A BRIEF HISTORY OF MY LIFE
Delbert Odell Boice
(written February 27, 1994 –
found in Del’s sister (Leta) Book of
Rememberance and typed into Word
by Leta’s granddaughter
Linda Fretwell Duchaine – Dec 2007)
I was born in Bountiful, Colorado on November 3, 1905.
I remember when I was about three years old, my father
John Boice, coming home where we lived in Bountiful,
from a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. It was his second mission.
He left my mother, Alta Ball Boice, to face two years of hardship with three small children to take care of,
Edwin, Letha and myself. I remember the grapes he brought home from California.
We moved from Bountiful to Manassa (about 6 miles) so we could attend better schools. Papa built a nice
house. It had no electric lights, no running water, but outside toilets.
I started school at age 7. I was supposed to come straight home from school at four o’clock, but one day after
school, I got into a big marble game and forgot to come home. Papa came and switched me all the way home.
Mrs. Jenkins was my first grade teacher. She was very strict and cracked my knuckles with a ruler and told me
to never blow my breath into Walter Garcia’s face again; but I got it again when she saw me sharpening my
pencil too much, with a new knife.
When I was in the sixth grade, I joined the 4H Club and took my Polen Ching hog to the county fair and won a
blue-ribbon first place prize. It went on to the State Fair in Pueblo, Colorado and won second prize. After I
finished eighth grade, I went to high school at the San Luis Academy for three years, when it burned to the
ground and everything went up in smoke, including all the records. So I had to go an extra half year and
graduated in 1926.
I helped on the farm until the middle of November, when I left for a mission to Georgia. I was assigned to the
southern part of Georgia for 27 months.
While on my mission, my companion got me to write to a second cousin of his. Her name was Blanche Dahle.
We corresponded after I got home. I let my folks read the letters I received from Blanche. They really fell in
love with her because she was a good letter writer and told how she worked on her dad’s farm, herding sheep,
cultivating and plowing with six head of horses. Papa would say, you had better go up to Canada and get that
girl.
So, I made a trip to see what she was like and to get acquainted with her father and her sister, Leore. I
boarded the narrow gauge train at Romeo, 3 miles from Manassa, and changed trains in Alamosa. I arrived in
Raymond, Alberta, Canada, population of about one thousand. I did not know anyone there, but Blanche told
me she lived on a 320 acre farm, nine miles from town. She had mentioned a girlfriend named Dorothy Strong.
I finally found her working at a store and she gave me directions and said it was a long walk. She said she saw
Blanche’s father in town delivering a wagon load of grain and about that time Mr. Dahle was tying his horse up
to a hitching post.
I went outside and introduced myself and told him I had been corresponding with his daughter and would like
to ride with him in the wagon back to the ranch. I got a cold reception, and he said no. I went back into the
store and told Dorothy, and she said, “I guess you’ll have to walk.” She said there was a trucker going out
close to the ranch and maybe I could get a ride with him. He said o.k. and dropped me off about one half mile
from the ranch.
I started walking to the ranch and saw Blanche and Leore out in the beet field topping beets. I got another cold
reception from Leore and could not get Blanche to the side to talk to her. So I decided that if I had to walk nine
miles back to town before dark, I had better leave. It wasn’t much of a get-acquainted deal. So I left the ranch
before Mr. Dahle got home and got a ride to town with the same trucker.
That evening I called her on the phone and told her I was leaving the next day. She didn’t coax me to stay, and
I know we were nine miles apart with no transportation, so I left for home. I told my folks about the trip and the
cold reception and that my romance was over. So I started a little romance with a girl, an old school mate in
Manassa. But, my folks didn’t like her very much.
So, about a month later, I got a letter from Blanche. She wanted me to come back to Canada again. We wrote
to each other a few more times, and I told her I didn’t have enough money to come up again. So the next letter
I received had some money she had saved.
My mother and dad read the letter and put the pressure on me to go. So to make a long story short, I went
back. We were married in Cardston in the Alberta Temple on March 5, 1930. We lived with my folks in
Manassa for awhile, til my folks built a small house on the 120 acre ranch. We helped on the ranch, farming
and milking cows.
Ronald was born January 27, 1931, in the little two room house we were living in. In the spring we moved again
to a farm close to Antonito, of 40 acres, 200 chickens, one cow, six pigs, 10 sheep and farming equipment.
The hens were laying so many eggs that we couldn’t hardly get rid of them. This was in the middle of the 1930’
s depression and there was no cash for eggs, so we traded them for groceries at 8- and 10-cents a dozen.
Our two hundred pound dressed hogs sold for about $10.00 each.
We hardly broke even that year, so went back to papa’s ranch and with my sister Lois and Raymond Barber,
we started a milk rout in LaJara. We sold milk for 5-cents a quart and delivered it house-to-house, about 40-50
quarts a day.
We wanted to get out on our own, so decided to try to buy the Reynold’s place. It was 120 acres near Romeo.
In order to purchase the place, we had to have $2,700.00 in cash to pay Mr. Berkins. That was a lot of money
in those depression years and papa said he could not loan us any money but would sign the note.
We tried First National Bank of LaJara, but they said they would not loan money on an unsecured loan. So
papa suggested we try Kenos and Stell Sowards. She was a school teacher and he was a well-to-do
cattleman. So one evening, Blanche and I went to their nice home in Manassa and told themwe would like to
borrow $2,700.00 to buy the Reynold’s place. After some consideration, they said if I would get my dad to co-
sign, they would loan us the money at 3% interest. As we started to leave, he asked us to come back and sign
the note without the co-signer.
So we bought the place in 1932 and made payments when we got a little money ahead. As we made our final
payment to the Sowards, they said they were not going to charge us any interest because we had been
honest in paying off the note. We thanked them and told them how much we appreciated their kindness. We
worked hard to improve the place and built a new house, cow barn, and sheep sheds etc.
We accumulated horses, cows, sheep, chickens, turkeys, hogs and everything that goes with farm life. That’s
where Robert and John were born. Robert was born on October 16, 1940 and John on August 3, 1946.
My folks had moved to Kirtland, New Mexico and Blanche decided to visit them. On that visit, she fell in love
with Kirtland and found a nice house and young peach orchard on 40 acres of land. We inquired about the
price, and he said he would sell for $27,000.00 cash, after the peaches were harvested. We talked it over and
decided to buy the place, if we could borrow some money from First National Bank in Farmington (NM), about
10 miles from Kirtland. She said she would loan us the money with the equity that we had, but said she thought
we were crazy.
We sold out in Colorado in 1946 and had a big move on our hands. We had two tractors and two rubber tire
hay rack trailers which we loaded with household goods and farm machinery. It was late October when we
started for Kirtland, over 200 miles away. Ronald drove one tractor, and I drove the other. We got an early
start and made it past Del Norte and part way up Wolf Creek Pass, when one of the trailer wheels came
unwelded. So we took it back to Del Norte and got it fixed. That delayed us about 3 hours. We got over the
pass and to Pagosa Springs (CO) but about froze to death. When we stopped at a motel for the night, the
manager could see we were cold and told us to jump into the hot springs to get warmed up. That is what we
did, otherwise, we would have been cold all night. We got to Kirtland the next day in mid-afternoon.
We thought we were going to have a big peach crop the first year, but instead, all the fruit got frozen. So we
started milking cows again so we would have a little money coming in. I didn’t like the orchard and all the
pruning you had to do. We thought about ;moving back to the valley. We heard that the Zia Motel was for sale
in Farmington and decided it would be a better deal than what we had on the fruit farm. I talked to Fon Taylor,
who owned the motel, and he said he would sell for $57,000.00. So we went back to borrow some more money
from Mrs Sammons. She considered the equity we had and said she would loan us the money, but told us
again that she thought we were crazy.
We moved to Farmington in 1950 and took charge of the Zia Motel. We bought the motel just as the oil boom
started and that was the easiest and most money we had ever made. We then got a franchise for A & W Root
Beer in 1953, which made us more money but a lot more work. We paid the First National Bank note off with
700 silver dollars that we had saved from our milk route in LaJara. Mrs. Sammons said, “Where in the world did
you get all those silver dollars?”
So after operating the business for a number of years, we sold out in 1968 and bought a new house at 1006
Crestview Drive. We thought it time for retirement, but we couldn’t rest, so we built a Kentucky Fried Chicken
store in Montrose, Colorado in 1972. We operated it for a year and then sold it to Ronald.
Life has been good for both of us. We have hardly been sick a day of our lives. We have been married for 64
years and have enjoyed raising our three boys. They have been a blessing to us and are now taking good
care of us. They have good families and are doing well in their business affairs. Ronald has owned and
operated a number of “fast food” restaurants over the past 30 years. Robert has been self employed and
worked for Ronald in that business for many years, until going back to school at BYU Hawaii to get his degree.
He now works for the State of Arizona as an accountant. John is an orthodontist and has had his own practice
for the past 19 years.
I am proud to be a member of the John and Alta Boice family. So many years have passed since we left
Bountiful, Colorado; and as a poem says:
Out of this life, I shall never take things of silver and gold I make.
All that I cherish and hoard away,
After I leave, on this earth must stay.
Tho I have toiled for a painting rare to hang on the wall,
I must leave it there.
Tho I call it mine and boast its worth,
I must give it up when I leave this earth.
All that I gather and all that I keep,
I must leave behind when I fall asleep.
And I often wonder what I shall own in
that other life, when I pass alone and
what they find and what shall they see,
in the soul that answers the call for me.
Shall the great Judge learn when my task is through,
That my spirit has gathered some riches, too?
Or shall at last it be mine to find,
That all I’d worked for, I’d left behind!
Love to every body.
Delbert Boice
1006 Crestview Dr.
Farmington, NM 87401
505.325.6671
February 27, 1994
Delbert Odell Boice
(written February 27, 1994 –
found in Del’s sister (Leta) Book of
Rememberance and typed into Word
by Leta’s granddaughter
Linda Fretwell Duchaine – Dec 2007)
I was born in Bountiful, Colorado on November 3, 1905.
I remember when I was about three years old, my father
John Boice, coming home where we lived in Bountiful,
from a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. It was his second mission.
He left my mother, Alta Ball Boice, to face two years of hardship with three small children to take care of,
Edwin, Letha and myself. I remember the grapes he brought home from California.
We moved from Bountiful to Manassa (about 6 miles) so we could attend better schools. Papa built a nice
house. It had no electric lights, no running water, but outside toilets.
I started school at age 7. I was supposed to come straight home from school at four o’clock, but one day after
school, I got into a big marble game and forgot to come home. Papa came and switched me all the way home.
Mrs. Jenkins was my first grade teacher. She was very strict and cracked my knuckles with a ruler and told me
to never blow my breath into Walter Garcia’s face again; but I got it again when she saw me sharpening my
pencil too much, with a new knife.
When I was in the sixth grade, I joined the 4H Club and took my Polen Ching hog to the county fair and won a
blue-ribbon first place prize. It went on to the State Fair in Pueblo, Colorado and won second prize. After I
finished eighth grade, I went to high school at the San Luis Academy for three years, when it burned to the
ground and everything went up in smoke, including all the records. So I had to go an extra half year and
graduated in 1926.
I helped on the farm until the middle of November, when I left for a mission to Georgia. I was assigned to the
southern part of Georgia for 27 months.
While on my mission, my companion got me to write to a second cousin of his. Her name was Blanche Dahle.
We corresponded after I got home. I let my folks read the letters I received from Blanche. They really fell in
love with her because she was a good letter writer and told how she worked on her dad’s farm, herding sheep,
cultivating and plowing with six head of horses. Papa would say, you had better go up to Canada and get that
girl.
So, I made a trip to see what she was like and to get acquainted with her father and her sister, Leore. I
boarded the narrow gauge train at Romeo, 3 miles from Manassa, and changed trains in Alamosa. I arrived in
Raymond, Alberta, Canada, population of about one thousand. I did not know anyone there, but Blanche told
me she lived on a 320 acre farm, nine miles from town. She had mentioned a girlfriend named Dorothy Strong.
I finally found her working at a store and she gave me directions and said it was a long walk. She said she saw
Blanche’s father in town delivering a wagon load of grain and about that time Mr. Dahle was tying his horse up
to a hitching post.
I went outside and introduced myself and told him I had been corresponding with his daughter and would like
to ride with him in the wagon back to the ranch. I got a cold reception, and he said no. I went back into the
store and told Dorothy, and she said, “I guess you’ll have to walk.” She said there was a trucker going out
close to the ranch and maybe I could get a ride with him. He said o.k. and dropped me off about one half mile
from the ranch.
I started walking to the ranch and saw Blanche and Leore out in the beet field topping beets. I got another cold
reception from Leore and could not get Blanche to the side to talk to her. So I decided that if I had to walk nine
miles back to town before dark, I had better leave. It wasn’t much of a get-acquainted deal. So I left the ranch
before Mr. Dahle got home and got a ride to town with the same trucker.
That evening I called her on the phone and told her I was leaving the next day. She didn’t coax me to stay, and
I know we were nine miles apart with no transportation, so I left for home. I told my folks about the trip and the
cold reception and that my romance was over. So I started a little romance with a girl, an old school mate in
Manassa. But, my folks didn’t like her very much.
So, about a month later, I got a letter from Blanche. She wanted me to come back to Canada again. We wrote
to each other a few more times, and I told her I didn’t have enough money to come up again. So the next letter
I received had some money she had saved.
My mother and dad read the letter and put the pressure on me to go. So to make a long story short, I went
back. We were married in Cardston in the Alberta Temple on March 5, 1930. We lived with my folks in
Manassa for awhile, til my folks built a small house on the 120 acre ranch. We helped on the ranch, farming
and milking cows.
Ronald was born January 27, 1931, in the little two room house we were living in. In the spring we moved again
to a farm close to Antonito, of 40 acres, 200 chickens, one cow, six pigs, 10 sheep and farming equipment.
The hens were laying so many eggs that we couldn’t hardly get rid of them. This was in the middle of the 1930’
s depression and there was no cash for eggs, so we traded them for groceries at 8- and 10-cents a dozen.
Our two hundred pound dressed hogs sold for about $10.00 each.
We hardly broke even that year, so went back to papa’s ranch and with my sister Lois and Raymond Barber,
we started a milk rout in LaJara. We sold milk for 5-cents a quart and delivered it house-to-house, about 40-50
quarts a day.
We wanted to get out on our own, so decided to try to buy the Reynold’s place. It was 120 acres near Romeo.
In order to purchase the place, we had to have $2,700.00 in cash to pay Mr. Berkins. That was a lot of money
in those depression years and papa said he could not loan us any money but would sign the note.
We tried First National Bank of LaJara, but they said they would not loan money on an unsecured loan. So
papa suggested we try Kenos and Stell Sowards. She was a school teacher and he was a well-to-do
cattleman. So one evening, Blanche and I went to their nice home in Manassa and told themwe would like to
borrow $2,700.00 to buy the Reynold’s place. After some consideration, they said if I would get my dad to co-
sign, they would loan us the money at 3% interest. As we started to leave, he asked us to come back and sign
the note without the co-signer.
So we bought the place in 1932 and made payments when we got a little money ahead. As we made our final
payment to the Sowards, they said they were not going to charge us any interest because we had been
honest in paying off the note. We thanked them and told them how much we appreciated their kindness. We
worked hard to improve the place and built a new house, cow barn, and sheep sheds etc.
We accumulated horses, cows, sheep, chickens, turkeys, hogs and everything that goes with farm life. That’s
where Robert and John were born. Robert was born on October 16, 1940 and John on August 3, 1946.
My folks had moved to Kirtland, New Mexico and Blanche decided to visit them. On that visit, she fell in love
with Kirtland and found a nice house and young peach orchard on 40 acres of land. We inquired about the
price, and he said he would sell for $27,000.00 cash, after the peaches were harvested. We talked it over and
decided to buy the place, if we could borrow some money from First National Bank in Farmington (NM), about
10 miles from Kirtland. She said she would loan us the money with the equity that we had, but said she thought
we were crazy.
We sold out in Colorado in 1946 and had a big move on our hands. We had two tractors and two rubber tire
hay rack trailers which we loaded with household goods and farm machinery. It was late October when we
started for Kirtland, over 200 miles away. Ronald drove one tractor, and I drove the other. We got an early
start and made it past Del Norte and part way up Wolf Creek Pass, when one of the trailer wheels came
unwelded. So we took it back to Del Norte and got it fixed. That delayed us about 3 hours. We got over the
pass and to Pagosa Springs (CO) but about froze to death. When we stopped at a motel for the night, the
manager could see we were cold and told us to jump into the hot springs to get warmed up. That is what we
did, otherwise, we would have been cold all night. We got to Kirtland the next day in mid-afternoon.
We thought we were going to have a big peach crop the first year, but instead, all the fruit got frozen. So we
started milking cows again so we would have a little money coming in. I didn’t like the orchard and all the
pruning you had to do. We thought about ;moving back to the valley. We heard that the Zia Motel was for sale
in Farmington and decided it would be a better deal than what we had on the fruit farm. I talked to Fon Taylor,
who owned the motel, and he said he would sell for $57,000.00. So we went back to borrow some more money
from Mrs Sammons. She considered the equity we had and said she would loan us the money, but told us
again that she thought we were crazy.
We moved to Farmington in 1950 and took charge of the Zia Motel. We bought the motel just as the oil boom
started and that was the easiest and most money we had ever made. We then got a franchise for A & W Root
Beer in 1953, which made us more money but a lot more work. We paid the First National Bank note off with
700 silver dollars that we had saved from our milk route in LaJara. Mrs. Sammons said, “Where in the world did
you get all those silver dollars?”
So after operating the business for a number of years, we sold out in 1968 and bought a new house at 1006
Crestview Drive. We thought it time for retirement, but we couldn’t rest, so we built a Kentucky Fried Chicken
store in Montrose, Colorado in 1972. We operated it for a year and then sold it to Ronald.
Life has been good for both of us. We have hardly been sick a day of our lives. We have been married for 64
years and have enjoyed raising our three boys. They have been a blessing to us and are now taking good
care of us. They have good families and are doing well in their business affairs. Ronald has owned and
operated a number of “fast food” restaurants over the past 30 years. Robert has been self employed and
worked for Ronald in that business for many years, until going back to school at BYU Hawaii to get his degree.
He now works for the State of Arizona as an accountant. John is an orthodontist and has had his own practice
for the past 19 years.
I am proud to be a member of the John and Alta Boice family. So many years have passed since we left
Bountiful, Colorado; and as a poem says:
Out of this life, I shall never take things of silver and gold I make.
All that I cherish and hoard away,
After I leave, on this earth must stay.
Tho I have toiled for a painting rare to hang on the wall,
I must leave it there.
Tho I call it mine and boast its worth,
I must give it up when I leave this earth.
All that I gather and all that I keep,
I must leave behind when I fall asleep.
And I often wonder what I shall own in
that other life, when I pass alone and
what they find and what shall they see,
in the soul that answers the call for me.
Shall the great Judge learn when my task is through,
That my spirit has gathered some riches, too?
Or shall at last it be mine to find,
That all I’d worked for, I’d left behind!
Love to every body.
Delbert Boice
1006 Crestview Dr.
Farmington, NM 87401
505.325.6671
February 27, 1994
