When I first started writing this column in April of 2013, I had little idea of whom Wally Smith was. This may sound strange since he was my father and we lived under the same roof, ate the same food, drank from the same well and rode in the same car, but he and I spent little time together that didn’t involve work. The few times he and I spent baching while Auntie Kay was out of town were occasions too few, but remembered vividly.

Recently, I came to acquire most of Wally’s weekly columns. They started in 1955 and ended in 1982 upon his death. In his files, I came across an article by John Woodworth published December 9, 1982, two weeks after Wally’s death. His accounting was very enlightening for I see some similarities that Wally and I share.

The following is an excerpt from John’s column to demonstrate the kind of man Wally was.

“Wallace and my father, known as KD Woodworth, became great friends. Each elected to weather the Depression in his own way. My father, at age 48, settled to a hand to mouth existence with four children on raw sagebrush property at the river edge. He planned to live off the land as his fore-fathers had done, using his skills as an engineer to build an irrigation system and farm implements from native materials and salvaged scrap.

Wallace chose to stick to his trade. To cut home expense he planted a small orchard, the latter often a subject for ORCHARD RUN ( Wally’s column) these past twenty- five years.

The classic, I suppose, was Wallace’s water wheel. On our Haywire Ranch, father built at least one water wheel a year for irrigation. He would start with a wagon wheel and an axle, then add arms of jack pine wired to the spokes, paddles made from box ends form the packing house dump, buckets from quart oil cans, and a flume from salvaged nail kegs. Most springs we lost our water wheel after a struggle in the river floods.

Wallace would have none of this, but he needed irrigation. So he scrimped and saved to build a proper water wheel, a compromise between KD’s ingenuity and his own determination to do it right. He had a ball bearing wheel, steel spokes, and was in a contained water race in the stream below his house. It ran trouble free for years at a cost of $1.00 annually for a water use license.”

I have hoped to locate those who knew Wally as friend, but so far have found none living, for even John Woodworth died two years ago. Slowly I’m getting to know Wally and I’m learning that he and I are more alike than I ever imagined possible.