I like this guy!

Meet Riego Hawkins, the brother of my Great, Great, Grandmother Aurelia Hawkins.

Riego arrived in the Salt Lake Valley September 22, 1852, at the age of four. Life on the pioneer trail and in his mother's one-room rugged pioneer home was all he knew. His memories were joyous because he was unaware that his life was full of hardship.

He enjoyed recalling one of his childhood capers when he and his friends dug a hole in the adobe wall of the old First Ward building, just above the Relief Society sisters table. When the sisters gathered around the table, Riego and his buddies took a long stick and pushed a frog on it into their midst, which caused "no few shrieks", much to the delight of the boys. However, when the Relief Society Sisters reached the outside, there wasn't a soul around. 

Riego had a great sense of humor,was an excellent story teller and enjoyed a good tall tale. One of his favorites, always told with a very straight face, but an irrepressible twinkle in his blue eyes, was: 

"A tenderfoot had made a beautiful harness for his team. but he had made it of rawhide. 

He went up the canyon to get a load of wood. Everything went well until it started to rain as he was coming down the canyon. The rawhide started to stretch and stretch and stretch, and the team got farther and farther away from the wagon which just stood still. 

The man frantically ran ahead with his team and when they got home there was no sign of the wagon. He said to an old-timer, "what shall I do?" "Just let your team stand there, don't unhitch them", he was told. The next day the sun came out and the rawhide contracted, and when the Tenderfoot went out about noon, he found his horses standing patiently in the yard with the load behind them." 

He liked to tease with tales such as this:

"Do you know that the eagle on top of the Eagle Gate? Well, every time it hears the clock strike one, it flies down and takes a drink." 

When the invariable chorus of young voices asked, "Does it really?" he replied, "Yes, indeed it does, every time it hears that clock strike." 

Riego was faithful to the church throughout his life. He believed in Prophets and in revelations. He was willing to defend the gospel, at any cost. When a young husband and father, Riego served as a scout and bodyguard for Brigham Young.

He was among those who toiled many long years hauling granite for the walls of the Salt Lake Temple. 

He also, with his son, carved the rosettes that adorn the ceiling of the Terrestrial Room in the Salt Lake Temple. 

Every night after a hard day of work, he would sit by the table covered with a red checkered cloth, pull the kerosene lamp close to him, take a bit of fruit to nibble on and get out his "Book of Mormon".

Riego with one of his grandchildren

His love of children was one of his outstanding characteristics. Many times he made toys for them, grew watermelons for them, let them help him with his work, entertained them by putting wooden shavings on their heads for curls or hitched up his team to take them on rides. One of his tricks that always delighted his small admirers, was to wrap a red bandanna handkerchief around his clenched fist like the kerchief around the head of an old woman. Then he would draw eyes and nose on the forefinger, and moving the thumb and finger, make it look like a toothless old woman who would speak to the children.

Blessed with a vivid imagination and creativity, he applied for many patents, including a bicycle stand, a safety coil oil lamp, and later on, a propeller for an airplane which was enclosed in a tube. He also worked on a perpetual motion machine, claiming that it worked, only "you had to give it a shove to get it started, and you had to start it too often." 

I'm anxious to meet Uncle Riego, I think I'll like him a lot.