I worked along with father on the farm, and in building houses and barns for other people. During the time from 1864-68, my mother and my sister had been carding and spinning wool and weaving cloth for the family of Heber C. Kimball and others, and had saved a little money. So we bought another cow and a few sheep.

In 1873, began the hard work for me, for to feed our animals meant that about twenty-five tons had to be cut with a scythe and a swath. I’d be so tired at night I could hardly walk home. But father would brag of me to mother, tell her what a good worker I was, so I couldn’t complain after that.

In 1874, the mowing machine came to our help, along with the reaper. These made farming much easier. I was now seventeen years old.

Because of the constant struggle against poverty in pioneer life, and frequent moves, my schooling was very limited, as was the case with many other children in those pioneer times. I had only three or four years of elementary schooling. After that my father was my instructor, and a good one he was too. He had mastered several languages as well as several trades in his native Sweden. These trades he also taught to me.

My parents had given up all their possessions in the Old World to come to Zion. Here in Utah, we suffered privations for years just to live. My brother and I felt we could not let them sacrifice further for our education, so we being now well in our teens, hired out in numerous ways and places to help them to get ahead and to take care of my own needs. But I was determined to somehow make my own opportunities for some education. I asked myself, “Does anyone ever get too old to want to know, to learn, to find out, to reach out for new experiences?”

From my father, I had learned not only carpentry, cabinet-making and wheelwright, but other occupations as well: farming, dairying, lumbering, saw-milling, and others. Over the years, I was always able to keep busy at something. At various intervals, I built many homes, churches, schools, barns, stores, railroad bridges and canals, in Utah, Old Mexico, and in Arizona.

My brother went to Wyoming to work at hauling cordwood, and sent for me to come work with him. One day I was driving four horses hitched to the wagon loaded with about two cords of wood. In leading the rack, Gustav had put in front a green quaking aspen with the bark on it. Going down hill the bark slipped, and the wood I sat on began slipping too. It bunted the wheel horses and they started to run. The road was very steep and rocky, and we couldn’t stay on the road. I tried to get off the side, but fell directly across the tugs of the head wheeler and hung there for a minute. I made a lunge to get off for fear of being kicked to death, but I fell under the wheels. The front wheel passed over my right arm, breaking it, and the back wheel went over my back and so badly bruised and injured it that I never fully recovered from it. I was unconscious for six days, and laid up for four months. When I got better, I went home.

The next spring, there being no work at home, I went to Montana to work on a large ranch. Wages for a good man were only $15-$25 per month, but this rancher had written, offering me $40 with room and board. A very good thing for me. So once again I left home. I walked all the way, a distance of 800 miles, in eleven days and nights.

I worked here for nearly two years; I cut and hauled wood, milked cows, had charge of a crew of men cutting and putting up 100 tons of hay, rode the range at round-up time, cut and hauled fence posts, set posts and strung wire fence.

Up in the timbers we’d work sometimes for weeks in snow, often up to our waists, starting at 4 o’clock in the morning and never getting back before 9 o’clock at night -- sometimes not until 1 o’clock. We were always wet and our clothes frozen so stiff when we removed them to put dry ones on that they would stand alone. As a result of the exposure I began to feel rheumatism in my arms and knees.

The next summer I was sent on the round-up again. I liked the work, but the Nez Perce Indians went on the war-path and we were 1,000 miles from home! Everyone left their ranches for the towns and cities but we had no way to go. This was a trying time, with danger on every side. At Horse Prairie, a ranch only nine miles away, six men were killed; but the only thing we could do was to stay and trust in Providence.

This Indian uprising lasted about five weeks before they could be subdued, but we completed the round-up in the fall, and in mid-December I left for home, half promising to return in the spring. Another man who had been working on the same ranch, returned with slush and mud. We walked most of the way to Pocatello, then rode to the train from there to Ogden. There father met us and we rode to Huntsville in a sleigh drawn by a little team of mules -- Jack and Jule.