A Series Of Old Pictures--John C. Ward I, John (Jon) C. Ward II, And Myself Included

For years I tried to find the name Clesmer. One man by that name not related to us, eventually became an administrator in Blackfoot School District. I think his last name was Olny.

While my son Cles worked at Garcias, he had a name tag with the name Cles. This administrator and his wife came in one evening, and as soon as they say my son's name tag, he wanted to know where he received that name.

Cles gave him the short history lesson about our roots in Malad.

The Mr. Olny then explained to Cles, that his mother knew a young man from the area, and I can't remember if he mentioned Malad, but she was so impressed, that she named her son that same name.

Another man had that name in Colorado. I did a Google search once, and an obituary appeared. The name appeared, just like our family spelled it.

It didn't satisfy me at all. I was still curious.

My volunteer work at the Holocaust Museum in Washing D. C. led me to another thing to think about, and that was the whole notion about where the name originated. My grandfather's mother was a Moon, and her father Hugh Moon had a fascination with a couple of things regarding Jewish culture.

After moving to Nauvoo as a part of an large number of English converts to Mormonism in the 1840's, he began studying Hebrew.

He also loved playing the "fiddle," and according to what I read, he was very good at it.

His interest in Klezmer music remains something I can only speculate about at this point, since no actual record exists to confirm it. I keep thinking that his daughter Julia Ann Moon probably used the middle name for my grandfather to honor her father Hugh Moon.

It is purely speculation, but the reason I feel so strongly about it is the history behind it, that I explained.

One thing for sure is this: my friends at the Holocaust Museum found it an interesting coincidence.

My grandfather was a farmer and rancher. His father owned a large amount of land, and all of his sons eventually bought land from that series of purchases the family business purchased in addition to other tracts in Arbon Valley and Malad Valley as well.

Our ranch, which stretched from Northern Utah into a bit of Southeastern Idaho was part of a land deal. The local paper in my hometown recorded it as the largest purchase in the history of Idaho in 1926. I remember reading the account years ago in a section of the paper dedicated to specific things in the past.

I posted the picture of my grandfather twice, one appears quite dark--probably taken on a cloudy day during the winter.

My grandfather was a cowboy, not just by name or by some sort of illusion. The term today is "wanna-be," but my grandfather was the real deal. He was not only an incredible cattleman, rancher and farmer, but his gift for roping was something many envied.


My dad always talked about being with my grandfather, when they found a coyote hiding in the alfalfa patch in the field we later called "The Bottoms." It was adjacent to the "Water Lane," where our cattle watered before returning to pastures beyond the lava ledges on the Northeastern edge of the farm.

Grandpa chased the coyote on horseback and roped it. Dad told about a California tourist filming it on a small movie camera, and he always wished he had had a copy of that event.

My grandfather spent Sunday as a day to recuperate from hard work. His days began at 4:00 a.m., when he began harnessing horses. Later he did other things, when the ranch relied on machinery. He and my father worked side by side throughout the day, breaking for meals. At midnight, they walked about with a lantern, making preparations for the next morning.

He roped wild horses as a way of relaxing on Sundays. It was a way of unwinding from the extremely hard work. He kept the best horses, selling the others.

His other gift was breaking horses to ride. Only one ever was one that grandpa didn't stay on. The horse rolled with him to get him out of the saddle. Grandpa had two choices, step off or fracture his pelvis or hip. He stepped off, climbed back on the horse when he stood up again, and finished breaking him to ride. Grandpa was a cowboy. He worked the cattle. The picture above shows Grandpa Cles on horseback with Grandma Liza. Aunt Janice is on the back. Rulon Ward, a first cousin and next door neighbor on an adjacent ranch, sits on a horse on the right.

My dad did the farm work, so he didn't learn to rope, and he didn't break horses like grandpa, yet dad eventually did everything needed to operate a successful cattle operation, just without roping and without breaking his own horses.

The result of the difficult work was my grandfather's passing in his late 40's, when he died of a massive heart attack.

A photograph at the right shows dad sitting on a horse while gripping his father's cowboy hat.

Dad knew how to ride, and he was far better at it than I ever was, although I began early.

I helped herd cattle and drive them with my dad, when we moved them to fresh pastures. By the time I was in second grade, I was riding in a saddle, even though my feet didn't reach the stirrups completely.

I'm not sure, but I think my dad was more nervous about my getting my feet caught in the event of falling off the horse or even being thrown from the horse.

One thing that happened, when I was in first grade, was that I rode a mare called "Old Peach." I rode bareback, and one day, while driving cattle with my father, I kicked the mare in the ribs to get her to run a bit to herd one wayward cow.

She started running. The faster she ran, the more my short legs struck the side of the mare. She ran away with me.

Dad rode my grandfather's last horse, Old Buck. He was a buckskin, which grandpa broke from the herd of wild horses that ran in the pastures west of our ranch.

On that day the mare ran away with me on the gravel road, dad galloped along side, grabbed the reins and pulled the mare to a stop. I hung on the best I could, and even though I didn't fall off the mare, I never liked riding a horse after that episode. It only happened, when I had to help dad with cattle, and even as a high school student, I preferred to help dad cut cattle on foot.
Dad was a pleasant person. He had a temper, but you only saw it in extreme times, when someone pushed him to the limit, like when a neighbor once tried to run over the top of him with his horse.

Dad warned the neighbor to get his cattle out of our field. A threat of legal recourse was the only thing that finally resulted in solving the problem. When dad walked to talk to the man, he tried to ride over the top of my dad. Dad grabbed the reins, whipped the horse backwards, until the animal rested and sat on hits hind legs briefly, and then dad began pulling the man from the saddle.

The neighbor had spurs, and drove the animal back to its feet. He rode on and never tried that again. The man will never know how close he came to being beaten severely.

I saw one more thing happen like that, but I won't write about it, because my father was a good man. He didn't look for a fight, but as he taught me to live, he didn't walk away from one either. And he rarely fought, because others knew about his resolve.

My dad taught me that, and I benefitted from the same thing. I rarely had anyone press me to the point, where I had to teach anyone a much-needed lesson.

The baby picture of my dad above says a lot of the kind-heared man he was--loved my his family, respected by anyone who knew him.

I placed a picture of my dad as a teenager in high school as well.

He played one sport, football. As tackle on the football team, he lettered two years. It was a time before face masks, and the picture basically shows him after he broke his nose in three places. He loved the sport, and dad encouraged me to play as well.

I loved it too.

Besides football and farming and being with his dad. My father loved hunting.

He told me stories of how Bert Eliason helped him get shells for his .22 during World War II, a time when it was almost impossible to do that.

Hunting jackrabbits on the farm was not only something you did to ensure the numbers didn't get so heavy, that it affected crops, but it was also something my father loved.

Dad also hunted with me, but we didn't often have the time. By the time I was old enough to shoot a gun, rabbits were rarely a problem. A disease took most of them, and for years, their numbers were very few.

Hunting deer and pheasants were annual things, but we only took the time on opening day for each season. I still regret the fact, that my father and I never had the chance to go elk hunting.

There wasn't the time, and when we could have done that, I was playing football.

It was just something we never had the chance to do.

The tradition stopped with me, not because I wouldn't have enjoyed hunting more than what we did and certainly not because I wouldn't have enjoyed taking my son on a trip like that, but because I had no idea how to dress an animal after shooting it.

Not only that, but the insides looked too human to me. I would become light-headed. My father did the task, but to be honest, I figure his father did it when they went together, because the meat we tried to use had a terrible taste to it, regardless how I cooked it.

I figure we did something incorrectly. One thing was leaving the mean in the skin as long as we did, but getting the bladder out of the deer always seemed to be a problem. More than once, the thing would rupture, spilling urine on the meat.

It was no big deal for dad. He hated the taste of venison.

As I look at the pictures of those who share my name, it gives me pride in the fact that they were hard-working men, honorable men.

My father taught me, just like his father instructed him. I plan to do another blog detailing my father's lessons he gave me over the years. It will be brief, but it will give my children and grandchildren an idea of what these men instilled in me.

It is a blessing that I remember both of them clearly. I miss both of them still, even though my grandfather died when I was only three-and-a-half. The loss is still something that I sense. And I remember specific things I did with my grandfather.

And as a son, who like his father worked side-by-side with his dad, I have so many memories of my dad.

Yes, we didn't go elk hunting, but there is rarely a spring that doesn't pass, when I don't have to eat bologna sandwiches or sandwiches with olive loaf. It reminds me of working with my dad, when we took lunch to avoid "losing time" away from the field. It was always about "eating on the go."

And rarely is a time that passes during winter, when skies turn cobalt blue and cattle begin that mournful cry to remind ranchers that the time is right for them to be fed. I love the sound. And occasionally I even catch a sent of hay in the wind, or at least I did, before our housing area became so clogged with homes--before the area pushed farmers further away from fenced in yards and "spec" homes.

No one will ever realize the close relationship I had with my dad as a result of those years of hard work, but my dad knew. The best compliment he ever paid me was after I moved my family northward. He said this: "Jon, I never knew how much I depended on you until you moved."

We talked almost every day after I left. When I lived in Malad, there were few days that I didn't drop by in the evening. It's what I miss now.

These are the things that shaped my character and helped me become the type of person I became.