The surrounding countryside, in which Anton Uran grew up with his brothers and sisters and the children of the neighbourhood, was like most of the uplands of the eastern Alps. From 1926 to 1936 he went to the elementary school in St. Martin. Every day the children had to descend three kilometres (about 2 miles) from the Hoher Karl and, at the end of the school day, climb up the same distance back home. When the winter snows were heavy, the village of Karl was sometimes cut off. When that happened, a neighbour would plough a way through for the children to go to school by dragging a fir-tree behind one of the few horses the village possessed. Even at this young age, the children were expected to lend a hand in the fields, at home and in the inn.

Anton Uran’s childhood ended when he finished his years of compulsory schooling. As he grew in strength he quickly learned from his father how to cut timber, and he spent long hours with the lumberjacks in the forest.

Franz Wohlfahrt, son of the family of Bible Students of that name in Techelsberg, remembers that Anton "was a skilled timber worker even at quite a young age." He adds that Anton’s parents were "very opposed" to the beliefs the Bible Students preached, and that Anton became more and more interested in their teaching from 1938 onward.