Wilford Woodruff McConkie

Lyrad Kelly Riley - Shirley Ann McConkie - Lyrad Charles McConkie - Wilford Woodruff McConkie

“My favorite person in the whole world was my Grandpa McConkie. He was kind-of a rough-tough old cowboy and I just thought he knew everything, did everything, and was everything, so I was his buddy.  I went with him all the time from the time I was tiny I would cry to sleep with him when he came up in his old sheep wagon, and my mom and dad thought I’d get scared of the dark.  They said, “Grandpa’s gone to bed,” and I said, “I want to go to bed with Grandpa,” so I went out in the dark and Mom told me the Boogy Man was going to eat me if I went out there.  I didn’t care, so I just went up over the ditch up  to the  side of  the  sheep wagon and beat  on  the door  until Grandpa got up.  Then I would sleep with him, so after that they didn’t try to stop me from going to sleep with him when he stayed out.  But he loved to be up there; it was cooler and he liked to come do stuff with his cows.  I went everywhere with him in his truck, helped him always.  He worked with bulls a lot.   He  liked  his  bulls  to  be  champions  and to  look  perfect  so  he’d  put weights on their horns and lead them around so they were like show bulls all the time and I would help him.   I went with him to all the stock shows and to the Saturday cattle auctions.And he let me start driving his truck when I was around six or seven years  old  and  my  dad  would  get  gruff  with  him  and  tell  him  he  wasn’t supposed to let me drive, so then he says, “Well, Sis, we’ve got to get out of the sight of your house before you can get behind the wheel.”  So he would drive down the lane about a quarter of a mile, then he would stop the truck and slide over and he would run the gas and let me steer it because I was so little I practically had to kneel up on the seat to see out the windshield even a little bit.  I remember lots of times my dad would tell him not to let me drive,and when I was about 11, he would let me drive on the main highway, the Highway 40, which is the fast highway across the United States, but once we’d get out on Highway 40 he would tell me to pep it up a little bit, but I used to  be really scared to pull out there because of the semis and stuff that were coming, because I was only used to driving about 30 or 35 down the road.  But if my grandpa was driving, that was the same speed he went.  He didn’t go much over 35.  I guess everybody in town got to know his old truck because they could tell by how slow he went..  But it didn’t matter what he was doing, out in the hot sun or anything, I just wanted to be with him, so I spent most of my Saturdays, or else I’d sleep down there Friday nights.  Then when I got a little bit older I started taking piano lessons at their house, at my grandparents’  house,  so  I’d  do  everything  with  Grandpa  after  my  piano lesson,  then we’d come home and Grandma and I  would stay up half the night playing cards or Chinese checkers.”Source: Cassette-tape interview with Shirley Riley, by Alicia, January 2002