Henry Ferdinand Reimann 1892-1975

              HENRY FERDINAND REIMANN
1892- 1975
UNCLE HENRY
Henry Ferdinand Reimann was a very special man in my life. He always treated me with respect and took care of my needs during the years 1930 and 1931. It was during this time period that I lived with Uncle Henry and Aunt Eunice. My family was always made to feel welcome in his home.
Uncle Henry was born in Heminford, Nebraska 25 April 1892. He was the son of Gottfried and Katherine Kramer Reimann. He was the second son in a family of ten boys and girls.
His parents were farmers and Henry often spoke of the time he and his older brother Carl herded the cows and horses on their ponies. Being a member of a farm family he was taught how to farm and to take responsibility for many chores on and about the farm.
Henry said, “ I didn’t go to school much after the fourth grade.” His ingenuity and abilities made up for his lack of education.
It was Henry’s Uncle Ferdinand who was the first to leave Nebraska and travel to Idaho. He gave such a glowing report of the land in the Greentimber area of Fremont County, that the whole Reimann family moved to Idaho and homesteaded land in the Greentimber area. The year the family moved to Idaho is not known.
Henry told about clearing the land for farming. A few acres a year were done until all the land was cleared. This homestead became one of the better homesteads in the area. He also said, “ My father took on some cattle to herd and I being some kind of a cowboy was given the Job. We had summer school in the old Perry Grubs house and when I saw the cattle coming I would get on my horse and drive them back.”
One of Henry’s jobs as a teenager was running a threshing machine for his Uncle Kramer and later a threshing machine for Carl Lenz. When he was about twenty years old he went to work for the Salt Lake Grain and Milling Company. He relates, “ I got a splinter in my right forefinger and blood poison set in. I had Doctor Hargus lance my finger. The poison went into my arm as well and I had it lanced two more times. I was about to have it lanced a third time and decided to go home and have mother doctor my hand and arm.”
“ Mother had me put my arm into a hot bath. Water as hot as I could stand it. The poison run out of all the lanced holes. It was mother that saved my hand and arm.”
During World War I Henry was called to serve in the United States Army. When they noticed his stiff trigger finger he didn’t have to go overseas. Instead of releasing him they gave him the job of training mules for a mule division. When the mules were trained he was given a job as “ hoisting engineer” and he helped build railroads.
When Henry was released from the Army he returned to Idaho and went into farming with his brother, Joe. Henry said, “ After the crops were in Joe and I worked on the roads. Hoe drove the grader tractor and I built wooden bridges between Marysville and Macks Inn.”
When Joe married, Henry sold his share of the farm to his brother Walter. Henry went into the threshing business. He bought his first machine from a Mr. Christian in St. Anthony, Idaho. This threshing machine was a 21 inch Case. One of the largest machines that Case made and was run by a steam engine.
This machine was not in good condition. Even though the machine appeared to be near new, the bearings were burned out and had several shaker arms that were broken. Henry made a good deal on this machine. Years later when he sold the machine, he sold it for more than he paid for it. EXACT REPLICA OF HENRY REIMANN FIRST TRACTOR
Getting the machine from St. Anthony to Marysville took some doing. It was hard to find bridges that would support the heavy load and many detours had to be made.
Henry replaced all the bearings. He said, “ I was lucky all the old grease cup fittings that were originally on machine were given to me. I replaced the modern zerk grease fittings with the original grease cup fittings. I never had to shut the machine down to grease it. All I had to do was to give the grease cap a turn.” He made and replaced the broken shaker arms. He stated” My machine looked good and I never had a problem finding work.” This machine ran for many years without a major break down.
At the end of the first threshing season Henry reported, “ I paid for my outfit and made an $ 800.00 profit. I was so tickled!”
Later Henry bought a smaller threshing machine to thresh peas only. This machine required a tractor with a pulley to operate it. His search for a suitable tractor finally took him to Pocatello, Idaho. It was here he found a near new Rumbley tractor equipped with a pulley. Rumbley tractors, while operating under a load soon boiled the water dry in their reservoir. The dealer, glad to get rid of this tractor, gave Henry a good deal. He drove the tractor to Warm River. Henry modified the cooling system by simply running a three- quarter inch water pipe around and around the reservoir and tapped the pipe into the bottom and top of the tank. This machine never again overheated.
Henry’s threshing machines threshed all the peas from Greentimber to west of Ashton. As soon as the peas were all threshed, he turned around and threshed the grain.
Henry bought some lots in Boise, Idaho. He built a garage on one of the lot and “ batched” in it. He did his own laundry and said, “ You should have seen the mess I made when I boiled my white and black clothes together.”
Later his sisters, Annie and Mary kept house for him. Henry worked at many jobs while living is Boise. He did carpentry work and helped build the Egyptian Theater. All was going well, working as a carpenter, until they told him he would have to join the Carpenter’s Union. He quit.
While Henry was living in Boise he once again met Eunice Walker. Eunice was now a widow with two small children, a boy named Paul1 and a girl named Eunice, called by the nickname of Billie. After a short courtship the couple were married 16 Nov. 1926. He added, “ We lived in Boise for a year and then moved to Warm River. I rented the Charles Walker farm for one year and the next year we bought it.”
In 1928 Henry built, out of logs, a two car garage on his property. He started accumulating the materials needed to build a modern log house. In 1929 he got a
1Rohr Paul short died 29 March 2002 at Pocatello, Bannock, Idaho permit from the Forest Service for the necessary trees needed for the home. In fact the forest ranger allowed him to pick his own trees. Henry felled the trees and cut them into length. He then hauled the logs to a saw mill and had them sawed on three sides. When this was done he hauled them to the building site to cure.
The government Civilian Conservation Corps had built a camp east of Greentimber and then abandoned the camp. Henry asked for permission to dismantle the camp and salvage the materials. He was given permission and during the summer of 1930 salvaging this camp became a family project.
Uncle Henry carefully removed every board starting with the roof and working his way down. Aunt Eunice and Billie would bring the lumber to Paul and me. We would pull all the nails out. We saved every nail and put them into cans by size. Later we would spend many hours straightening nails. Aunt Eunice and Billie stacked the clean lumber according to length. When we finished our day’s work we would load the lumber on the truck and take it to the building site. We salvaged everything that could be used. All we left was the concrete pad.
Our next big family project was to haul river stone from the Warm River. Henry used a tractor and a stone boat. We would wade out into the river and gather stones and place them on the stone boast. Each rock had be of a certain size and shape. I asked Uncle Henry why we were hauling so many rocks. He explained, “ Every rock that I can use in the foundation will take the place of so much cement.” A bag of cement at that time cost about fifty cents.
During the winter of 1931 and 1932 Henry dug the hole for his basement using a pick and shovel. He placed the dirt in a wheelbarrow and filled in some low spots a short distance away. After the crops had been planted in the spring, Henry put the forms together out of the salvaged lumber and made ready to pour cement.
Uncle Henry hired two men with the understanding that whey they started the pour there would be no rest periods or other delays. Work was so scarce the it wasn’t hard to get a man to agree with Henry’s request. He also gave them double wage for their day’s work. One man ran the cement mixer and the other man wheeled the wet mixed cement and poured the cement into the form. Henry had a long tamping pole and would throw in some river rock and then firmly tamp the wet cement in and around the rock. He allowed two weeks for the cement to cure and when he removed the forms he had a perfect pour.
Uncle Henry laid the floor joists and then sawed and placed the rough flooring. It was Paul’s and my job to nail these boards down by using the nails we had salvaged. We wished many times we had done a better job straightening nails.
Once the rough floor was laid the first layer of logs went into place. Holes were bored through the logs and placed on bolts that had been placed in the cement. These logs were securely bolted down. Paul and I were told to pound two small nails in the end of each log and then run two lines of binder twine and tie them to the nails and then finish driving the nails down flush. When the next log was spiked down the binder twine made a perfect seal between the logs. Thus no calking would be needed to keep the wind out. When the logs reached the square we boys again nailed down the rough flooring for the upstairs floor. Henry put the roof on and then it was time to harvest the crops. With the roof on the finishing work could be done during the winter months. This home cost Henry about $ 400.00.
Log house that Henry built in 1929 ( Cost $ 400.00) It was completely modern with electricity from a generator and water pumped up from the river by a water wheel
REIMANN HOME– WINTER SCENE
NOTE FIREPLACE CONSTRUCTED BY HENRY WAS MADE BY USING RIVER ROCK.
REIMANN HOME AT WARM RIVER- JULY 1972
UNCLE HENRY’S TWO CAR GARAGE BUILT OUT OF LOGS- NELLIE V. CHAMBERS BATE, A NIECE, STANDING NEXT TO HER CAR.
Although electricity for this area was several years in the future, Uncle Henry completely wired the house. Plumbing was installed. Charles Walker had to haul the water to fill his cistern. Uncle Henry dug a trench, by hand, down the hill to the river and installed an inch and a half pipe line from the river to the cistern.
Taking the rear of a wrecked car, Henry replaced the wheels with two flow through water wheels. Then he built a pump house on the river and through the use of a lowering device that placed his water wheels into the river’s swift current and used the power, thus generated, to pump water up the hill to fill his cistern.
Toward the end of one of his threshing runs he was threshing grain for Glen Mitchell. When he came in for dinner he noticed a gasoline driven Delco Remmy electric generator. Henry asked, “ Glen does this outfit work?” Glen replied, “ No, I wish it was out of here.” Henry offered him ten dollars for the generator. Glen said, “ If it is all right with Mary you can have it.” He asked Mary. Mary said, “ No, not unless you take the one out of the basement with it. Henry took two generators home. One generator he sold and he repaired the other one. He took this generator down to his pump house and connected it to his water wheels. It worked so good that he put a line up the hill to his home and used this setup to light his home for several years until regular power lines came to the area.
Uncle Henry started his farming career by using horses. As soon as tractors became available he sold his horses. He did keep one team which he used during the winter months for transportation to Ashton and back. When the State highway Department started to plow the snow from the road during the winter months this team was sold also. The cow was sold, and the chickens, they had, went into the pot and were eaten. Henry said, “ It was cheaper to buy milk and eggs then to have a cow and chickens.”
Uncle Henry loved the land and was the best farmer in the area. He believed the land needed to rest between crops. Each year half of the land lay fallow. This fallow land was never allowed to grow weeds. He weeded it several times during the growing season.
He was very particular about the seed wheat he used. This seed was run through a fanning mill several times to insure the weed seed and wild oats had been removed. Any wild oats that remained were picked out by hand. When he sold his wheat it always brought top dollar.
Henry decided to retire and looked at the Land Bank Program that was offered by the Department of Agriculture. He signed up and put his land in the program. The land started growing weeds. He asked the people in charge of the local program to weed the land and was turned down. He asked if he could weed it. The answer was no. Uncle Henry pulled his land out of soil bank. He returned all the money he had received and also paid a huge fine. He then rented his land with the stipulation the land would be kept weed free.
Winter months were long but Uncle Henry kept busy. He would get a notebook, a pencil and a 12" ruler. He would sit in his easy chair and jot down projects to do. He then would draw out the proposed projects by scale and put down the list of materials that would be needed. The next winter would find henry busy building a project.
One of his first innovations was a camper mounted on his pickup truck. This was the first camper ever seen in southeastern Idaho. Where ever they parked in a town a crowd soon gathered around to look and marvel at it. He also constructed a small pull camping trailer. I suggested that he set up a place in Idaho Falls and manufacture these units. Uncle Henry replied, “ They would be so expensive no one would buy them.”
Uncle Henry decided they would like to do some lake fishing. He designed an inboard motor boat. He used a small air cooled Wisconsin gasoline motor for his propulsion unit. He constructed the propeller shaft and the bearings as well as the seal for the shaft. He went to a boat shop to buy a propeller. When they told him how much a propeller would cost he looked it over and left the store. He bought a block of brass and spent a winter filing out a propeller. His finished project was very well balanced and worked well. He and Aunt Eunice enjoyed fishing on Henry’s Lake.
One of his last projects was the construction of an air cleaner for his tractors. He maintained commercial air cleaners only removed half of the dust out of the air the tractor breathed. His finished project with a few innovations removed ninety percent of the dust and he could prove it. When he approached machine manufactures with his idea they turned his cleaner down.
What kind of a man was Uncle Henry? He was a man clean of speech. I never heard him use foul or obscene language. We boys gave him plenty of opportunity to do so. Henry never had children of his own and really didn’t understand how to handle us. He was a perfectionist and we were anything but. At times he was hard to get along with because of this trait. He dressed well. I never saw him wear a pair of overalls. Henry never went into debt. If he couldn’t buy it for cash he would either go without it or if possible make it. He was a good provider and did in fact love his step- daughter greatly. Billie had epilepsy and Henry took her to the best doctors from Idaho Falls to Salt Lake City, Utah for treatment. Nothing seemed to work and Billie passed away in her early twenties from the disease2.
Uncle Henry lived a long productive life. In his eighties he developed a blood clot in one of his legs. The leg had to be amputated. The shock was just too much for his weakened condition and he passed away. He left a sizable estate to Aunt Eunice.
Written by Elwood W. Chambers ( nephew)
Material by : Elwood W. Chambers
Material by Helen Reimann Mardsen ( niece)
Pictures by: Elwood and Helen.
2Eunice ( Billie) Short died 3 September 1943. LEFT TO RIGHT: JO ANN WHITTLE, HENRY F. REIMANN, EUNICE ( BILLIE) SHORT, CORAL WALKER WHITTLE.
ON THE NEVADA DESERET GOING TO LAS VEGAS
HENRY AND EUNICE REIMANN- JULY 1972