He rarely if ever interjected with a hell or a damn. That would have been out of the question for a man of his ecclesiastical standing, but for a period of more than eighty years he managed very well with "oh pshaw" and "confound it."

       I can hear him now as though he were standing near me saying, "Oh pshaw, that's a lot of rubbish," or "confound it, we'll miss the train" when there was a load of fruit to be packed and taken to the depot for shipping.

      Clem, as he was affectionately known among all of his associates, was born about twenty years after the arrival of Brigham Young in the Salt Lake Valley. His folks had settled in a one room log cabin at  Three Mile Creek (now Perry), Part of what was then known as the Box Elder Settlement. In mid-winter, with the help of Sarah, the midwife, . his pioneer mother brought him into the world, the first of a family of five sons and three daughters, and laid him in an improvised crib made of a wooden box. He grew up hearing Brigham's name as a household word and at nine years of age listened to the "modern Moses" give his last public address at Brigham City shortly before his death in 1877.

      Clem's education was reasonably good for the time, having completed a year in the Commercial Department at the Brigham Young Academy, now the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

      At twenty-two he married a brilliant and talented school acquaintance from Provo and fathered three sons and two daughters before she died in 1902 shortly after the birth of the second daughter. He served a mission  for the Latter-day Saint Church in California during the early years of his first marriage. Later, while in his fifties he married again, this time a refined spinster from Salt Lake City, fourteen years younger, who bore him two sons.

Over the years he and his father, brothers, and sons maintained a produce shipping and retail merchandising business in Brigham City. He served in several city, county and state elective offices including the legislature and senate. His whole life, however, in spite of numerous other interests and acti vi ties, was devoted to ecclesiastical service in the Mormon Church. In addition to his early missionary work he served in a bishopric, as a high coucilman, a member of the stake presidency, and finally as patriarch.

      As his son I was accustomed over most of the years of my life while he was still living to have people constantly coming and going in and out of our home, seeking his counsel and blessing. His mind was a veritable storehouse of stories and experiences rich in Mormon folklore and human interest.

     It is from his relating and recording of these that much of the material for this book has been taken, supplemented by that whioh I have remembered myself along with other miscellanea from the family Bible, extensive family records and diaries.