my recollections of ernie faust
When we got to Castle Valley, one of the first people we found living there was a man by the name of Ernie Faust. He lived up the valley, and we heard he had tomatoes to sell, so we went to buy some. He was in his garden trying to harvest rows of tomatoes while in a wheelchair. Ernie only had one leg. As we got to know him better, we learned that Ernie had been a rather famous cowboy riding steers and bucking horses in the rodeos. One day as he was going out of the chute, the horse lunged against the side wall and smashed his leg. It wouldn’t heal and eventually they amputated his leg. Under those conditions, he was trying to make a go of it on his own in Castle Building the house.
He lived in a little root cellar that had six or eight steps down into a very small cinder block room. The roof on top was covered with earth. We also learned that Ernie was a member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Eventually, Ernie got someone to haul some poles and logs down from the mountains for him, and he began to build a house. From his wheelchair, Ernie could only get the poles up about three feet and couldn’t go any higher. Some of the men and young men in the branch organized work projects to help him. They hauled the poles and built up the log walls. Finally they helped build a roof and put chinking in the cracks of the logs to keep the weather out. Before long Ernie had a better place to stay: his very own house made of logs. In the Fall, we’d get loads of firewood and bring to him. We cut and split the wood and stacked it by his door. He had a big barrel stove that he used to keep warm in the winter time.
Ernie began to have trouble with his lungs. He had emphysema. He’d started smoking years before, and though it was destroying his lungs, he just couldn’t seem to give it up. One day as I was visiting with Ernie, he said, “I had friends—if you can call them friends—who talked me into smoking. Look what they did to me!” He put his hands in a circle and said, “If I could get a hold of those guys now, I would choke them to death!” Eventually he had to be constantly on oxygen, and in time he passed away. He was buried in Castle Valley and left his property to the Church.
He lived in a little root cellar that had six or eight steps down into a very small cinder block room. The roof on top was covered with earth. We also learned that Ernie was a member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Eventually, Ernie got someone to haul some poles and logs down from the mountains for him, and he began to build a house. From his wheelchair, Ernie could only get the poles up about three feet and couldn’t go any higher. Some of the men and young men in the branch organized work projects to help him. They hauled the poles and built up the log walls. Finally they helped build a roof and put chinking in the cracks of the logs to keep the weather out. Before long Ernie had a better place to stay: his very own house made of logs. In the Fall, we’d get loads of firewood and bring to him. We cut and split the wood and stacked it by his door. He had a big barrel stove that he used to keep warm in the winter time.
Ernie began to have trouble with his lungs. He had emphysema. He’d started smoking years before, and though it was destroying his lungs, he just couldn’t seem to give it up. One day as I was visiting with Ernie, he said, “I had friends—if you can call them friends—who talked me into smoking. Look what they did to me!” He put his hands in a circle and said, “If I could get a hold of those guys now, I would choke them to death!” Eventually he had to be constantly on oxygen, and in time he passed away. He was buried in Castle Valley and left his property to the Church.
