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St.Johns AZ
May 1, 1959 (to be sure it is in time for Mother's Day)
Dear Mother,
Today is May day and it makes my thoughts go back to May days in Richville. We had such good times. I was going to say that the wild roses were in bloom but that must have been on June day, Brigham Young's birthday...
I also remember out Sunday lunch hour picnics. Of course a thousand memories come crowding in. Watercress and the spring ditch by the house, the garden, the willow fence, the cottonwood trees, the meadow with milk cows in it. The river bordered with willow and an occasional cottonwood, the lower end springs and canyons, wild grapes, the hills after the rains came.
Do you remember how the cows would go up the trail to go on top of the mesa the next morning after the first rain expecting gramma grass about a week before it had started and all just because it had rained.
Oh yes, I want to thank you for the willowing you gave me when I sassed you and I mean it too, because I never sassed you again.
I was plowing today and nothing to do but tend the tractor and think so I thought of Dad.
He never told a smutty story and never took the name of the Lord in vain, and never spoke of his father as the old man and never told a lie and never stole anything and never took advantage of his neighbor or any other man. No wonder I idolized him, and tried to be like him.
He told me to stay away from the very appearance of evil and if it comes upon you - get out of there and run just as hard as you can, just like your great grandfather Joseph did who was sold into Egypt, even if you have to leave your coat.
He never stopped studying and never failed to tell of the good things he read.
I was truely born of goodly parents.
How I always loved my mother but it took Forest to keep the wood chopped... I remember when we lived across the river of seeing you, my mother, sitting on the east side of the house in the afternoon shade with Aunt Alice... and Aunt Ruth Sherwood, and I thought you were the prettiest of them all, my mother.
With all my love,
Hugh and Nellie
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