We rented teh Wilford Brookby's home as they were going on a two year mission for the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints to Alaska. It waas a much better place to live and had corrals and a good garden spot. I bought a milk cow to put in the corral. We enjoyed having mild products.
Early in my job in Fredonia I befriended the Arizona State Game Warden for the same area. He was Harold Pratt, a son of old-timers in Fredonia. He was about my age and we had a lot in common. Harold took me all over the Arizona strip and got me acquainted in Littlefield, Beaver Dam. He showed me all of the roads on the Arizona strip.
As we came back from a trip to Littlefield one Sunday we came into Short Creek late in the afternoon. We drove up to Hillsdale and thru Short Creek, a community inhabited by polygamists. A congregation was letting out from the Hillsdale school house and we had a group of cars following us til we left the area. The Short Creek raid had taken place the year before and the women and children were still being held in Phoenix. We were not very welcome there that day.
Later I got acquainted with one of the older boys that had been left behind to take care of the dairy after the men were all in custody in Phoenix. His name was Sam Barlow and he said he was in the group that followed Harold and I that Sunday, he said that they were really angry cause we were in a AHP car.
Just before dawn on July 26, 1953, more than 120 Arizona police officers descended on Short Creek in what then Gov. Howard Pyle called "a momentous police action against insurrection." They found residents of the polygamist community, who had been tipped off about the raid, gathered at the schoolhouse, singing. In days that followed, families were lined up outside their homes and photographed.
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