High School  1924-1926

At Denver we stayed at the Fitzsimmons General Hospital. Being an R.O.T.C. band the army put us up at the hospital and we were fed army grub. It was my first taste of the army and I was not too impressed. In fact there were some of the boys that refused to eat the food that they served us and caused a lot of trouble. The trip with the band was my first time away from home. I was greatly impressed with the big cities and the bigness of the nation.

One of the most interesting experiences I had was working at Yellowstone National Park. The Union Pacific Railroad ran a special train from Salt Lake City to West Yellowstone every day during the summer months. At West Yellowstone the train was met by busses that took the people around the park. The Union Pacific operated a restaurant at West Yellowstone where the people were fed their breakfast upon arrival in the morning and their dinner prior to departing in the evening. The railroad employed fellows and girls from high schools and colleges to work at the restaurant during the summer.

I started early in the year to try to get a job and finally after my father and the father of Merrill Tribe, who went up there with me, exerted some pressure on some of their friends I got a job. We went up there on the 13th of June and stayed until about the 7th of September. The title of the job was "yardman" and I was paid $55 a month. My duties consisted of sweeping off the front platform every night, firing the boiler that made steam for the coffee urns, carrying out the garbage and raking up the yard. I also used to help some of the other boys with their jobs when I was not busy.

One of these jobs was cleaning fish. They gave the guests a trout breakfast and about 200 fish had to be cleaned each morning. Our quarters consisted of old box cars that had been equipped with bunks. The boys that worked in the kitchen had to be on duty at 6 am. As my work did not start until after the train arrived I was allowed to sleep later provided I was over at the kitchen when the train arrived at lam. I used to stay in bed until I heard the whistle of the engine as it came around a curve about a half mile from the station. I'd then jump out of bed and try to beat the train in. Some of the fellows that I remember that worked up there with, that year were Merrill Tribe, Fred G entsch, Chick Treseador, Bill Gunnel, and there were several others.


YEAR (FILE ) PICTURE AND SUBJECT
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1925 (1031) John Griffin with boss in Yellowstone

Our work was generally from about lam to 11, and then from about 4 pm. until 8 in the evening. I had my Ford bug up there with me and almost every day we would all pile in it (8 or 9 of us) and ride about ten miles over to a lake and go swimming. We use to have a flat tire on almost every trip. Each one of us had an assignment when a tire went flat. One would grab the jack. Two others would lift up the wheel and a couple of others would start taking off the tire. We became so proficient that we could fix a tire in a couple of minutes. I mean "fix" as we had no spare. We had to find the hole in the tube and mend it and then put the tire back on and pump it up. We had some wonderful times on this old bug even if we did have to overhaul it almost every week to keep it running.

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