (editors note: He was not likely to find an apostle at the museum, but must have been directed to the Church office building) I asked advice about where the most likley place for a family such as ours could get started. His remark was “Well, the Lord knows it’s cold enough here, and with your trade line, you would stand a better chance to find work north, but I feel to advise that you head south to about Mason Dixon Line where they can still gather wood off the hills and winters are not so cold.” We took his advice but, Reginald wanted to hunt out the place where he had stayed and worked for a rug and carpet company on his first trip out. The business was closed due to the depression. So we were convinced there was nothing there for either of us. I promised Reginald that if he still felt to stay in Salt Lake, I would let him out at any corner as we drove south. After stopping three or four times and each time he would finally say drive on, until we were out of the suburbs. When he said, “I feel better now, I’ll go on with you.” We had not been able to do anything about the bad wheel, we just drove south resolving to go as far as we could.

By mid afternoon, in the early part of June, 1932, we pulled into Richfield, Utah and stopped at the post office which was the most likely place to ask for Joseph Young, one of the missionaries, who said that if we ever came west to look him up. We asked the janitor who happened to be an uncle of his and he told us that he was working with his brother, Leland Young in Vernal on a road construction. But he said that his father, A.G. Young, was just here and had just gone across the street to the bank. Seeing him out on the sidewalk, he called to him and he came across and met us. After hearing our story, he invited us to come to the south end of town and set our mobile home up on a vacant lot next to where he lived. He then invited us to take supper with him after which we told of the missionaries who had visited us and had steered us toward the Church. He mentioned his niece, Rachel Young, the daughter of the janitor, who had met us at the post office. He invited her over and Reginald took a liking to her and within three or four months they were married. e attended Church in the First Ward Meeting house. We had become acquainted with the people but we found them quite skeptical and not too ready and willing to accept us without writing back for papers, certifying our membership. Work was now very scarce and not too well available to a new-comer. We were allowed the very first measure of welfare, an allotment of four dollars a month. But with my painting, I proved my capability to do lettering, painting, and offering meager assistance anywhere. We began to make a rather meager existance. The children born here in Richfield were: Howard Murray, April 23, 1933; Terrance Monte, August 26, 1934: Dorothy Marie, February 2, 1935: Richard Lee, November 17, 1936: and Edith Karen, January 17, 1939.

Under the PWA administration, I signed up as self-employed painter of signs and so forth. My first job of any importance was for Charlie Card, who had desired that I paint in his basement, which he called his den, a continuos pointing on all four walls. The painting was of the Rocky Mountains; a mountain lion, bear, and other creattures of the west. My rate of earning had been established in that state amounting to six dollars per day for any all building and construction. Now trying to get started with a home of my own, I found a location that had fallen to a doctor who had made it available to buy if I could obtain the fifty dollars. It was in the hands of the County of Sevier. I attended a meeting of the city council and in answer to my wishes to obtain the lot, my Sunday School teacher who was a member of the council, spoke for me and recommended that I be given an opportunity to earn it. Upon this I proposed to paint the library building straight across for the lot if they would supply paint.

We lived nine years in Utah. I tried very hard to become a Latter Day Saint, a member of the Mormon Church.

I was building a ceiling in the large living room in Richfield and I could not afford to buy the necessary bundles of lath in which to lath a ceiling. The walls were adobe, they were already for plaster. I had seen several abandoned homes, and evidence of lath made from wollows. I asked a neighbor who had made a business in plastering if they would be suitable to build my ceiling. He prompted me that they were stronger and better, but it would take a lot of work. The willows had to be cut in the dormant stage and left to dry and it took a lot of nails. About this time, a young man came from north of Salt Lake City where his father had a coal mine. He had come down to Richfield with three ton of coal, hoping to turn it into money. He had tried several places and finally, Alf Sharp, who I had gone hunting with several times sent him to me. I told him I needed the coal for I had built a fireplace and there was not enough heat from the kitchen stove to warm the other rooms. He caught me at a time that I had no money but still he wanted to leave the coal. I agreed to buy it if I needed or I would try to sell it for him. He then promoted a theory that his group had decided to not wait any longer for the Church President to unite the Church membership into a “United Order”, which was a community for having everything in common. He pointed at several places in all the Church books where it had been said that this had been God’s intention. I believe still is! But the Mormon people have always been dedicated to the Church Leadership in the governing of the members. Yet, he had made it look quite inviting, for he declared there was no rich or no poor among a group of one-hundred and twenty families. He thought I would be very useful to the group and there was a promise that all the needs of my entire family would be supplied without waiting.

This all “sounded good” and I carried the thought throughout the winter. Finally in the month of May, he returned. I had not sold the coal and I had not used it. He then told me that he wanted me to keep it and that I didn't owe him for it for he watched me go to great lengths to build a place for my family, he wanted to help that much. He proceeded to have me read a letter that his first wife had written to a girl signifying that she would be willing for her to become the second wife. This began to change my opinion of his motives. I asked him how I would fit into that sort of life for I had already ten children and what would I do with twenty? Of course, he gave me no answer. He left, but promised that he would be back at the end of the week in anticipation of my joining him with my family and belongings, including my cow and leave the unfinished house and go and join his colony. I began to ponder and weigh this very carefully. Polygamy had never fit to my liking and it was coming closer to the time of his return.

I jumped into my car and ran down to Reginald’s who was not at all well, in fact, close to death at one time but was some better now. I laid the proposition before him and the grabbed one book and then another trying to help me to arrive at some definite decision. Ordinarily, I would have stayed for there had been many times we had talked things over way into the middle of the night , but this time was different. About mid-afternoon, I said "never mind Reginald, I know what to do." I had read in the Epistle of James "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." My question was not going to be answered by man. I was ready to ask directly of God, believing that my concern was more important for my posterity than for my own desires.

At that moment I saw a spot in my mind where I had gone to many times on my way into the west mountain sometimes gathering fire wood and sometimes to hunt. It was just a little spot off the main road which was not traveled very much, bordered around with sand cut rock and dead cedar and sand. This was just a little over a mile above where I lived. I drove north, anxious to be at that spot for it burned within me as most important place to make this decision. Without a thought of home or family, I made directly for the road leading out of town up past the Natatorium a place where the public could swim, dance, etc., on up a dug way that skirted around to the right at about a sixty degree angle. My car had been in perfect condition. It was a one seated roadster, one of the first model A's. I was making good time, when all of a sudden, I found that I was unable to steer the car. The steering wheel had actually become locked with the motor still running without my touching the clutch or shifting any gears. The car began backing down and gradually picked up speed, coasting as though there was no motor present. I fully expected at any time to run over the brink which was a hundred and fifty feet down to the level below. When I realized that I was tracking perfectly without steering I knew for sure that some miraculous power had my car in his control. The thought struck me that there would be only one who would want to discourage me and back me off from my determination. I called out declaring, "It has to be the work of Satan." Just as suddenly as before, everything went back to normal and I continued on up to the little spot where I had intended to go. I pulled off the road and parked just a little way from the main road. I turned off the engine and got out. I've very seldom if ever, in my whole life experienced being anywhere with complete silence and not a thing moving nor even the sound. It seemed like a great vacuum and somehow supernatural. I was still bent on my purpose, so I walked past the sand cut rocks and the dead cedar trees. I was reminded of how Moses was answered out of a burning bush yet was not consumed. I felt that I would get an answer but did not know how. A few hundred feet from my car, I picked a spot at the edge of a rock and when I got down that same old demon hovered close to me . My mind was filled with these mocking words, "You small and insignificant being, who are you, to think that you could get to God after all the multitudes that have gone on before? And who are you to think that He would answer you." I recalled having read of Christ on the mountain and how he had been challenged by the Devil in the same manner, "Again the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and saith unto Him "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." I liken my situation as similar and I said "Get thee behind me Satan."

Addressing the father in Heaven, I stated, "You surely know why I've come and my urgent need to know what to do. For one week I have carried an increasing pressure upon my mind like carrying a bag of sand on my head becoming heavier every day." I felt exhausted and with hesitation I felt I could say no more. I stood up and looked around. There was not a rock moved or anything at all. I turned and walked slowly back to the car.

When I had gotten within about twenty feet from the car, I began to wonder how it was going to act going down the mountain, especially if the steering wheel was still locked, I would surely wreck. It was at that moment, when a hand rested upon my left shoulder and a thumb pressed very firmly and a voice spoke slow and loud and very clear saying "Your prayer will be answered in due time." I looked to the left but there was nothing but space, yet I felt the presence of a hand on me. After the last word was spoken, I felt greatly relieved and the pressure of indecision had been erased. I got into my car and drove down the mountain and returned to my home just about dusk. I threw myself across the bed and fell asleep. I was awakened shortly by my wife asking me if we could go to a movie for I had been doing sign work for the man who owned the two theaters in town and had always received a liberal amount of complimentary tickets. I remember what was showing at the Lyric Theater. It was one of the Andy Hardy movies with Mickey Rooney which had been running in series for some time. As we came out and crossed the street to the car, Marie asked me how I liked the show and I said alright I guess, but all the time I had been meditating and wondering how and when I was to be answered. Then in my own words, I spoke; saying "Now I know that Reginald Dale and we had been promised that through the affiliation of the Church, we automatically would be drafted into the House of Israel. Had we not therefore been descendants of the forerunners of the Church who had not yet come to the order where we should have all things in common?" Therefore I knew my answer to the man when he came would be NO!* This proved to be proper, for what I told him was that I would not go and he became very angry, and I knew then that I had been answered properly. This was the year of 1936, in the month of May.

Now that I had an answer, I did not completely appreciate at the time the fact that my prayer had brought me definite proof of the promise which was made unto all mankind who showed evidence of sufficient faith to ask that it would be given. This has given me a greater comfort and evidence of the Spirit which has been with me in all my problems unto this day. I surely trust that it will continue to be as I continued to be faithful in all things.

I worked at whatever was available. And I finished the big living room and built a cement porch to the front ot the house then with more adobes, I had started to build a second story. As we became more involved with the war, defense plants began to hire tradesmen- mainly in California. My half brother, Robert who was already trained was working there. Robert had gained a job and he sent a letter and advised me to come on out with plenty of work available there for anyone with experience.

Mary Margaret was born in St. Mary's Catholic Hospital in San Francisco May 18, 1942. About this time I received a letter from the town marshal of Richfield. He asked me if I had given permission to anyone or if I had made any arrangements at the high school for several of my paintings that they might be exhibited.

This was unexpected for I had boarded up the doors and windows of my deserted home in Richfield and found that the house was secure enough to leave it. I left my pictures on the walls. I went back to Richfield and found that the house was completely in ruins. After thorough investigation I found all that had happened. The officer had the names of some forty-two teenagers who had broken in and made it a meeting place and misused the place and shot out the window lights and burned the chairs and bed in the fireplace and destroyed the refrigerator and poured canned fruits into the electric stove which had been stored in the basement I salvaged what I could and moved north to Mount Pleasant, Utah. The whole state had become like a boom town, labor had become organized, my card was good anywhere. But rather than to let me work in the big project which was already started in Mr. Pleasant, they sent me to work in Ogden for the Fox Sheet Metal Company, building circular air vents for the big warehouses. It was there I obtained an injury to my right elbow from the recoil of excess hammering in the process of this building.

I had been injected with a drug that caused me to lose my memory and was hospitalized for four days. I decided that it was foolish for me to drive 70 miles to work and when I was told that is the way it is, I loaded up my family and moved back to Indiana. This was October 1942.

After a few inquiries, I found a big house that was for sale just across the street from where I had lived for a short time with my uncle Frank. The old home was well over a century old when we moved into it I had known the people who had lived there before the Kennedys. I had obtained work in Richmond and kept up the payments for a year or so and then applied for a loan at Henry County Building and Loan in New Castle, Indiana. I paid on this loan for some time then asked for a separate loan of three hundred dollars to build a small house on the property which was about four and a half acres. I built the house completely myself with a basement and four rooms with bath and a small front porch. I did the wiring and the plumbing myself. I sold it for their thirty-five hundred dollars and surveyed and gave the deed to a young couple just married Right after moving into the old house, I took work in Connersville, just twelve miles from Cambridge at the Auburn Plant making cars.

This house was completely round when first built, over the years it has been modified, this photo was taken in 2003

In 1943, our daughter Joann died with diabetes. When the war had come on, my sheet metal experience afforded me an opportunity to hire in where defense work was available in many places. I adopted a habit of changing work location to better my status.

In 1946 our fourteenth child, Samuel Johnathan was born the first day of June. He died on the first day of September that same year. He could not make enough blood to sustain himself.

In 1947 I hired on at Johns Manville, which eventually became the last place I worked prior to coming west the second time to live. I was hired by a man named Rab Stanley. He advised me of the system that they had adopted where a man could be hired in as a third-class Mill Wright and could make a $1.15 per hour. I told him that I preferred to start at this rate and made a bargain with him that I should be raised to this class as I proved out At that time they had been working under a small independent union known as Stone Felt They had been developing rock wool insulation in a branch in Richmond It was the best type of insulation known in the world at that time.

About my fourth year there, a man from New Jersey by the name of Clayton Powell hired on. He was a genious who converted the process of breaking down molten rock that had been blown by steam jets onto a conveyer forming a bat of insulation. He was a man that would get so engrossed with his work, that he would drive down town for his dinner and take a bus back to the factory without remembering he had taken his car. At a later date, when we had established a dining hall on the grounds of the factory, he was known to go to lunch and then return later for another, not realizing he had already been there. I worked at this factory for twelve years and left at the age of sixty.

In 1949 our last child, Deborah Ann was born January 23. By now, in Cambridge I had remodeled the big ten room house and removed the upper story and roof, making the home a ranch type building and two car garage and studio.

I had been teaching fine art I had been teaching since 1933 when I lived in Utah. I had formed a club in Cambridge which was called the Wayne County Realistic Club formed by those whom I had been teaching from Richmond and Cambridge and nearby communities.

WALNUT ST. HOUSE

We had gone many times on field trips where I was teaching them how to get a picture without a camera, but merely by sketch. We had gone many miles into several locations capturing a replica of the covered bridges of Indiana which some had been torn down some them burned down, but now after starting a specialty and having painted several of the bridges, I was known to display them on highway 40 at a restaurant known as the Coffee Pot Inn, where I would hang two covered bridges at a time and in the following week or so I would replace them with a couple I had done more recently. This I had done over a period of two or three years. I eventually acquired recognition as the covered bridge artist.

Photo of H.N. covered bridge sent to me by Leah Huddleston 2010.

I had periodically held an art show of my work with the students work, either shown on my lawn or in the park which began to prove most affective in promoting me among the public as an art teacher as well as an artist. During this time, someone told me that "Success is relative, if you are successful, relatives move in." This was the case when I had several of them come from a great distance trying to show evidence of their relationship to me, which in most cases I could trace and indentify in my Huddleston Family Tables compiled by my grandfather Samuel Brown Huddleston.

In 1961 the city scheduled a 125 Centennial for Cambridge City. The members of the chamber of Commerce, including my banker, proposed that I should paint The old Grietz’s Grist Mill from the only existant black and white post card. This old building was well steeped in my mind. It was an old land mark where I had repaired the galvanized roofing and many blower pipes from time to time. I also remember the lake where one row boat lay a drift among the willows along the bank. The arrangement was made that if I would paint a canvas depicting this old mill site as it looked when in process they would show it for several weeks prior to the time of the Centennial. I painted it on a 30X36 canvas. While it was on exhibit, they had it reproduce and printed on the front cover of the Lincoln High School Yearbook. Mrs. Cecil Cohee committee chair had obtained the whereabouts of all the children who had attended the school, which included two of my own children. Beulah graduated in 1946 and Norman graduated in 1950. They also published all the people of the town dating back to the town’s birth and had many photos, places of business and advertisements, as well as one of my own, which featured the painting of my wife, Marie.

The advertisement was as follows:

Realistic Fine Art Studio Portraits, Landscapes Favorite Landmarks by Order

My location for the exhibit of twenty one of my paintings was near the old mill pond site. I had recently done a painting of Emmet Kelley, the clown. One of the roustabouts who had helped set a carnival near the site came through my exhibit one day and told me that he had worked for three years in the carnival where Kelly worked and as he looked at the painting, with tears in his eyes he said,”He does everything but talk.”

I have left paintings in the new Lincoln High School, the pavilion at Glen Miller Park in Richmond as well as one at White Water Park. I left a painting of Mrs. Fisher at Fisher’s Mortuary in Cambridge and a painting in California of the LDS Church in San Francisco, depicting Lehi’s dream taken from the Book of Mormon. Another painting of the Canadian Scene at Macanaw Canada and a portrait of these people from Johns Manville: Pat Murphy, and Ruth Christensen and Robert Maddix, draftsman for the plant.

In 1963 I decided to go west for health reasons. The hot humid summers in Indiana and the long cold periods with snow on the ground in winter seemed to keep me on the sick list. We sold our home and bought a mobile home and moved it to New Mexico. I was privileged to meet Fred Harmen, an artist who was well established and the originator of the Little Beaver and Rider comic strips.

Once in New Mexico I bought a lot south of Albuquerque on Highway 85 in Los Lunas, New Mexico. I set up a studio and very quickly acquired students. Mrs. John Love was my first student. When Debie graduated high school in 1967, I asked her to become a partner in teaching. We called the club Mid Valley Artists’s club. We started with a membership of twelve, quickly climbing to 40. We have had several successful exhibits in this valley and we are now in the process of arranging another.

In 1969 we were privileged to take a trip back to Indiana where most of our children live and held a reunion. We are proud to claim now that we are the grandparents of thirty two, great grandparents of nine at last count.

I am now in the process of demonstrating how to paint a portrait from a live subject to my students who want to become portrait artists. The portrait I am painting is of a local artist and friend from Belen, L.A. (Hank McCormick). He and I intend to hunt and fish together in the near future.

It is now the latter part of 1973, we are planning to take another trip to Indiana for a reunion for this is our 50th year of marriage. Last April we were surprised to be honored with an anniversary celebration given us by the students and people we have come to know in our years in this state.

We are now one year later in August of 1974. I had intended to end the story of my life at this point, I find that we have accomplished more in this one year. However, we did make the trip back to Indiana. We were honored by our children and grandchildren with a reunion celebrating our Golden Wedding Anniversary. We found that we more than likely could not endure the climate there or would have been able to survive it for the past ten years.

Our studio and our club has survived and we are continuing with two exhibits annually. Each exhibit seems to prove greater achievement by all. Most favorably, we find where we are making head way as far as the general public concerned. For they have come from all parts of the state seeming to have an eye on the type of art we do and teach.

The Howard N. Huddleston Family Reunion 1973 Back row L-Right Nolan,Sharon,Nathan Ogzewalla, Walter Rhodus,Nancy & David Maloney Leslie Henderson, Debie, Bob, Maloney, John’s girlfriend, John Maloney, Sue & Bill Bell, Tiny & Cathy Rogers, Lee’s wife & Lee Rhodus, Taylor Maloney, Sonny, Sharon, Mark Centers, Leah Huddleston, Susan Huddleston & daughter, Mark Maloney, Susan Huddleston’s husband.

Front row L-Right: Josh, Jeremy Ogzewalla,Mary, Lora, Heidi Rhodus, Edith Henderson, Debie Huddleston, Marie, Howard Howard Huddleston, Beulah Rogers, Wanda Maloney,Dorothy Center, Andrew,Howard Huddleston, Dick & Heather Huddleston, Maryann Maloney Cathy Maloney

Ground – L-Right Susan Huddleston’s daughter, David Michael Maloney, Brian & James David Maloney,Vincent, Cindy Bell, ? Jimmie Maloney in front of Beulah, Tracie, Christie Maloney, Patricia Center, ?Centers, ??Gina Huddleston (Not sure of all the children

While I was in the east, many years ago, it had long been my desire to paint some of the Indian art of weaving and pottery and this has become a dream come true now, through the extent that many of the tribes from Arizona and New Mexico have revised their ancient art and applied new designs and techniques; and it has been appearing in the Arizona Highways Magazine which I have used for many years as a guide line of photographic values from which to paint and teach.

The coming fall exhibit which will occur in mid-October of this year, will show much of this Indian art, mainly pottery. We have re-produced it in what we think is a better composition than they have photographed it. We had acquired a special location in which to exhibit and have an indefinite privilege to call it the Mid Valley Art Center. Having passed my 72nd birthday, I ‘m glad to say that I have planned out and done more in the way of improving my home, studio and business, that any other year previous.

My ultimate aim has been to guide and inspire to any and all of my posterity, hoping to guide and direct a smoother path through life, knowing that having found God as the key to success in life and the assurance of life eternal.

Richmond Paladium Item sent to me by Leah Huddleston

Photo of a painting done by Howard Huddleston taken by Sharon Ogzewalla while visiting Howard’s cousin, Gloria McLaren in Richmond, Indiana.