Item Detail
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347
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English
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Hooper and its Sons of Ditches
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This book tells stories of Hooper, Utah and its founding. The book makes several references to the citizens of Hooper and their involvement in the Church.
"Former Weber County official Greg Haws has combined historical material with anecdotal memoirs in his book "Hooper and Its Sons of Ditches." The first 2,000 copies hit area bookstores the day before Thanksgiving. The title grew from Hooper's beginnings when settlers dug 17 1/2 miles of irrigation ditches by hand to bring water to the area for farming. "If there hadn't been a canal dug in the 1870s, there wouldn't be a Hooper," Haws said. "So we're all sons of ditches. I have a few aunts who feel funny about that title." Haw's mother, Marie Haws Beecher, typed up his handwritten notes and tried to get her son to delete some things. "She wanted to edit and censor some of it so I had to put stuff back in that she took out," Haws said. A few years ago Haws, a former county auditor-clerk-treasurer, began recording memories during lag times on business trips. As his mother typed them, he assembled his life in sections in a loose-leaf binder and later transcribed the notes to his computer. In the fall of 2000, Haws had a dream in which "These old men came to me, looking like farmers I'd seen as a boy with tanned, leathery faces and white foreheads where their hats had been. I don't know who they were but they stepped forward and told me to write the story of Hooper." Haws said he told the old men in his dream that his mother, the community's unofficial historian, would be a better choice. "But they were adamant that they wanted a story, not a history," Haws said. "Something that would give the sense of what life was like." [Deseret News]