Monday, June 10, 2013

Grandpa Ray, the storekeeper

Did you know that my (Myrna's) Grandpa Ray Smith was the bookkeeper and the storekeeper at a CCC camp. That happened years after the Mexican/American War. In fact, that was after he had owned his own butcher shop in Huntington. He became ill, they later discovered that he had terminal lung cancer, and decided that he would train as a bookkeeper. He stayed with Fred and Pearle Smith, his brother and sister-in-law, in Springville, for a time and went to school. When he finished, he went to work as the bookkeeper at a CCC camp. He could add, so I was told, a long list of figures by moving his finger down the line arriving at the total, in his mind, when he reached the bottom of the line. He would then move up the line in the same way, checking his accuracy of the first time. He figures always resulted in the same total. 

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