Leaving Home

David did not enjoy Colorado as he had Indiana. It was not an easy place to farm; he didn't mind the hard work but there were many aggravations. David remembered his young life in Indiana where life never seemed so hard as it was in Colorado.

By the time he was a teenager David could do the work of a man. He thought of his older brothers making money for working. He didn't know what his father planned to do but there was no mention of moving to a more promising land and it seemed that prospects were getting darker in Colorado. He knew his father would strongly object to his leaving but as he thought about it he grew more convinced it was the thing to do.


In David's words:



I'd been thinking and wishing that I could leave Colorado, and get away from home. This was on my mind, day after day, week after week, month after month until finally I made up I was going to leave and I left.

I needed to get away from the environment.

It was the fall of the year, and I was in the field with a team of horses bringing in feed. Some Russian Thistles had gotten in the feed, and you had to cut the feed like cane.

I didn't have a decent pair of shoes and I did a very dirty deal. Dad had a team and wagon also.

I had already in mind to leave and just got worked up enough over the stickers and thistle in the feed and around my feet, and it just gave me enough nerve to decide that this is "Then I'm going to leave."

I left the team and wagon stand and I went over to where dad was loading up his team and I said "I'm leaving."

Very little else was said but I do remember dad said "Well, you don't need to expect to ever come back." I was 16 or 17 at the time. Father was very serious, seldom humorous.

Eli had moved to Kansas where he got acquainted a girl who he would marry; she was my first wife's sister. I had already told Eli in a letter and he said he'd send me some money to come on, and he did. I had already secured a little satchel, not even a briefcase, more like a doctor's medicine bag than a suitcase. I hid that in the barn with the great hayloft in it, about a mile and a quarter from where we lived.

Our closest neighbor lived about a mile from us. Their name was Duddy. They had a couple of daughters, and the family were good friends of mine. I stayed there overnight my first night away from home.

The next morning I started out for the railroad. I got almost to Sorrento, a city with a train depot and a general store/post office, when a man on horseback came from the opposite direction. He asked me if I was looking for work. He didn't even ask my name.

I said "Yes, I'd like to have some work."

He said "I've got some work I could let you do. How much do you want?"

"Well," I said, "Whatever's right."

"Well, I had a boy work for me this summer, by the name of Carl Duddy, who worked for me for 75 cents a day."

"Well, that'd be alright." I wasn't even used to having spending money then.

He said "I'll tell you what. I'm on the way to a sale. You go down to the first house just north of the post office and the depot. You find a team tied to a manger there in the barn. You'll see the harness there. You harness them up. But before you do that, you go tell my wife that I sent you and that you're to harness the team up and rake up the feed that's ready to be raked up. And when dinner time comes she'll have dinner ready for you. You go in there and have dinner."

There was nothing more said about wages.

I did what he said and she had dinner for me. I worked there for almost three weeks and when he paid me $7.00 I realized that he never said he'd pay me 75 cents a day.