The History of Emmett and Madge Leonard and Their 64 Years Together

By Madge Leonard

Emmett was born in Price, Utah, on April 22, 1907, to Zoe Ellen and Leo Leonard. He was the second of nine children. They lived in Peerless, Utah, a coal mining town and the children were bused to school in Price, Utah, about 25 miles away.

I was born in Orangeville, Utah, August 12, 1908 to Annie and John Irving Jewkes. l was the second of five children. My father and mother moved to Wattis, Utah, a mining town where Dad worked in the coal mines mining coal. I finished high school in Wattis. The family then moved back to Orangeville and I stayed there and worked in an ice cream and candy store and also went to beauty school.

During that time Emmett's parents moved back to Price while he remained in the mining camps and worked in the coal mines. Leo, Emmett's father, had a ten-piece orchestra. Emmett and his brothers, Lee and Clair all played in it. Emmett played the saxophone. They were called "The Night Hawks." They played for dances all over Utah and other states for 10 - 15 years. That's where I first met Emmett, I was sixteen and he was seventeen. They were playing for a dance in Helper, Utah. My friends and I were there having a good time. The music was great. I looked up and saw Emmett and thought he was a tall, good-Iooking guy, so I winked at him. When the dance was over he came over to talk to me and to my surprise he was short, but still good—looking. (I was never going to marry a short guy.)

We went together for a while, but on one date we had to go to a dance and he called and cancelled saying he had to work. It just happened that Birdie, Emmett's sister, came and asked if I was going to the dance. I said, "No." She insisted, saying. “If you get a date, you take me. And if I get one, I'll take you."

Birdie got a date and he had a friend, which made it nice for me. Surprise, there at the dance was Emmett dancing with a new girlfriend. Well, that was enough of that two-timing guy, I thought. Needless to say, we started going together again two months later and on October 27, 1927, we got married in Orangeville, Utah.

When Emmett proposed he said he didn't want to get married. He didn't want me, but he didn't want anyone else to have me. So he guessed we‘d get married. The day we were to get married we were at my parents' house in Orangeville, killing time while we waited to go over to the Bishop's house where the ceremony was to take place. So what happens? Emmett comes up missing for about 30 minutes. I didn't know until months later that he had decided he didn't want to get married and was going back to Price. After a few miles he said he changed his mind and decided it would be a rotten thing to do and he decided to marry me. But, if he didn't like being married, then after a while he would take the rings off and throw them away, and that would be the end of that.

We lived in Price for a while and then Emmett went to work in the coal mines at Mohrland, Utah, where he could load more coal than any other man in the mine. He was very strong and very fast. I worked as a hairdresser in the only hotel in Mohrland. On September 11, 1928, our daughter Zona was born. She was a beautiful baby girl with big brown eyes and dark hair. She was a Leonard alright. She didn't look anything like her mother. I had blonde hair and blue eyes.

In a few years Emmett quit the mines. He got hurt three times. One time he had his little toe cut off, so we thought it was time to do something else even though this was during the Depression. We moved to Salt Lake City, where Emmett began working for Safeway. First in the stores and then in the warehouse, where he worked for many years. I worked for J.C. Penny's as a clerk. By this time we had two more beautiful girls, Emogene and Peggy. They both had dark hair and brown eyes.

Emogene was born November 2, 1935, and Peggy on August 5, 1938. In 1938, just after Peggy was born, I got sick with pneumonia and had to go to the hospital for ten days. Emmett was working the night shift and trying to take care of three children. He didn't get much sleep. We finally had to call on both mothers to help. When Grandma Leonard got to Salt Lake, she found Peggy with pneumonia. The doctor didn't think she would live, but Grandma Leonard took to doctoring Peggy with mustard plasters and tender loving care and she soon got well.

We were having a very hard time and Emmett was so busy he didn't get our rent paid, so here came the landlord and said we had to move. He got his money, but Emmett said as soon as you get better we are going to buy us a house or a chicken coop to live in so nobody could tell us to move.

We found our first home in Sugar House in 1938. We had to mortgage our car to pay some down. The house cost $2,200.00 and the payments were $20.00 a month. It was very hard to make even that payment until we both went to work at the Arms Plant making bullets during World War II.

Emmett and I did shift work at the Plant and then took care of the children at home. After the war ended, the plant shut down and Emmett went back to work for Safeway. We lived in Sugar House for eight years then Emmett decided he wanted to buy some farm ground. I sure didn't like that idea. I knew how hard you have to work on a farm, but I thought if that is what he wanted I would help him.

We purchased a ten-acre farm in Union, about thirty miles south of Salt Lake. There we were with the ground and no machinery to work it. World War II had just ended and we couldn't find tractors to buy. We were forced to level the ground with a big plank tied on to the back of our car, but after burning up the transmission, we did finally find a small tractor that we could pay so much a month on.

Emmett still worked at Safeway and Kennecott Copper and was farming our ten acres. As time went by we planted fruit trees--peaches, pears, cherries and apricots. What we didn't know was that the irrigation water didn't come into the ditches until the month of May. We put two barrels of water in the back seat of the car and watered eight or nine hundred trees by hand to keep them alive until the water came into the ditch and we lost only one tree. The trees grew very well and in a few years we had a beautiful orchard. We also planted lots of different vegetables, but we had too much to take care of, so we decided to just plant cantaloupe which did grow real well in the sandy soil. We sold our crops to Safeway for a long time, then we thought it would be better if we had a fruit stand.

This required that we buy eight more acres of ground adjoining our ground that would give us frontage on Ninth East Road that had a lot of traffic on it for our fruit and vegetable stand. During this period I was going to have another baby and the farm work was very hard, but Emmett needed help because he was working at Safeway and farming. I couldn't bend over very well so I would have the girls pull me down the rows of vegetables in a little red wagon so I could weed the garden. On August 7, 1946, we got a beautiful baby boy with lots of hair and brown eyes, a Leonard again. We were all so happy to finally have a baby boy in the family. We named him John Emmett Leonard Junior.

Emmett quit working at Safeway in 1950. We continued to sell our fruits, vegetables and cantaloupes from our little stand for quite a few years, until they started to charge us more taxes on the ground. At this point we decided we should sell the ground instead of farm it. We started to sell one or two lots at a time and when we got enough money, Emmett would build a house to rent or to sell. He built four in all.

Then Emmett decided to turn his attention to building us the dream home that he had promised me for years. He built us a beautiful split-level house in Midvale, about four miles from the farm. As soon as it was finished, we left the farmhouse. The three girls had moved away by this time and Johnny was thinking about getting married, so he and Sharon rented the farmhouse, then bought it in 1965. This way we were able to keep the farmhouse in the family.

Since we didn't have to work so hard anymore we started to travel. I was 58 and Emmett was 59 when we bought a motorhome and put a sign on it that said, "Our Haven From Slavin'." First we went to Canada, then all over the United States and then to Mexico. Clair and Blanche Leonard went with us to Mexico to see Leo, Emmett's and Clair's older brother who was going to school down there. We went to Mexico for three or four months during the Utah winters and traveled all over. We all had a great time.

When we weren't traveling, Emmett decided to teach himself to play the organ. By that time we needed some hobbies. We also became interested in dune buggies since Zona and her husband, Fred, were into that at the time. They lived in El Centro, California, and we attended many races and outings in the sand dunes. Among some of the races were the Mint 500 in Las Vegas, Nevada. In January of 1968, we attended and helped out at one of the largest races in America. It was broadcast by ABC's Wide World of Sports. Over 200,000 people showed up at Glamis, California, for this race. Fred was the president of the Imperial Valley Dune Bug Association that organized this event. We finally ended up buying a beautiful gold bug that gave us many years of enjoyment, but it also set us up for our next hobby--hunting for rocks.

We traveled all over the desert and mountains in the bug finding all different kinds of rocks. Then Emmett bought him a rock saw and polishing machine. What to do with all these rocks but to make polished stones in all sizes for jewelry and then take them to the rock shows in Quartsite, Goldrock Ranch and Palo Verde, California. We also went to Oregon, Arizona, Montana and Idaho to attend show.

What we sold paid our way to go to all these places also to go find more rocks. We had our motor home parking place in Madras, Oregon, where we sold our stones for twenty years. I would sell the stones and jewelry that Emmett made and I made hats and caps. I would sell 15 to 50 caps and hats at a five-day show. We had lots of fun and made many good friends and went to lots of dances. We went to our first show in 1970 and our last in 1991.

To make sure we weren't wasting time we started metal detecting to and from all the shows or when we were just resting. Emmett bought us both a detector--different kinds, of course. First time out I was finding all the money. The next day he took his back and got one like mine. I still have them and they are both still in good working order. We found lots of old coins, jewelry, watches and I found a one ounce gold nugget in Arizona. We took it to a jeweler and he said it was the most expensive little rock that I would ever find, and I still have it.

As time went by Zona and Fred were going to retire. Zona called us and wanted us to go with her to Idaho to look for them a place to live, which we did. It was while driving around that Emmett seen this piece of ground. He just loved to have lots of ground, so he bought five acres and in 1982 we bought a mobile home and moved to Orofino, Idaho. We sold our beautiful home in Midvale, because Emmett wanted to have a place where he could farm and go fishing again. Johnny and Sharon wanted to move to the mountains also, so they bought them a mobile home and both were moved to the property in Orofino at the same time.

Zona and Fred bought a beautiful log house on fifteen acres of land twenty miles out of Orofino. It was just two years old. Zona and Fred moved first, but the rest of us were not far behind. Emmett was 75 years old and I was 74 when we came to Idaho to begin again. Within two months we laid out the ground for the homes and had the power, water, septic tanks, drains and roads in. The mobile homes were brought in from Nampa, Idaho, and set up. Johnny and Sharon moved in August of 1982 so their children, Natalie, Phillip and Brian, could start school. Johnny got a job right away as a Clearwater County Deputy Sheriff. Emmett and I planned to go back to Midvale and wait for our home to sell, but the day before we were to leave Orofino the real estate man called and said they had sold our house, so away we went home to Midvale and got things packed.

Emogene and her family and workers loaded her big trucks and moved us up to Idaho on September 17, 1982. We have all enjoyed it very much in the mountains. We put in fruit trees, planted grass and landscaped our two places with shrubs and rock gardens. We built porches front and back and large metal sheds to house the cars and equipment. Emmett was so happy that he could have a nice garden and he planted it. Before long we had peas, corn, beets, carrots, beans, potatoes, tomatoes and cantaloupes. We had so much of everything that two people could not eat it all. So once again we loaded up the car and I went to town and sold our goods on a street corner in town. It didn't take long to sell them, so every summer Emmett had his garden and I sold what we couldn't eat or put up. We entered our vegetables and fruit in the Clearwater County Fair in September and we won 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes and a grand prize on our peaches one year.

Emmett didn't want neighbors close, so he bought five more acres adjoining the property and Emogene bought five acres across the road so no one would get close. That made him happy. We still took time to rock hunt and to go to our rock shows. We also spent pleasant hours metal detecting in the parks and school grounds all over the area. When we couldn't find any money from metal detecting, we took to picking up aluminum pop and beer cans to sell.

Emmett had always wanted a boat to go fishing in and I had resisted due to my fear of water, but I finally made up my mind that if that's what he wanted we would do it. So we purchased a 21-foot Bayliner boat with all the comforts of home. We had many wonderful fishing and pleasure trips with it on Dworshak Dam and reservoir. During the winter we passed the time snowmobiling on our property and took videos with our video camera, another one of Emmett's new toys.

Indoors, Emmett practiced playing on his fourth electronic organ. Always wanting to keep up to date with new things, he never kept an organ longer than three years. With his last electronic organ he was able to record his playing. Selected tunes from some of these tapes were chosen and played at his funeral.

We had a good and full life and a wonderful family. All of them are so good to me and do everything they can to make me happy. I miss Emmett very much. We were married for 64 years. He passed away April 24, 1992, and is buried in Orofino, Idaho, in a beautiful cemetery with pine trees on one side and the Clearwater River on the other. I had a beautiful double headstone made in Salt Lake. I go to the cemetery every time I go to town and relive the wonderful memories we had together. I loved him very much.

I made up this poem when we started to hunt rocks:

I think that there shall never be

An ignoramus just like me

Who roams the hills through the day

To pick up rocks that doesn't pay.

For there's one thing I've been told

I take the rocks and leave the gold.

O'er deserts Wild or Mountains blue

I search for Rocks of varied hues.

A hundred pounds or more I pack

With blistered feet and aching back.

And after all is said and done,

I cannot name a single one.

I pick up rocks where 'er I go

The reason why, I do not know.

For rocks are found by fools like me

Where God intended them to be.

Madge Leonard