Otero County Stories

Monster in the Museum, A True Halloween Horror Story

2025-10-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a land of dark forests where castles sat on mountaintops and rivers flowed past villages as old as Christmas itself, a boy was born in the village of Westtunnen-im-Hamm in the Kingdom of Prussia.

He was a perfectly geometrical, strong, bright-eyed baby. His father, a stern principal at the local elementary school, gave the boy a name full of hubris, Hubertus A. Strughold. The name Hubertus meant “shining intellect” and Saint Hubert was the Saint that protected hunters.

His last name, Strughold, meant “stronghold” - like a fortress. His father’s only child was born on Saint Germaine’s Day, three years before the new century; St. Germaine is the guardian of abandoned people, abuse victims, and the poor.

Hubertus walked to school each day with his father who was a feared headmaster. The boy was a serious student who studied hard and did as he was told without question. But one night, a comet appeared brilliantly in the inky night sky and the young boy became possessed with the cosmic light.

As everyone in the village stepped out of their tidy timbered homes to view the once in a lifetime phenomena, soothsayers in the area began to forecast that plague, war, and disaster were in the making because of the comet’s approach.

The oraclers reminded the farmers and tradesmen that every time the comet appeared, kings, popes, and beloved people died, deadly storms developed, and milk turned sour. Dogs began howling along with the chatter and excitement in the air.

Rumors were whispered and past that some men might turn into wolves on full moons, ogres would show up in town looking for good people to display their brute-force upon, and bugabears would arrive to steal the children.

The town chronicler pointed out the story in his ledger that a millennium ago, the same time the comet blazed overhead in the 1300’s, the Black Death also arrived. A ship bringing spices and silks from the Far East had left the town empty except for nine families whose surnames graced all the community’s current residents.

Young Hubertus compulsively drew pictures of the moving trail of ice, gas and dust particles that always pointed its tail away from the sun. He wrote simple, cryptic formulas, drew triangles, boys climbing ladders onto clouds, and predictions that looked like mathematical spells on his slate tablet and in his copybook.

From that day on, the townspeople said Hubertus had his head in the stars. He made ridiculous predictions that men would one day fly and travel to the stars; he questioned adults if they thought dogs or hamsters could live on the moon. He filled his notebook with drawings and conjectures.

His father told him, “Heads up,” while they walked to school; he strayed in others’ paths on the narrow old medieval streets because he wouldn’t look up from his copy book. Hubertus wasn’t paying attention to where he was going because he was wondering if time could be stopped so people could travel faster.

His teachers and the neighbors shook their heads at this strange child. During the six months the comet was visible, the townspeople were advised by healers to avoid the comet’s miasma and be sure to balance their humors; medical salesmen sold anti-comet sugar pills, comet-protecting umbrellas, and gas masks for the six hours it took for the Earth to pass through the cyanogen gas from the comet's tail.

And apparently the comet prevention program worked; there were no cyanogen deaths when the planet whooshed through the tail; no one caught cometus vometus, so the comet pills seemed to have saved the day and was money well spent.

It was all very exhilarating to Hubertus. The last day the comet was visable, a full eclipse of the sun was set to appear. Hubertus knew that he should protect his viewing eye with dark glass to look at the eclipse, but did not consider covering his other eye.

The sun's intense light made “blind spots” in the boy’s right eye; he could no longer see facial features or read other people’s emotions from that eye, and when he looked backwards, he could only see forward. He was doomed to forget what was behind him and he began to speak only in the present and future tense.

And true to the soothsayer’s prediction that people would die, the boy’s father passed away three years after sighting the comet, when his son was nearing 13 years old. Without the protection of a father, rocks were chucked at the brilliant boy’s head as he walked to school; one hit him so hard that it cracked his moral compass.

His mother began to accompany her son to school, glaring at would-be rock chuckers, and holding her boy’s hand tight - it wasn’t a helpful solution.

Hubertus went on to attend the University of Muenster where, as a young student, he neglected the cafes and arts scene, did not visit historic sites, and paid no attention to festive celebrations.

The flag that flew over his school looked like a chessboard on a mustard background; he surmised it represented that success required strategy and that sandwiches were a delicious, sustaining element of life.

Hubertus became a medical doctor; Doctor Strughold focused his medical practice with research on keeping pilots safe and warm. He did his research diligently and profoundly.

When his country began a war, the doctor dutifully supported his leader and was given a military appointment as a Luftwaffe Colonel so he could investigate, evaluate, and experiment on the effects of high altitude travel to his heart’s content.

He began with guinea pigs. And here is a warning: if cruelty, crushing, starving, suffocation of living creatures gives you nightmares, read no further!

The Luftwaffe Colonel’s first experimentation was on how to keep cold pilots alive after they had been shot down into the North Sea by enemy pilots. Hubertus began his research by having his guinea pigs put in pressure chambers and testing their nitrogen levels after they stopped breathing.

They were sealed into ice water vats or left outside in freezing temperatures and their demise was charted; they were boiled up in giant tubs and autopsied while they were still squealing and struggling in pain.

Another trial team was starved and forced to drink sea water, and when they couldn’t, they were injected with the salty liquid and the results were charted. The subjects were given a glucose medication and liver biopsies were done on them without anesthetics - the medicine and surgery left no survivors.

The guinea pigs were locked inside of a portable air pressure chamber that simulated free falling from a high altitude without oxygen; some died and the rest were useless for further research so they were “put down.”

Juvenile guinea pigs were placed in vacuum chambers to simulate the effects of high-altitude sicknesses and oxygen deprivation. The rapid decompression caused them to gasp and struggle for breath, convulse, their jaws twitched, their organs failed, the lining of their lungs tore, and blood bubbled through their eyes and ears and noses.

The thorough doctor detailed his freezing, falling, and suffocation findings and shared his charts and graphs with the other doctors; he said this was important medical information for future flights from the troposphere to the exosphere.

As the winners of the war marched toward Hubertus’ leader from all sides, scientists began to hide or burn their research notes and equipment, soldiers took off their uniforms, and the culpable tried to disappear from their consequences.

The winners of the war decided they needed the scientists’ brilliant minds to establish new Middlewerks in their own countries so they could compete with each other in air and space and military operations.

The researchers were divided among the victors and they received housing and jobs with large salaries. They traveled to new homelands and several thousand scientists crossed the ocean and took a train to the desert to begin work.

They stood on a bridge and were given visas; they walked over the bridge covering a stream of water they would not bother to call a river, and eventually became citizens of their new home. Their wives and children, sisters and brothers and parents were allowed to join them.

Dr. Hubertus Strughold did quite well in his new digs. He wrote books and presented papers on topics like the “time of useful consciousness.” He received accolades and awards, traveled the world and became known as the Father of Space Medicine in his new country far from his homeland of castles and rivers.

Dr. Strughold met Walt Disney as they both sailed on the Queen Mary to England; they became good friends. He lunched with Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun, a fellow scientist from his homeland. The governor of his new state invited him to his mansion and he rubbed shoulders with the rich and powerful.

As his research continued, he developed a “Space Cabin Simulator,” a tiny space with an aircraft seat and an instrument panel. It had life support systems for closed loop cabin atmosphere maintenance and urine distillation pure enough to drink. Hubertus had learned how to keep the cabin pressure constant to keep an astronaut alive.

After men were sent to the moon, the Doctor's portrait was put into a university’s stained glass window along with other notable scientists like Marie Curie; a library was named in his honor; he was a much requested dinner speaker.

Dr. Strughold was declared the Father of Space Medicine in a shining gold space museum on a hill in the desert where he had first arrived in his new homeland.

When the space doctor was 71 years old, he married a pretty, blond, much younger, merry widow named Mary. They made each other’s lives very comfortable for the next 17 years, she with amenities in a comfortable home on her ranch, and he with the generous salary he received in his new homeland. He got a nurse and she got a purse.

It wasn’t until after the Doctor died peacefully at an old age, after his photograph was hung in the gold cube museum and a university and his name was put onto a library that his reputation began to crumble.

One day a museum visitor stood in front of the picture of the Father of Space Medicine. He shivered and seemed to be gasping for breath. The man had a number tattooed on his arm. He recovered himself long enough to take a picture of the doctor’s picture and he hurried off to contact other people who also had numbers tattooed on their arms.

It seems that researchers in his old country of rivers and castles had discovered evidence that had not been burned or hidden and witnesses that still remembered names and faces.

The Doctor’s subjects had been guinea pigs metaphorically, but literally they were human beings - prisoners of war, gypsies, citizens of other nations, followers of other religions, and most frighteningly, children, who fit so perfectly in tiny research spaces.

The Doctor’s picture was taken off the space museum wall, his stained glass portrait was painted over, and his name was chipped off the library. After his past actions were revealed and his legacy destroyed, a woman who worked with Dr. Strughold commented to the newspapers, “But he seemed like such a nice man.”

“There are monsters among us. There always have been and there always will be,” Rob Thurman wrote in his novel about survival, family, and hidden worlds and pasts of monstrous men. We tend to forget that Frankenstein was actually the doctor, and not the creature who is never given a name.

Dr. Hubertus Strughold was brought to El Paso, Texas by the U.S. government during Operation Paperclip in 1947. A 1946 memorandum at the Nuremberg Trials listed Strughold as one of thirteen "persons, firms or individuals implicated" in war crimes committed at Dachau. His picture was removed from the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico in 2006.

La Luz, God, Gold, and Glory - Part I

2025-09-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

There is some debate over the founding of La Luz, New Mexico. Some historians claim it was first established as a mission by Spanish Franciscan friars in the 1700s and called Nuestra Señora De La Luz (Our Lady of the Light). It seems plausible; Fray Diego de Santander was 110 miles north of La Luz in 1659 at the pueblo of Gran Quivira. The mission and pueblo dispersed in 1672 due to disease, drought, and Apache raids.

The Franciscans were diligent record-keepers and their archives are a dependable and important resource for historians; the friars documented their travels, geography, interactions between Spanish and Natives, births, baptisms, sacramental records of marriage, conversions, epidemics and deaths. No written evidence has been found that there was ever a mission at La Luz Canyon in the 1700s.

It can be argued that some of the first steps to establish the unincorporated village of La Luz may have begun with Juan Vázquez de Coronado, born as the second son into a noble family in Salamanca, Spain. The first noble son’s job was to preserve the wealth of the family; the second and following sons needed to either join the military, become priests, or seek their fortunes.

Coronado sought his fortune in New Spain (modern Mexico), and immediately found it on arrival by marrying the Governor’s twelve year old daughter. His mother-in-law was from a Converso Jewish family. During the Inquisition in Spain, Jews had three options: leave Spain, convert to Christianity, or be burned at the stake.

Coronado’s wife’s dowry was a large encomienda - a grand estate staffed with native workers who involuntarily labored for protection, food, and religious instruction. But the glory of being a wealthy landowner was not enough for Coronado.

Spain had become the richest nation in the world by forcefully taking gold and silver from the Americas. Coronado mortgaged his encomienda to hunt for the gold that was rumored to be in the north.

After encounters with the Zuni and Hopi pueblos, Coronado met a community of people in what is now the panhandle of Texas. They were nomadic Apache buffalo hunters and gatherers. They were not awed nor impressed by the Spanish, their guns, nor their "big dogs" (horses).

The hunters came out of their tipis to look at the men wrapped and hatted in metal sitting high on their “big dogs" and asked the Conquistadors who they were. The Apache encampment held several hundred tipis with more than a thousand people gathering together for at least this time of the year.

Plains Tipis

Spanish Conquistadors

Coronado left the hunters and continued toward the Seven Cities of Gold in the geographic center of what is now the United States. The big cows (buffalos) were never out of their sight.

The seven cities were straw-thatched villages with about two hundred houses near fields containing the Holy Trinity of corn, beans, and squash. A copper pendant was the only evidence of a precious metal the conquerors found.

Fray Francisco Juan de Padilla stayed in what is modern day Kansas to save souls and was eventually killed. Two other men who stayed with the priest hightailed it back to Mexico City and told the story of the Father’s murder. Fray Padilla became the first Catholic American protomartyr. Fray Juan de la Cruz, who stayed behind at Tiguex Pueblo near modern day Bernalillo, New Mexico, suffered the same fateful end.

Coronado traveled back to Mexico City where the royally titled and entitled “conqueror” continued to bankrupt his wife’s encomienda, the third largest in New Spain. He was the Governor of Nueva Galicia - present day states of Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit and Zacatecas.

Coronado encouraged others to go north by writing his own travel brochure about New Mexico: “The soil itself is the most suitable that has been found for growing all the products of Spain, for, besides being rich and black, it is well watered by arroyos, springs, and rivers. I found plums like those of Spain, roses, nuts, fine sweet grapes, and mulberries.”

Meanwhile, the people of the Great Plains began to see the value of those “big dogs” who had been making their way north without their Spanish riders. Bison could be hunted on horseback on a larger scale and feed more people. Horse technology allowed for raiding farming tribes quickly and efficiently - riders could swoop in at 30 mph and steal away with the ubiquitous corn, beans, and squash and perhaps a few women and children to serve as slaves until they integrated into the band.

Horses also took on a military role: nomads could carry more gear, transport more food, and travois bigger tipis. The Apache, Navajo, Ute, Comanche and northern Plain tribes took to equines like teenagers to telephones. While the Conquistadors were back in New Spain after their “failed” expedition, the Natives spent the next few years perfecting their hunting, raiding, and warring equestrian techniques.

Alternately, King Phillip II was idly considering more ways to wring mass wealth out of the Americas. Too much gold and silver, apparently, wasn’t enough for the richest monarch in the world. He appointed Don Juan de Oñate as the governor, captain general, caudillo, discoverer, and pacifier of New Mexico, a territory that had not yet been conquered. Oñate understood he must pay for this endeavor himself.

Oñate Crest

Juan de Oñate was the affluent son of the Noble House of Haro, a Spanish-Basque Conquistador who had received a silver mine encomienda from the King. Oñate's mother, Doña Catalina Salazar y de la Cadena, was from a family of Jewish Conversos.

Don Juan de Oñate married the granddaughter of Moctezuma, the Aztec ruler of Mexico, Isabel de Tolosa Cortés de Moctezuma, , who was also the granddaughter of Herán Cortés, conqueror of Mexico. Ironically, the etymology of the origin of the name Oñate is derived from the Basque word "oña" which originally meant “foot.”

Twenty-two years before the Mayflower left England, the entrada left for New Mexico to find riches for the Crown; 20% of any profits (the royal quinto) would be sent back to their blessed King. The promise of titles, encomiendas, land grants to settle New Mexico, and adventure enticed Oñate to finance 400 soldiers, 130 families, 1000 head of cattle, 1000 head of sheep, and 150 mares on a quest across the Chihuahuan Desert dunes and up the trail by the Rio Bravo River. Franciscan Friars accompanied the settlers to peacefully convert the Natives to Christianity.

The first capital of New Mexico spanning two years was San Juan de Los Caballeros near Ohkay Owingeh at the fork of the Rio Grande and the Chama Rivers, but in 1610, the capital became La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asisi. Oñate sent out scouting parties in all directions to search for gold and silver, but they returned empty-handed.

Without the gold or silver booty, the soldiers began to demand tribute from the Pueblos.

The Acoma pueblo refused to contribute the food they had stored for winter and Oñate’s hungry army, armed with steel swords and armor, guns and horses, killed over 800 Acoma people, enslaved 500, and cut the left foot off of all men over the age of 25.

Acoma Pueblo

Acoma Pueblo - Edward Curtis photo

The Franciscan friars got busy. By 1630 there were 25 Pueblo missions and 50 priests serving more than 60,000 Christianized Puebloans in 90 pueblos. Some of the outlying pueblos were abandoned because of Apache and Navajo raids. The conquistadors found the raiders on horseback difficult to control or capture to work on the encomiendas.

Around 1675, there were signs that revolt against the Spanish was impending. There was discord and quarreling between the missionaries and the military. The priests believed the soldiers were there to protect the missions and they weren’t doing their jobs because missionaries and whole pueblos were being wiped out by the Apache and Navajo.

The military believed its jobs was to encourage laborers to labor when they were reluctant, inspire Puebloans to feed them and provide them with female company, to search for their own gold or silver, and to look for new workers who would involuntarily enjoy the encomiendas’ protection and religious instruction.

The friars and the medicine men also became quite contentious with each other. It seems that most people were quite attached to their own native ceremonies and religion and not at all happy to see missionaries destroy sacred Pueblo objects and ceremonial sites. Medicine men were arrested, punished and sometimes killed for practicing “sorcery.”

The encomienda system seemed counter-productive.Brutal forced labor, exploitation, suffering, and pressuring Pueblos to work on their own lands to provide sustenance to their captors did not entice people to work well. There were crop failures and food shortages and the Pueblo people believed their misfortune was a result of not practicing their own religion.

It was becoming evident to the Governor that a conspiracy was afoot and he sent an appeal to Mexico to send more troops. Help did not arrive and the storm broke on August 10, 1680; the Pueblo Revolt was organized and led by Popé, a medicine man from San Juan Pueblo.

Pope' with knotted rope

Knotted ropes had been sent out to each Pueblo with instructions to untie one knot each day. When the last knot was untied, it was the day to exterminate the Spaniards, sparing no one - except a few women and girls who were kept as captives.

The Spanish settlers south of Santa Fe were warned in time to escape, but those in the north-east and west perished to the tune of over 400 people and 21 missionaries. Santa Fe, with its population of 1000, was besieged for nearly a week by 3000 Puebloans.

The Spaniards evacuated New Mexico and headed south to the Mission Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe del Rio del Norte de los Mansos in present-day Juárez near Paso del Norte, the pass between the mountains that led into New Spain.

On their way south, the fleeing Spanish took refuge at the Isleta Tiguan Pueblo near Albuquerque. The Tiguans had not participated in the revolution and many joined with the survivors on their journey to El Paso del Norte. Some historians argue that the Isleta Tiguans were hostages taken to insure the Spanish wouldn’t be attacked.

They stopped again in Socorro to regroup - the mixed entourage now included Spanish, Isleta Tigua, Piro, Tompiro, Tano, and Jemez Pueblo refugees and hostages.

Almost two thousand people were escorted down the trail that followed alongside the Rio Bravo by a Spanish supply train. Rebels shadowed the retreat from the north but did not attack the escapees.

The King of Spain gave the Tiguas a new home beside the Rio Grande, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. They were under the charge of friars of the Church of Corpus Christi de los Tiguas en el Reino de la Nueva Mexico de el Distrito de el Paso Canton Bravos.

Likewise, the Piro, Tanos, and Jemez Indians fleeing the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico were given a land grant at Socorro del Sur under priests at the Nuestra Señora de la Limpia Concepción de los Piros de Socorro del Sur.

The missions at Ysleta, San Antonio de Senecú, San Elizario, San Lorenzo, and Socorro were established for the pueblos and can be visited today. Although the tribe is federally recognized, the State of Texas has been contentious with the pueblo, removing their gambling license and implying they were more of a community than a tribe (for the last 300 years after moving to their present location).

Twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt, the King of Spain worried that the French might be encroaching on New Mexico and sent Diego de Vargas back in to re-conquer the Pueblos and re-settle the Spanish settlers. It was messy, people died on both sides, but concessions were made.

Spain’s best accidental weaponry was infectious disease; 95% of the indigenous population died or would die from smallpox, measles or influenza because of the lack of immunity in Native populations. The catastrophic death rates led to societal chaos and many tribes were completely wiped out.

The pueblos were also consistently raided by the Apache, Ute, and Navajos; the Spaniards and Puebloans developed an uneasy truce with each other to allow the Spanish soldiers to keep them safe. Most of the missions were reestablished; some of the people from the missions in the south went back north to their original homelands.

The presidio system began and individual citizens and territorial militias known as "vecinos," or neighbors, were common on the frontier. Locals armed themselves however they could with rocks, bows and arrows, lances, spears, or if they were lucky, a firearm. Their personal dwellings or a community building often incorporated some type of fortification.

Meanwhile, the King of Spain noticed that declining output and increased smuggling of gold and silver were affecting his bottom line. The price of goods from the colonies were cheap and goods made in Spain began to be heavily taxed to make up the difference.

Industries were not being developed since cheap imports were available. Entrepreneurs who became successful in New Spain returned and bought their way up the social ladder by buying titles from the King. They became wealthy enough to remove themselves from the productive sector of the economy.

Wages of craftsmen, builders, and food producers were at a stable low level causing the middle class in Spain to diminish. Their tax burden to keep the King flush led to the decrease of living standards and marriage rates decreased in Spain. Support for the safety and infrastructure of the New Spain colony was minimal.

Spain restricted New Mexico’s ability to do business with the neighboring United States and only allowed trade internally and with Spain. Smuggling was persistent. New Spain became tired of the Crown’s abuses and launched the Mexican War of Independence. In 1821, 300 years of Spanish rule ended and New Mexico became a territory of Mexico.

Farming communities developed along the Camino Real and Rio Grande and when populations grew too large, or when there were conflicts and disagreements, or there were ecological factors like flooding, drought, land or water scarcity, groups could petition the alcalde (mayor) to open new farmland for the spin-off group. This dynamic, known as "fission-fusion," is a flexible social strategy that helps balance cooperation with competition.

Some of the settlers were feeling the fission-fusion pressure and received permission to establish a community about six miles north of Socorro. Word of the good farm land spread and several families from Albuquerque, Belen and Tomé joined the new village of Lemitar. They were pioneer and conquistador descendants of Armijo, Chavez, Gonzales, Vigil, Lopez, Sanchez, Romero, and the Santillañes families.

Lemitar’s population in 1846 was a little over 400 residents. Governor Manuel Armijo was the last Mexican governor of New Mexico. After surrendering New Mexico to Gen. Kearny in 1846 during the Mexican-American war, when the United State stole 55% of Mexico fair and square, Armijo was arrested and sent to Mexico City for cowardice and deserting in the face of the enemy.

Lemitar Church

He was acquitted of the charges after proving his 400 Mexican soldiers were no match against the 1,500 well-armed Americans that entered Santa Fe. He said he surrendered to spare the bloodshed of the Santa Feans. After his acquittal, Manuel Armijo returned to his family farm and ranch in Lemitar east of the church. He farmed and ranched on his property east of the Lemitar church.

Governor Manuel Armijo

There is a strong local legend of buried treasure related to the governor. One version states that upon his return from Mexico, Manuel Armijo buried a chest of gold Mexican coins somewhere on his property. It was reported that he did not retrieve the buried treasure before he died and his brother looked for years for the buried Mexican gold coins. Another version of the story is that his brother, Juan, found the gold and reburied it across the Rio Grande near his home in Sabino.

In 1860, Lemitar’s population of nearly 800 people outnumbered Socorro's 523 residents. Persistent flooding convinced a group of families to try their luck across the San Andres Mountains south of the new settlement of Tularosa. The families traveled across the Tularosa Basin to the mouth of a canyon where figs and fruits and black walnuts grew.

Jose Manuel Gutierrez was one of the men who led the families south and east. They built a defensive wall, La Muralla, to defend against the Apache who hunted in the mountains that shadowed them from thousands of feet above. The people who founded La Luz took 400 years to get there. Their DNA is a roadmap from Spain - thousands of miles traveled for God, Glory and Gold.

(note: I recently worked with a friend from Dona Ana, New Mexico on her ancestry. The twenty some generations we traced to Spain was a history lesson that included Spanish royalty, Jewish Conversos, conquistadors, ranchers, farmers, Lipan Apache, and Pueblo).

To be continued…

Lessons in School Bus Safety

2025-09-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

as told by Barbara McDonald

Barbara is 3 rows up on the left

Anyone who will drive an enclosed metal container with a passel of children ranging from four year old preschoolers to eighteen year old “adults” seated behind them has superhero powers beyond those of ordinary people. School bus drivers vigilantly negotiate 20 to 30 tons of steel through traffic and weather while arbitrating low grade crimes from seat stealing to snack theft, consoling sad or sick children, waiting for late-comers, and sometimes pulling over and walking down the aisle like Moses parting the sea - to break apart a ruckus.

The bus driver is often the first adult to greet a child whose parents have departed early for work; their smiles and greetings frame many children’s days. The school bus driver’s skills are similar to those of referees, therapists, comedians and detectives, i.e., overhearing “Uh oh - what’s that smell?” coming from a rider a few rows down the aisle. The patience and kindness of the adult dealing with the chaos of children’s lives can affect them for a lifetime.

My mother, Barbara, had such a memorable bus driver. During the 1940’s, the country was in the middle of World War II and it was difficult to find someone to drive the bus. Most of the men who were old enough to drive had been drafted or joined the service.

Seventeen year old males could sign up with parental consent; some young boys had no birth certificates and lied about their ages to lenient recruiters. Men as old as 45 were drafted depending on the skills the military needed to fight the fascists in Europe and the Far East.

Farmers and ranchers who lived in the Sacramento Mountains were exempt from the draft - they had a nation and warriors to feed; these men worked from dawn to dark and had no time left to drive a bus through the mountains twice a day. Many women did not drive at the time and they had families and field work to take care of at home.

The community population was depleted to women, children, boys too young and men too old to serve, and farmers and ranchers. The bus driver who was hired to take the mountain children to school was exempt from the war because he had Strabismus - his eyes were crossed - one eye looked toward his nose and one eye looked straight ahead. His name was Burr Polson and he always had a big, big, cigar clamped in his mouth.

Burr was one of the most respected men in the Sacramento Mountains. The remote, narrow, canyon dirt roads near Cloudcroft had very little traffic, so no one worried that his slightly imperfect vision would cause a problem. The children liked Burr - his children were grown and gone and he had the patience of a saint with his new young charges. He combined his bus driving job with delivering the U.S. Mail - the routes were the same.

My mother told me Burr had a funny way of laughing; it was a process of silent chuckles. His face would light up; a broad grin would appear around his cigar; his fat belly would jiggle like Jello but he made no chuckling sounds.

The school bus was not really a bus but an old delivery truck with two wooden benches attached length-wise along each side that the children sat upon. Seatbelts were unheard of in those days so they bounced along the rough, potholed roads, the truck sometimes having to back up or down if they met another vehicle that needed to pass. The bus route went through the upper Rio Peňasco Canyon, Wills Canyon, then to Cloucroft via Cox Canyon. At any given time, no more than a dozen children were on the bus.

Delivery Truck/School Bus

There was a saw mill in Wills Canyon. Employees of the mill provided the bus with a few young passengers, but their population was transient and the children did not often last a school year before their families moved on. Most of the bus riders were children from farm and ranch families that had lived in the area for several generations.

Burr Polson was also the U.S. Mail Carrier for that same route, and sorting mail would always be the chore of one of the older children. Barbara loved that job. She sat importantly in the big front bench seat and at each stop she would get out of the bus and fold the seat forward so her school mates could enter or exit. There were only two exits, the passenger and driver side doors.

There were two big doors at the rear of the bus that could be opened from the inside but they were tied together with a rope on the outside handles because they had a tendency to fly open. The opportunity to sort mail, see who and where the neighbors’ letters were coming from, to spot an envelope rimmed in black which was a death notice, or to read the postcards from far off places made the job of getting in and out of the bus a small price to pay for Barbara to know what was going on in the entire world.

Riding this bus was a great adventure; it was a microcosm with its own social hierarchy, drama, giggling, gossiping, and occasional outbreaks of romance. Barbara first experienced puppy love on the bus. Sitting next to a boy on the bench near the back of the bus was a great place to hold hands discretely under a folded jacket and to exchange whispered secrets. She also experienced her first heartbreak and betrayal when her best friend sat beside her sweetheart in the back of the bus with a folded jacket over their knees.

Burr’s vision problems did at times have its drawbacks. One morning as the bus neared the road at Cloudcroft, a log train approached very slowly down the tracks. Burr stopped the bus to wait for the train to pass. The train chugged along in front of the bus and caught the bumper and part of the truck hood on the side of the engine.

The vehicle was dragged in slow motion down the track until the old “bus” gave up and turned loose of its front end. Burr’s depth perception did not work very well and he had mistakenly parked the front of the bus on the train tracks. No one was injured but they were somewhat shaken up from being tossed around like ping pong balls inside the truck.

The incident happened only a short distance from the schoolhouse so the students walked the rest of the way hoping they would be dismissed for the day because of the collision. They sat at their desks and discovered it would require something much more serious than a train/bus wreck to get a day off from school.

It was not always driver’s vision errors that caused bus incidents. One extremely cold, snowy morning, Burr stuffed rags in all the cracks and openings in the bus to help the tiny, overworked heater to keep them warm. They were warm and toasty, so much so that they became drowsy and by the time the bus arrived at school, all of the children were asleep.

They were actually not sleeping but were slowly being asphyxiated by exhaust leaks of carbon monoxide which the heater was drawing into the vents. When Barbara awoke, she was being rolled in the snow by the school superintendent. Cold air and snow finally revived everyone, but they were dizzy and had terrible headaches. They were allowed to lay their heads on their desks for the rest of the school day and discovered it would require something much more serious than CO2 poisoning to get a day off from school.

One morning on the first curve just east of Carrie and Leon Green's house in Cox Canyon, the bus slid off the icy road and became stuck on the side of the road. A dump truck was headed up the canyon so Burr got out of the bus anticipating help from the truck driver who was struggling his way up the slick road and he did not see Burr standing beside the bus.

The driver didn't stop hoping to make it to the top of the hill, and as the truck passed by, Burr slipped on the ice and slid under the truck's back wheels. The truck driver was unaware he had run over Burr's legs and he kept going. His legs were badly broken; the students managed to get him in the back doors of the bus and he lay on the delivery truck slats while one of the older boys ran to a nearby ranch for help.

Burr was taken to the hospital. The children were driven on to school and discovered it would require something much more serious than the trauma of watching your bus driver getting run over by a dump truck, hefting him into the back of the truck, and running several miles for help to get a day off from school.

On another occasion a car had stopped and in the shady bend of the road; the driver was changing a flat tire. The early morning sun was shining through a dirty windshield into Burr's one crossed and one uncrossed eyes. He didn't see the car and ran head on into it. As usual, Barbara was sitting in the front seat. The impact threw her into the instrument panel; the car rolled and she was upside down on the floor with the folding front seat over her. She had a huge knot on her head, a split lip, and bruises.

The only way out was through a side window because the back door was tied together with a rope. A small boy who had a pocket knife was hoisted through the window and told to cut the rope on the back door so it could be opened. The smell of gas and the sound of gas splashing out of the old truck caused Burr to yell at the boy to “Hurry it up.”

The boy came back to the window and calmly told Burr that he was trying to untie the knot because it was a “new rope.” He was commanded to “cut it now!” He cut the new rope, they opened the doors and the students and driver made their way out of the bus.

The crash happened near the beginning of the school route so there were only a few students on the bus at the time. No one was seriously injured but Barbara’s face looked a bit like a train wreck. The bus was hauled off and needed serious repairs. They happened to be near Barbara’s grandparent’s house and her grandfather came up, loaded up the children and Burr, and took them back to their homes, then he went back to his farm work.

Barbara spent the rest of the day with her grandmother; as the day wore on her bruises became more visible. Her recounting of the day’s adventure grew more grave and graphic and Little Grandma (as she was known due to her height) nursed Barbara’s wounds better than the Mayo Clinic and provided much sympathy and made all of her tragic patient’s favorite foods for her. There was much drama and commiseration and tending after wounds.

Apparently, the way to get a day off school was to be in the front seat of a head on crash, roll the vehicle into a ditch, cut a brand new rope, nearly total the mail truck/school bus, and be rescued by your grandparents who thought you should probably just spend the rest of the day on their farm instead of sitting in your desk with a cut lip.

The school bus was put back together and Burr started his mail/school children delivery service back up. Sometimes he would let two kids crowd into the coveted front seat. It was really special when Barbara and her friend, Billy Peek, got to share the front bench seat.

Burr never interrupted their serious and silly conversations as they discussed secrets about the boys they liked or the mean girls they didn't like at the moment. They fussed and experimented with each other's makeup and hair as they were being chauffeured around the bouncy mountain roads of their kingdom.

Billy was staying the night at Barbara’s the night her brother Toby was killed. along with two seniors, in a car accident. Billy’s parents came to fetch her and told them all the horrifying news.

Toby had ridden the bus with the ranch and farming children all those years. It felt like a giant chasm opened up in the earth when Billy left what was supposed to be an evening of staying up all night, popping pop corn, talking and giggling, just two friends like peas in a pod.

The next morning Billy was not at her bus stop by the mail box but her father was waiting there. He asked Burr if he could ride the school bus to town. Mr Peek explained that his car was not in running condition and he needed to make funeral arrangements for his son. Barbara opened the door, folded the seat forward and sat in the back on one of the wooden benches with the other students. The grieving man sat in the coveted front seat beside Burr.

Not a word was spoken by the children that morning. They strained to hear the conversation between Burr and Mr. Peek. The men discussed the particulars about the accident, spoke about Toby, too young, just getting started, they talked about better places and God, tears streaming down their faces.

Barbara learned that day the extent of Burr's compassion and wisdom. They were all desperately seeking answers about the tragic deaths of the older boys that they so admired. It was the conversation between the father of a dead boy and a bus driver that settled the fears Barbara had experienced the night before.

Burr dropped the children off at school and took Mr. Peek on to do the overwhelming task he needed to do. The students sat in their desks and glanced painfully around at the desks that sat empty.

The long bus ride to Cloudcroft and back each day was an education in itself. During World War II, bubblegum was almost impossible to come by. If by rare chance someone acquired a piece of gum, everyone would share it. Each person would have an allotted amount of time to chew and Burr would be the timekeeper. His big belly jiggled and he silently chuckled behind his big cigar as he timed the children on his watch.

Another time, the older boys stealthily passed around very risque postcards that one of them had acquired in Juarez. The El Paso warehouses and cattle market were near the border and after trucking vegetables or cows to the sale barn, it was easy to take the street car over to Mexico and back.

They were sneaking peeks of the cards in the back of the bus and trying to shock the girls (who had apparently never seen females scantily clad in underwear before). It was quite raunchy and the girls were dramatically disgusted with the salacious behavior of the boys! Burr was unaware of the immoral activity in the bus but no one told on the boys.

Cloudcroft School

One day on the way home from school, Burr complained of an upset stomach and stopped several times to get out of the bus and throw up at the side of the road. He finally said he couldn't drive because he was in too much pain. He asked one of the older boys to drive the bus to his son's house several miles away. He went inside his son’s home and the son finished the bus route that day. The next morning the children learned that Burr had died from a heart attack that he had suffered the day before.

They would have other bus drivers, but the gentle kindness of Burr Polson would define every mile into a memory for Barbara on the school bus/mail route where she had dutifully sorted correspondence from soldiers and sailors serving in Europe or East Asia, readable post cards from travelers visiting far away places, and sometimes letters sorrowfully written and mailed in envelopes sealed and rimmed in black.

Cloudcroft, NM 1940s

The Old White Woman with Many Stories - Part III

2025-09-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

Eve Ball and her mother, G.G., left Independence, Kansas and set off for the frontier after Eve’s stepfather died; people went west to survive, out of desperation, to reinvent themselves, to escape disappointing marriages, to perhaps achieve upward mobility, or to strike it rich. They escaped the social hierarchies and their histories; in the East, who one was related to often counted more than merit.

Those who were content with their lot stayed where they were. Eve’s husband, Harry, stayed; he remarried (or married - no marriage or divorce certificate has been found in any Kansas courthouse for Harry and Eve). Harry had a daughter with his new wife and lived happily ever after until he died in 1975 still living near his birthplace; he had been a salesman all his life.

Eve and G.G. traveled to Tucson and lived with family, then moved to Wink, Texas, then Hobbs, New Mexico. After G.G. passed and Eve moved to the Sacramento mountains, the autobiography she gave to those who lived around her was that she was raised on a ranch in Kansas and then on a ranch in Texas, that she was a widow, and that her mother had been the first female doctor in Kansas. It was probably easier to enhance a good story and leave out the struggle.

The term “BS” most certainly was invented in the West. BS translates into bunk, baloney, hogwash, hooey, poppycock, and malarkey. BS is synonymous with nonsense, deception, foolishness and trickery-talk. Before this technical Googley age, few would bother to check a hyperbolic lineage - and what did it matter?

In 1908, a man named Clarence Van Nostrand left St. Louis, Missouri and arrived in Roswell, New Mexico at the L.F.D. ranch to work as a ranch hand. He introduced himself as Tex Austin and said he had been raised on a cattle operation in Victoria, Texas.

When he later went north to work on the Vermejo Ranch near Raton, New Mexico, he claimed to have been employed by Don Luis Terrazas, the Chihuahuan cattle baron of the Creel-Terrazas family. Tex claimed he had been a captain under Pancho Villa’s revolutionary forces against Diaz - as had Tom Mix before he became a famous cowboy movie star in his fancy duds and Stetson ten-gallon felt white hat which featured a tall crown and a wide, flat brim.

Tex Austin, BS' er extraordinaire, produced his first rodeo in El Paso, Texas right after the Mexican Revolution ended. In Wichita, Kansas he promoted the first indoor rodeo in 1918; two years later Austin organized rodeos in Chicago Stadium, New York's Madison Square Garden and in Hollywood.

Tex Austin, aka the “King of Rodeo rode his promotional high horse through the Golden Age of Rodeo. In 1924, Austin took his newly created International Rodeo to Wembley Stadium in London, England to the massive British Empire Exhibition.

Nearly every former or present commonwealth nation participated in the British Empire Exhibition; one that blatantly did not participate was the newly established Irish Free State which did not give a fekkin’ flip about joining the bloody limey pom Brits' extravaganza.

At the time, the British Empire held sway over nearly 25% of the world’s population - 412 million people, and covered 13.7 million square miles - 24% of the Earth's total land area. The United Kingdom told the world that "the sun never sets on the British Empire.

On St. George's Day in 1924, one hundred and one years ago, King George V stepped up to a BBC Radio microphone at the newly created Wembley Stadium to open the British Empire Exhibition. His opening statement was the very first radio broadcast given by a British monarch. The King sent a telegram that traveled around the world in one minute and 20 seconds before it was read back to him over the radio by a messenger boy.

There were pavilions from every corner of the world. Canada exhibited a statue of the Prince of Wales carved from butter, the United States dodgem cars (bumper cars) were a favorite as was Egypt’s copy of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Other popular attractions included Queen Mary's Doll House, dance pavilions, an amusement park and the extremely popular Tex Austin’s wild west rodeo. Twenty-seven million people from around the world attended the Exhibition during the two years it was open.

Daughter, Roberta and wife, Thelma Bob Crosby, World Champion Cowboy

Bob Crosby and his wife, Thelma, sailed across the Atlantic with his roping team of horses to perform in the International Rodeo. The rodeo featured ten events including bareback bronc riding, fancy roping, cowgirls' bronc riding, steer wrestling, cowgirls' trick riding, cowboys' bronc riding with saddle, cowboys' relay race, wild steer riding, cowboys' trick riding, and wild horse races. They performed twice a day.

Bob Crosby performed his roping skills before King George V and the Royal Family - and 27 million other people from around the world. Mystery writer Agatha Christie and her husband were among the observers as well as most celebrities of the day.

The U.K. post office issued commemorative postage stamps, envelopes, letter cards, postcards and the mint struck medals for the Exhibition;; a glut of many other souvenirs were produced as well, the most common being a tea towel. (If sold today it would probably say, "My grandmother went to the British Empire Exhibition depicting 400 years of British supremacy and all I got was this lousy tea towel").

At the end of October 1925 when the exhibition had its finale, even after receiving 27 million visitors in two years and grossing nearly 151 million dollars, Variety Magazine claimed that the Exhibition was the world's biggest outdoor failure; the UK Government was $90 million dollars in the hole.

The closing ceremony was presided over by the Spare, who eventually became King George VI, even though he was second in line to inherit the throne. His brother, whose full size figure the Canadians carved out of butter, decided to marry an American divorcee and had to abdicate.

The 2010 movie, The King's Speech, is based on the British public’s reaction following the then Duke of York’s radio broadcast on 31 October 1925. King George V had been the first Royal family member to utilize the newly invented radio when he gave the opening speech for the British Empire Exhibition. His son, the future King, (future King George VI) was an embarrassment and an abhorrence to the Royal Family when he gave the closing speech. It was the first time Britons realized a Prince - chosen by birth by the Divine - had a debilitating stammer and could barely stutter his way through a speech.

King George VI Coronation

The patience of some of the public in the British Empire was wearing thin for the expense of the pomp and circumstance of royalty. P.G. Wodehouse's fictional character, Bertie Wooster, that the Exhibition’s only and greatest accomplishment was the Green Swizzle, a frothy, crushed ice, citrusy rum and absinthe drink served in a frosted commemorative glass.

Musician and conductor Edward Elgar said the self-importance of the Royal Family’s exhibition was "vulgar" and overdone. Writer Virginia Woolf was unimpressed; she called it "an outmoded piece of antiquated fiction." The Daily Herald wrote, "to this debased spirit we owe many unnecessary wars, the loss of much valuable blood,” after the reporter witnessed huge military bands, historical reenactments of battles, and a simulation of an air attack on London by firing blank ammunition into the stadium and dropping pyrotechnics from aeroplanes to simulate shrapnel from guns on the ground.

However, the genuine International Rodeo was the top event at the Exhibition. The cowboy and cowgirl bronc riders, fancy ropers, steer wrestlers, trick riders, wild steer riders, and wild horse racers caused quite a sensation in civilized Great Britain, but no good deed goes unpunished.

The rodeo was not popular with animal rights activists who attempted to get a court order to stop the event on the grounds of animal cruelty. Public and parliamentary debate followed for ten years after the rodeo arrived in Merry Old England and ultimately caused the passage of the Protection of Animals Act in 1934 which banned rodeo events deemed cruel.

Bob Crosby arrived home from England and became the three-time World’s All-Around Champion (1925, 1927 & 1928) and permanent holder of the Roosevelt Trophy (on display at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He did so at the peril of breaking every bone in his body except his left leg and spine. His right leg was little more than an atrophied shank that he strapped into a specially made boot.

Bob Crosby, painting by Peter Hurd

"Half the fun of being a cowboy is the stories you can tell later in life." a veteran cowboy once said. Wild Horse Bob, King of the Cowboys, had his share. He told a reporter he was born riding. He said his mother was being chased on a pregnant mare by the Comanches just before he was born. They got far enough ahead to stop for a minute; the colt foaled, and Bob’s mom birthed him at the same time. He said he got on the colt and they all rushed away to safety.

Crosby said his mother was a schoolmarm and he told the tale of his father winning her in a poker match. The winner of the game would have the opportunity to propose to the schoolmarm - apparently she accepted. Their son Robert was an abstemious man - he did not chew, smoke, drink hard liquor, gamble or curse. He attended church and was known for his courage and physical fortitude.

In 1930, a horse fell on Bob at the Phoenix Rodeo and tore his knee from the socket. A month later, a steer ran a horn through his thigh. He stuck his thumb in the puncture which was bleeding profusely and went to his camp wagon and poured coal oil into the wound. The next day he returned to the rodeo and won first place prize money.

A few weeks later he got in a fight with five cowboys at a rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas. They broke his nose and his cheekbone so badly that his wife did not recognize him when he got home, but he had won the calf roping prize right after the beating.

Three weeks later Bob was flanking a steer and was kicked in the eye. He needed 17 stitches in his eyelid and he could not see out of it for several months. When he recovered his eyesight, he entered a rodeo in Prescott, Arizona where his right leg was broken for the fifth time. Gangrene set in because of a cast that was too tight. He was shipped to Mayo clinic where he was set to have his leg amputated.

Crosby was being wheeled to surgery when he suddenly sat up, said he was homesick and was going home. He got off the gurney and went to his brother’s house in Roswell, New Mexico. He told Harold to find the worst doctor in town; the physician came to his house and sliced Bob’s leg open from his knee to his ankle. They both took pocketknives, heated them, dipped them in alcohol, and scraped the gangrene out down to the bone.

Bob Crosby's leg after gangrene

The infection appeared again in Bob’s big toe a few weeks later so he took his wife’s sewing scissors and snipped off the toe. Gangrene appeared one more time; he cut up an old tire inner tube, slipped it over his leg and filled it with cow manure - the red centipedes of blood poisoning disappeared after a few days of poulticing. A couple of months later he won $2700 in a steer cutting competition in Winslow, Arizona (about $52,000 today).

The "King of the Cowboys" was interviewed by Life magazine because he was among the best and most colorful steer ropers and rodeo contestants and held three world championships. A multi-talented performer, Bob also founded the Cross B Band and the musical group sometimes performed at dances with Ray Reed from Maypearl, Texas. Bob always put on a good show at whatever he did or whoever he talked to. At the age of 49, nationally and internationally recognized Bob Crosby retired and settled into ranch life.

Bob's old friend and promoter, Tex Austin, bought the 5,500-acre Forked Lightning Ranch near Pecos, New Mexico after his financially successful International Rodeo ended in England. Tex turned his new spread into a dude ranch offering wealthy and famous guests riding parties, picnics, tennis, golf, croquet, horseshoes, polo, motor trips to nearby attractions, and polo. He held cattle drives between his ranch and Las Vegas, New Mexico, and in Tom Sawyer fashion, had wealthy customers pay him to drive his cattle to the railhead.

The Forked Lightning was heavily mortgaged as Tex was trying to build up his operation; the ranch fell victim to the Great Depression and in 1933 was placed into court receivership. Oil magnate Buddy Fogelson and his wife, actress Greer Garson, bought the property (which was later owned in the 1990s by actor Val Kilmer). Tex and his wife opened a restaurant in Santa Fe called “Tex Austin’s Los Rancheros."

In 1938, Tex’s wife, Mary Lou, came home to find stacks of photographs on the couch from his old rodeo days when he was “King of the Rodeo Promoters.” A few weeks before, Austin had received a diagnosis that he was losing his eyesight. Mary Lou found Tex in his car in the garage with the motor running. Apparently, he was not willing to live without being able to see.

The International Rodeo at the British Empire Exhibition made Tex Austin a wealthy man but the entire hoopla left British taxpayers $90 million dollars in debt. They paid up for the King’s extravaganza and their commemorative tea towels hung in their kitchens for years. The Duke of York became King George VI; he worked with a speech therapist and was able to give encouraging speeches during World War II. His brother who abdicated, along with his American wife, Wallis Simpson, greatly embarrassed the Royal Family because they seemingly preferred Hitler to English democracy.

“Wild Horse Bob” Crosby. King of the Cowboys” was driving to his Cross B Ranch near Kenna, New Mexico, north of Maljamar and southwest of Elida when he met his Maker. Cosby was driving his jeep and approached a one lane bridge when he saw a car headed toward him. Bob veered and plunged 30 feet into the dry Pecos River bed. He was wearing his battered black hat. He had his boots on. The bridge over the Pecos River on U.S. 70 between Roswell and Kenna was named in his honor, as was a nearby draw.

Bob Crosby died at the scene of the accident on October 20, 1947 several months after Eve Ball’s mother passed away. Nearly twenty years later Eve and Bob’s wife, Thelma, would publish a book about his life: "Bob Crosby: World Champion Cowboy;" published by Wild Horse Press.

The Old White Lady with Many Stories

2025-09-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

After I finished high school, having taken all the secretarial courses, and having some college courses under my belt - literature, creative writing, and history, my father suggested to me, since I was rather aimless, that I might want to go up to Ruidoso and meet Eve Ball and ask her if I could help out and learn about writing from her. She was an author who wrote Western stories and did oral history interviews with the Apaches who had been prisoners of war in Alabama, Florida and Oklahoma.

My father, Clif McDonald, had lived for a while as a young boy at Bent, near the Mescalero Reservation. He herded goats and got to know some of the young Apache boys he roamed the mountains with. When he became a politician, he always enjoyed going to Mescalero to reconnect with the families he knew and ask for their votes. He thought Mrs. Ball was doing the Lord’s work writing down the old warriors' stories before they were gone forever.

At the time, I thought to my young, ignorant self, “I would rather poke a stick in my eye than hang out with an old woman in her 70s every day, writing down what even older people are saying,” and I hightailed it off to San Francisco to work as a secretary for an import company - rods and reels and creels.

I began to date a bicycle messenger who delivered and took documents around the city; he frequented our import warehouse waiting for signatures, we began to meet for lunch and ate our sandwiches in the park across from City Hall and eventually I met his parents. His mother was a member of a tribe from near Yellowknife, Canada. She liked my turquoise and silver jewelry and I told her my mother and grandmother often bought jewelry from the parents of Navajo students who visited their children at the New Mexico School for the Visually Handicapped.

We talked about the recent occupation of Alcatraz by Native Americans and the American Indian Movement and I told her about Eve Ball interviewing Apaches in Ruidoso and how my dad suggested I go meet her and offer to help her. “What are you doing now?” she asked. “Secretary, taking shorthand and typing letters,” I said. “I think you should have listened to your father,” she replied.

Now I am an old white woman in my 70s who missed out on meeting Eve Ball and the warriors who fought the longest war in American history: 36 years, from 1849 to 1886 (with some minor conflicts until 1924).

Eve Ball

The Old White Lady With Many Stories, as Eve Ball was renamed by the Apaches, did not start writing stories until she was sixty years old. She had been a school teacher in Ruidoso, though she was not from there. She had an adobe house built along a trail that women walked along from Mescalero to Ruidoso to buy supplies. They would stop at Eve’s house to ask if they could use her garden hose for a drink of water.

Eve did one better - she put a table and chairs outside with glasses and a pitcher of water and a pitcher of lemonade. She would go outside and sit with the women on their trek to or from town. Eve learned that some of their husbands and fathers had spent nearly three decades as prisoners of war of the United States government - they were Chiricahua and Lipan Apache, not Mescalero. She also learned from Mescalero descendants of the escape from Bosque Redondo of nearly 350 Mescaleros who made their way “illegally” back from the concentration camp to return to their sacred Sacramento Mountains.

It took many years for Eve to gain access to interview descendants and relatives of Geronimo, Victorio, Nana, and Juh. She made friends with their wives and daughters who she spent years convincing that they should convince their husbands and fathers to let her interview them.

Ramona Chihuahua Daklugie finally got her husband, Asa Daklugie, after four years to agree to come to Eve’s home. Ramona and her daughter chaperoned Daklugie on his Thursday morning visits because it was not proper to talk to a white woman or any woman alone. Ramona was the daughter of Chief Chihuahua and met Asa at Carlisle Indian School; they married in 1896 and had several children.

Daklugie had been a young teenager when he fought alongside his uncle, Geronimo. He was so young that when the Apache warriors surrendered in 1886, he was eventually allowed to go to Carlisle Indian School rather than suffer in the hell hole prisoner of war camps in Florida and Alabama.

At first Daklugie pretended not to speak English to Eve but his English was excellent after spending twelve years in school. His comments often displayed stinging hatred of the White Eyes (Anglos) and Mexicans; 5000 U.S. Cavalry and Mexican military had tried to capture Geronimo’s small band of warriors. He described how his Chiricahua family were POWs for 27 degrading, miserable years. In 1913, they were given the choice to remain in Oklahoma with land allotments or relocate to the Mescalero Reservation but were not allowed to return to their homelands.

Eve was intrigued with how consistent her interviewees’ stories were. There was no Apache written language; storytellers told stories around the fire at night. A storyteller needed to have their story straight as it would be passed down to the next generation in oral tradition - verbatim. Eve used shorthand during the interviews. She would read her notes back to her interviewees to make sure she had the correct information. She did not ask leading questions; she let the person talk to ensure she got the Apache point of view.

When Eve Ball began documenting the “oral history” from the last living Apache warriors, many academics dismissed her. They saw her as a teacher pretending to be a historian, not using primary written sources, writing on a “side of the story” that wasn’t yet valued because history is written by the victors.

Eve had to pay for her first publication herself; publishers weren’t interested, but once it was released, people saw its value to history. In 1982, Eve Ball won the “Oscar of Western Writing,” the Golden Saddleman and was also inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. A year later, she was nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom and received a special joint U.S. Congressional Resolution honoring her work on the history of the west.

To be continued…

Taxes, Tariffs, Tarantula Juice and Unintended Outcomes

2025-08-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

Sheriff Howard Beacham

During the Civil War, President Lincoln’s administration put a tax on alcohol to pay for the war and the tax persisted until 1920. By the early 1900s, nearly 40% of the United State’s national government’s income came from liquor, wine, and beer taxes.

In 1910, the federal government took in $200 million in taxes from the sale of spirits; the rest of the United State’s budget relied upon the sale of federal lands and tariffs collected at customs houses from American wholesalers who purchased goods coming into the country.

Taxes on alcohol were so crucial to the budget that brewers and distillers didn’t take the possibility of prohibition seriously. They believed the government would never give up such a rich source of income. But another source of taxable funds was added in 1913: the 16th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified which allowed the federal government to collect income taxes from every employee in the country.

Surprisingly, the income tax was popular among most people. The working class felt that the Gilded Age “robber barons” should be assessed proportionate to their wealth because it wasn't fair that the rich contributed little of their income and wealth to keep the country afloat.
“The New Man on the Job,” 1913. This cartoon depicts the “Idle Rich” joining the “Working Class” on the treadmill of “Governmental Expenses.”

Sixty percent of the federal budget came mostly from import taxes. Prices of imported goods were inflated because tariffs were passed along from the wholesaler to the retailer to consumers; therefore, the smaller one’s income was, the more they paid as a percentage in taxes from their purchases. The regressive import taxes created a larger burden on the poor; citizens believed that the new income tax would mean everyone would pay taxes fairly.

There were plenty of smugglers along the coasts and borders who snuck in goods to avoid paying the custom house fees. Since the vast majority of the federal budget came from import duties, the precursor to the Coast Guard—the Revenue Cutter Service—was part of the Treasury Department. The Revenue Cutters were established to prevent smugglers from bringing items into the United States without paying import duties.

United States Revenue Cutter Service

Sugar, cigars, French champagne and cordials, coffee and tea were transported in boats and also across Canadian and Mexican smuggling routes to avoid paying these tariffs. Sugar smuggling shenanigans alone amounted to American consumers saving around $6,000,000 per year in taxes. Offenders also sought to avoid the tariffs on protected manufactured goods - from lumber to iron, to machinery which was produced cheaper elsewhere and covertly conveyed across borders and beaches.

Ironically, luxury goods, which only the wealthy could afford, were also illegally snuck in: silk, lace, furs, diamonds, and French fashions were popular. One economist claimed that $11.7 million in silk, or 25 percent of the total yearly silk imports, entered through the black market.

The largest smuggling seizures involved imported goods from Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. English china graced carved rosewood Asian dinner tables in elegant homes; French haute couture swathed the bodies of chic women whose necks dripped with De Beer’s diamonds - snuck in tax free.

In 1914, customs officials arrested millionaire glove manufacturer Lucius Littauer, a former congressman and adviser to President Theodore Roosevelt, for failing to declare a $5,800 diamond and pearl tiara imported from Venice, once owned by Empress Josephine Bonaparte. He pleaded guilty to avoid jail, but he did not avoid disgrace; his constituents demanded he be stripped of his right to vote - but that didn’t happen.
The Empress Eugenie Tiara

Meanwhile, women were becoming a political force because they had few rights to protect themselves and their children and were not allowed to vote or run for office to enact pro-family legislation. At the turn of the century, married women could not own property, control their wages, enter into contracts, nor act contrary to their husband's authority.

It wasn't difficult for a husband to get a divorce, but wives didn’t have a separate legal identity unique from their husband's. If a woman wanted a divorce, the husband or a “next friend,” usually a father or brother, would have to petition for it on her behalf.

It was not until 1937 that laws allowed for divorce in cases where bigamy, desertion, insanity, and drunkenness were proved. Divorce had to be justified with a cause such as infidelity, gross neglect, abandonment, or abuse - which needed to be witnessed by someone other than the wife. The concept of "irreconcilable differences" didn't exist.

A major concern about getting a divorce was very few employers would hire women. The jobs that were available meant women would have to leave their children to fend for themselves during the work day and females could not earn enough to feed many mouths.

But women began meeting with other politically active groups to not only get the vote for themselves, but also to outlaw the sale of alcohol which was often the cause of wives needing to divorce. The alcoholism rate before Prohibition was three times current levels, and the addicts were mostly male - women were not welcome in bars.

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union joined a coalition of southern Protestant churches, revival evangelist Billy Sunday, former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, the Anti-Saloon League, ax-yielding Carrie Nation, and curiously enough, the Ku Klux Klan.

The evils of alcohol were clearly spelled out by Prohibitionists: poverty - addiction was a major drain on a family budget and the biggest hit to finances was when an alcoholic breadwinner lost their job. Women and children had no recourse against physical, domestic and emotional abuse caused by the disease: insults, threats, physical violence, neglect, humiliation, intimidation, anxiety, depression and shame inflicted on families by a loved one’s addiction. Social reformers were out to tackle these problems by outlawing booze!

The KKK imposed their prejudices into the mix through the influx of German (Catholic) immigrants who arrived in droves and began brewing beer from grains grown in the Midwest known as the German Belt. The newcomers opened beer halls and beer gardens instead of saloons. Italian and Irish immigrants, also Catholic, were wine and beer drinkers and were soon placed on the KKK’s and the “Know Nothings” aka “American Party’s” hit list.

American Party candidates began winning elections in several cities. Their platform included banning languages other than English, requiring Bible readings in public schools, restricting certain types of alcohol like beer and wine and banning beer sales on Sundays.

When Know-Nothing party member Levi Boone was elected mayor in Chicago, he raised the cost of a beer garden license by 600% and revived a law banning beer sales on Sundays - the day Germans took their families to beer gardens for food, music, and imbibing. The Anti-Saloon League said beer halls were owned by “enemy aliens” and even characterized brewers as “the worst of all our German enemies” during World War I.

Beer producers were soon boycotted because of anti-German sentiments. Adolphus Busch, Frederick Pabst, and Joseph Schlitz were financially successful and this also bred resentment and jealousy among some white Protestants or “Native Americans” as they called themselves (they said they were here first).

A lack of support for Prohibition was deemed “unpatriotic,” and many Germans chose to Americanize their last names: Müller became Miller, Schmidt became Smith, and Braun became Brown.

The forces were aligned: suffragists, anti-saloon prohibitionists, preachers, people with common prejudices, and politicians were ready with their agenda. With the 16th Amendment in place, funding for federal taxes could be transferred from liquor taxes to wage earners. The 18th Amendment was ratified thereby outlawing the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Hopes were high!

Prohibitionists predicted the sales of clothing and household goods would skyrocket. Real estate developers and landlords said neighborhoods would improve and slums, poverty, and crime would be eliminated when saloons closed. Social reformers conjectured that domestic abuse and financial hardships would disappear when drunken husbands and fathers became sober.

Chewing gum, grape juice, and soft drink companies ramped up production expecting drinkers would switch over to their products. Theaters anticipated larger crowds as Americans would look for new ways to entertain themselves without alcohol.

Preachers believed divorces would plummet - down from 1 divorce in every 3000 marriages to no divorces. Church attendance would rise; tithes would increase. Hopes were high!

The first effect on the economy was that Prohibition led to the loss of around 250,000 jobs. These included jobs in brewing, distilling, barrelmaking, box making, bottle manufacturing, label printing, coppersmithing, vat making, trucking, bartending, serving, cleaning, stockers, clerks, salesmen, hops and barley farmers, bookkeepers, stenographers, as well as positions in venues like nightclubs and dance halls with entertainers and musicians. Upscale restaurants closed their doors without wine and cocktails to serve.

The Volstead Act didn’t do what it intended - which was to stop people from drinking. Alcohol enthusiasts began consuming more hard liquor during Prohibition than ever before, and spirits accounted for a staggering 75% of all alcoholic beverages consumed in the United States because it was more cost effective to transport.

Alcohol consumption before Prohibition had been gravitating towards beer, but a new drinking culture arose, giving birth to libations including mixed drinks to disguise the taste of alcohol, bathtub gin, and moonshine. Bootleggers and pharmacists became wealthy.

The only legal distributors of alcohol were drug stores with a doctor’s prescription for liquor used medicinally. Charles R. Walgreen expanded from 20 stores to 525 stores during the 1920s thanks to medicinal alcohol sales. Walgreen said his success was due to the popularity of his newly invented milkshakes at his stores’ lunch counters. But drugstores provided the only legal source of liquor during all 13 years of prohibition, and many distilleries kept their lights on during Prohibition by selling to the Rexalls.

Drugstores’ lucrative “secrets” are even alluded to in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby. Daisy thinks Gatsby is rich because he owns drugstores. But drugstore was also an euphemism for a bootlegger - and pharmacists were getting rich during the Roaring ‘20s.

With the great alcohol abstinence experiment underway, Alamogordo, Otero County, and New Mexico’s citizens and visitors were among those who made a national cat-andmouse pastime between those violating the law and those who were arresting the violators.

The Twenties were ready to roar and Otero County had one lawman who intended to see that the roar was a non-alcoholic one. Howard S. Beacham, a strong law and order man who believed in Prohibition, was elected county sheriff in the 1920 election. He took the enforcement of Prohibition seriously and did his best to apprehend bootleggers, still owners, and others connected with the trade. Moreover, he pushed the courts to prosecute the cases according to the rule of law.

Beacham’s effectiveness in the war on bootleggers brought him to the attention of the Department of Justice, and he was chosen to be a federal Prohibition Agent. As an agent, he had jurisdiction in four counties in addition to Otero County: Chaves, Eddy, Lea and Lincoln.

Nothing in Beacham’s background indicated that he would become such an effective lawman. Born January 27, 1883, he traveled west in his late teens and early twenties, making his way to Colorado, where he engaged in mining. On his way to South America to get rich at mining, he stopped in Alamogordo and Cloudcroft to visit friends.
Beacham traveled into Mexico before he decided that he liked what he had seen in the new towns of Otero County and returned to live in the Sacramento Mountains in 1907.

In Cloudcroft, he went to work for Mr. and Mrs. L.C. Jones at the Virginia Hotel. He became a cook of wide reputation, and he won the hand of Mrs. Jones’ daughter by a previous marriage, Juanita Chase. They were married in 1909.

Stutz Bearcat

The Beachams later moved to Alamogordo and operated the Hotel Alamogordo from 1913 to 1917. He remained a restaurant operator until his career as a peace officer began. In one of his raids, Sheriff Beacham confiscated a Stutz Bearcat, one of the fastest sports cars of the time. This car became his official vehicle, and no rumrunner was going to outrun the sheriff.

Among the many arrests Beacham made, one was an individual calling himself Franklin Turner. When Turner was turned over to federal officials, his real identity became known: “Machine-Gun Kelly”!
Machine Gun Kelley
Sheriff Beacham’s most notable apprehension occurred by happenstance in Alamogordo. The Sheriff was working on his automobile at his residence on Indiana Avenue when a very unusual load of lumber came by, headed north. The lumber was of good quality, without knots, a fact that struck the sheriff as odd since lumber from the nearby Sacramento Mountains was never free of knots. Also, the lumber was dusty, indicating that it had not been cut at a local mill and freshly loaded.
Bootlegger D.E. Sherry followed what he thought was a safer route, Indiana Avenue, and had driven right in front of the sheriff ’s house. The irony of the situation was that Mr. Sherry, the driver of the truck, had heard of Sheriff Beacham’s no-nonsense tactics and had avoided driving on the main highway through town.
Beacham got in his car and followed the lumber truck; he pulled the truck over near La Luz. The sheriff found that it was a rumrunner’s truck, cleverly camouflaged with a load of lumber. D.E. Sherry was running his goods out of Mexico. The load contained 972 pints of whiskey, 60 quarts of Gordon’s gin, 60 quarts of tequila and cognac, 9 one-gallon cans of alcohol, and a ten-gallon keg of whiskey. It was valued at $7,000 (around $130,000 in today’s money).
On February 7, 1928, newspapers throughout the Southwest reported, “The largest single cargo of liquor ever captured by officials in the vicinity of Alamogordo was flagged down by Prohibition Officer Howard Beacham.” The load had been cleverly disguised in a fake load of lumber. Beacham promised the newspapers that he would avoid joking and “refrain from saying anything about wood alcohol.”

Confiscated Alcohol smuggled from Mexico

Another unusual capture of what newspapers dubbed “a booze plane” was effected by Howard Beacham on November 22, 1927. This was reputedly the first capture of a liquor plane in New Mexico. Beacham seized the plane and the five cases of whiskey on information provided to him by Special U.S. Customs Agent Juanita McDaniels. Ms. McDaniels often posed as a high-school student, a cover which allowed her to gather information on immigration and prohibition violations.
Bootlegger Plane
Bootleggers were often very shrewd in concealing illegal goods. A 1929 Nash Coupe was seized near Alamogordo in January of 1931. The liquor in the car, which included 100 gallons of bulk bourbon whiskey and twenty-three bottles of French cordial, was cleverly hidden in “traps” under the car body and in the back of the upholstery. Thirteen specially made containers held the bulk whiskey.
Rum Runner's Booty
The pursuit of “rum runners” traveling in fast automobiles was a dangerous undertaking. On August 13, 1928, Howard Beacham, chasing a suspected bootlegger, was speeding along when his car was hit by a truck, which necessitated a brief trip to the hospital. In his long career as sheriff and prohibition officer, Beacham had only two automobile accidents.
Two moonshiners, J. Oral Whitefield and William M. Horton from Eddy County, who built and operated a 355 gallon still, were arrested and pleaded guilty in court. Mr. Whitefield, who was very proud of his workmanship on the still, insisted on being photographed with it before heading off to federal prison.

Whitefield's Still

Howard Beacham was credited in 1928 with the “invention” of a large banner, which rolled like a scroll and allowed officers to establish a roadblock at a moment’s notice. A December 12, 1928 newspaper article said of the banner, “In numerous instances autoists have believed that they were being held up by bandits and attempt to crash the bars. When a tourist sees [this] big banner...he will be reassured, unless he has some of the proscribed stuff that is alleged to circulate clandestinely.”
Beacham’s vigorous and successful enforcement of Prohibition appeared to be his undoing for a time. Towards the end of his term in office, 1921-1923, he was not renominated for Sheriff at the Democratic convention because of his undue diligence - no good deed goes unpunished.
Beacham, however, was still a federal Prohibition Agent and continued as a Prohibition Officer for the remaining nine years of prohibition, 1924 to 1933. He was again elected sheriff in 1935 and reelected again in 1937. After his terms ended, he went back to the restaurant business and operated the popular Plaza Café. He also served as municipal judge and justice of the peace.
Howard Beacham died on March 9, 1963, at the age of 80, respected and beloved by the law-abiding citizens of Alamogordo and Otero County, and probably some of the law-breakers, too.
Unintentional consequences always follow the best laid plans: the federal government lost around $11 billion in tax revenue during Prohibition and spent $300 million trying to keep America on the wagon. Doctors in the United States were paid an estimated $40 million to write medicinal whiskey prescriptions and bootleggers and the bootleg market saw earnings of an estimated $47 billion over the course of Prohibition, or approximately $650 billion in today’s dollars.
Al Capone alone was alleged to be making $100 million a year in the 1920s, and was never convicted of bootlegging - but he was sent to prison for non-payment of his income-taxes - thanks to the 16th Amendment.

Rumrunners who managed to stay out of prison, such as Lansky, Siegel, Costello, and Dalitz, headed to Cuba and Las Vegas, Nevada to dabble in legal casinos and all the vices that accompany the vice industry.
President Woodrow Wilson changed his mind about supporting women’s suffrage when he saw how the “weaker sex” stepped up to work during World War I. The 19th Amendment passed to allow women to vote and Maria C. Brehm was the first female candidate for Vice-President on the ballot in 1924 and women slowly trickled into the political arena.
Other strange consequences of Prohibition include the birth of NASCAR and the Border Town. Moonshiners in Appalachia and the South took ordinary looking cars, modified the engine for speed, installed suspension springs to handle the weight of cases of liquors, removed the seats and filled the insides with illegal booze.

Good mechanics could make engines run faster then police cars. “Souped-up” Ford flathead V-8 eight cylinders cars were used to stay ahead of federal agents and local police while transporting illegal whiskey on curvy mountainous roads in the dark of night. Bootleggers still sold corn mash hooch after Prohibition to avoid taxes and regulations. The back woods drivers became race car drivers several years later and NASCAR was born.
The Border Town was also a product of the Volstead Act. Tijuana, Juarez, Nogales, and other border cities ramped up their entertainment offerings. Drinking, dog and horse racing, bull fights, boxing matches, cheap quickie divorces, and other forms of entertainment were just a short walk away from the U.S. border. Celebrities made the towns popular with their mere presence and glorification in the movies and gossip columns.

A NOTE ON SOURCES: My history contributors were my father, Clif McDonald and Dr. David Townsend, my favorite history teachers. My dad grew up in the Sacramento Mountains. His family ranched, farmed, and sheared their way through the Great Depression. Daddy knew most of the families from Dell City to Mescalero and collected their stories and old photographs.

Dr. David A. Townsend was a retired college professor, former Campus Director at NMSU at Alamogordo, a former member of the NM House of Representatives, and a well-known local historian and considered to be a leading scholar on the life of Eugene Manlove Rhodes and the State Constitution.

Sheriff Howard S. Beacham’s son, Arthur M. (Buddy) Beacham preserved many of his father’s papers used in this article. Gertrude Painter wrote an unpublished manuscript entitled “Howard Beacham, Alamogordo’s Own Sherlock Holmes.” A copy of the paper can be found in the files of the Tularosa Basin Historical Museum in Alamogordo at the Plaza Cafe on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the Corner Cafe and down the hill from the TB Sanitarium.

Prohibition Poem

The Volstead Act's got us down,

No good cheer to be found in town.

But a glimmer of hope, a whispered plea,

Across the border, there's a place for me!

The rumrunners whisper, the moonshiners hide,

But freedom's calling, we can't be denied.

To Canada or Mexico, we'll make our way,

And raise a glass to a brighter day.

Oh, the border beckons, a watery line,

Where legal drinking is truly divine.

Pack the car, let's make the run,

'Fore the sun sets, and the fun is done!

So raise your glass, let the good times roll,

Across the border, to save our soul

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Leroy - Part III by JR Hightower

2025-08-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

In late 1968, Leroy bought the Jet Bar from his old friend “Red” Burnett. The Jet Bar was named Henry’s in the 1940’s and 50’s. Unlike Henry’s, the classy nightclub, The Jet Bar had become a beer joint. It was located at the corner of First Street and White Sands Boulevard.

Due to The Eddy brothers’ alcohol prohibition covenants in the original city limits of Alamogordo, the Jet Bar was on the south side of First Street, outside the original city limits.

Leroy purposely let the bar sit closed and dark for about three months hoping the beer joint image would evaporate some. Then he started the renovations in the late summer of 1969.

New Mexico liquor laws only allowed a licensed premise to be closed for 180 days without risking losing the license. This was to allow seasonal establishments like ski resorts and summer fishing resorts to be licensed. To avoid exceeding that time limit, the Backdoor Saloon Package Store was opened to make sales; photos of the transactions were taken to provide evidence of commercial activity within the 180 days.

Highway 54, aka Pennsylvania Avenue, aka White Sands Boulevard, had been widened recently and all but about ten feet of the land between the building and the curb of the expanded boulevard was taken for the street.

The former parallel parking opportunities in front of the Jet Bar were removed and converted to a right turn lane. There was a five-foot concrete sidewalk next to the curb and about five feet of ground between the sidewalk and the building. The only parking was now behind the building where the backdoor entrance was.

Corner of First Street and Pennsylvania Avenue looking East

Leroy bricked up the front door on the west side of the building next to White Sands Boulevard; all the windows in the building were also bricked in. Redwood lattice trellises were set over the former windows and front door to mask the plastered over openings; desert plants were used to xeriscape the grounds on the west and north side of the building. The Jet Bar was renamed The Backdoor Saloon and Supper Club.

The new entrance was in the center of the east facing side of the building and was covered by an awning. A matching awning was added over the package liquor store drive-through on the south end of the building - customers could wait in the shade while the attendant fetched their beer and bottles to go. A cedar shake façade covered the east side of the building. The dirt parking lot was blacktopped and striped.

The drive- through package store occupied the 12' x 20’ corner of the building. The liquor store also had a walk in entrance on the east side. The inside was carpeted and had dark, wood paneling with floor to ceiling shelves on all the walls.

There were two 4’ x 5’ plate glass windows on either side of the drive through window. The customer window was a French door that opened in. The drive-up window sported a high shelf to set cases of beer or bottles on as they were rung up and paid for. The area under the awning was brightly lit so customers could count out their money, IDs could be checked if the patron appeared to be under age, and to thwart robberies.

The cash register sat next to the drive-through window. A good deal of thought and research went into the $2500 purchase from National Cash Register Company for the chrome plated, single drawer, four category register.

The cash register buttons were marked Liquor, Beer, Wine, and Other. There was no time stamp on purchases nor specifics on what was purchased, and only three rows of keys numbered 0 to 9: one for cents, one for ten cents and one for dollars.

The maximum that could be rung up for a single item was $9.99. A $15.95 item would have to be rung up $9.99 and $5.96. The cash register was electric but came with a crank handle that could be attached to open the drawer in the event of a power failure.

Leroy was determined to turn his “sow’s ear” property into a silk purse and began decorating the inside of the saloon. One of the big-ticket items was the chairs. They needed to be comfortable so the customers would be enticed to stay (and drink) longer. He found his chairs in Los Angeles and bought two hundred of them through a local interior decorator for $200 each. Good carpet casters were necessary to add to the feet of the chairs so they could roll over plush carpet.

The carpet he chose was 52 threads an ounce per yard, dark red wool with an extra thick pad. It was wonderful to walk on and never looked worn, even in high traffic areas. It was cleaned with an industrial vacuum cleaner each night to remove the dirt or sand that if not removed, eventually cuts fibers when walked on. The night watchman doubled as a janitor and the Backdoor Saloon was never left unattended while Leroy owned it.

About the time the carpet was installed, Leroy and the local decorator had a falling out. Leroy found a Nogales, Arizona decorator named Joaquin. Joaquin made a very impressive proposal and Leroy awarded him the job. He collected the agreed upon deposit and made a respectable start.

Joaquin installed some Mexican hand carved mahogany arches inside over the bricked up door and window openings. The carvings on either side of the bandstand made a nice framing effect for the stage. Joaquin added an elaborate bar and carved wood back bar and hung some very nice velvet embossed wallpaper.

The decorator collected his second advance and went back to Nogales to pick up the rest of the decor, tables, booths and dining room furniture. Joaquin did not show back up on the appointed day or the day after. Leroy called him and Joaquin promised he would be there in a day or two. He was a no-show.

After several weeks, it became apparent something was wrong. Joaquin claimed he was having trouble getting a truck that could be driven into Mexico to pick up the rest of the furnishings.

Junior frequently drove to nearby Juarez, Mexico to the bullfights, for elegant dinners, and to shop, so he was not shy about driving across a border crossing. He rented a 22-foot U-Haul truck, and along with his younger brother, Jim, drove to Nogales, Mexico to pick up the booths and tables that were already paid for. They set off early the next morning on the six hour drive through New Mexico and Arizona.

Jim and Junior found the address he had given them for his home in Nogales, Arizona; Joaquin’s girlfriend and sister were there. The women invited the unexpected visitors to come in and wait.

It didn’t feel right; after a couple of hours, Junior insisted the sister should try to get Joaquin on the phone. Before cell phones, making phone calls was a gamble of catching a person at the right time and place near a land line. Allegedly, the interior decorator was across the border working on their furniture order.

The women assured them he would be there presently, but the sister was getting intoxicated and began making strange remarks about Joaquin that made the brothers wonder if the missing man was in fact reliable.

Jim was taking Diamox, a medication for his glaucoma. They had expected they would drive the six hours, load up the truck, and return to Alamogordo, so he had not brought any additional doses of the eye medicine with him. Jim’s eyes would begin to burn and the pressure would become painful if he didn’t take his dosage on time.

Junior called Leroy and told him he thought they were on a wild goose chase and that Jim was hurting and needed to get back home. He agreed and the brothers left and went back to Alamogordo empty handed.

They never heard from Joaquin again and they were out the second installment. Meanwhile, Leroy had been dealing with M. D. Lohman's company, Commercial Products, in Albuquerque, for the kitchen equipment and told M. D. about Joaquin’s disappearance. Lohman showed up the next day with a truckload of furniture and equipment and started installing it.

Several days later, M. D. came in with dishes, flat ware, cooking pots, pans and utensils. He brought all manner of glasses, equipment, and an almost new nickel-plated National Cash Register Company cash register for the bar. He brought a brown register for the other end of the bar.

M. D. also brought a chef from Albuquerque; he told Leroy the man was an alcoholic but that he was a great cook and could get the kitchen of the supper club started. Leroy hired him and checked him into the Alamo Courts motel he owned so he could keep tabs on him.

Joyner’s Upholstery did a beautiful job re-covering the twelve person, half-round booth at the south end of the saloon. The black Naugahyde, diamond tuck and roll upholstery matched the new, plush black chairs on coasters designed for plush carpet.

The channels in the tuck and roll booth were filled with cotton batting for comfort and the classic style looked and felt like the spacious inside of a Cadillac DeVille from the 1950s.

The booth was originally built on a stage that had been used for a small music combo in the 1940's when it was in Henry’s bar. It was a private booth, four steps up, so VIPs could people-watch over the entire room and see the floor show without any obstructions.

Leroy had traveled the southwest from Texas to the coast of California and he had a vision of what he wanted the Backdoor Saloon to be. Junior and Jim knew most of the wait staff in the local area and made a list of the best cocktail waitresses and food servers in Otero County. Youth and looks counted for being on the list.

Minimum wage was $1.30 an hour in 1969. Tipped employees were paid 40% of that or 52 cents per hour but The Backdoor Saloon offered full minimum wage so staff didn’t have to declare their tips as taxable income. This made it easier for staff because tip records weren’t required if employees made minimum wage. That changed eventually and everyone needed to report their tips at 8% of their sales.

After the remodel, purchasing all the furniture, equipment, inventory, hiring, The Backdoor Saloon and Supper Club opened in November 1969 to a packed house.

The saloon was instantly a huge success and had a line at the door most nights. The waitresses were making $200 some nights and most always made at least $400 a week in tips- $600 a week was not uncommon. The waitresses tipped the bartenders 10% (or more) of their tips at the end of the night.

The original mythology of tipping was that it was an European acronym for “To Insure Promptness.” Originally, the tip was given at the beginning of the evening to ensure the service would be good but evolved into tipping at the end of the meal or event.

In the United States, tipping only took hold after the Civil War when George Pullman established his Pullman Railroad Cars and hired former slaves for low wages. They were expected to provide excellent service and did so in anticipation of tips at the end of travellers' trips. Other low paid or unpaid service jobs began to depend on tips following George Pullman’s suit.

Leroy hired Hotch Manning from the Holiday Inn as head bartender. Hotch set up and stocked the bar and the wine cellar. Manning was the Sergeant Major of the Holloman Base Hospital but that never seemed to interfere with him being on time or being able to work at the Backdoor.

The bartending staff was paid minimum wage too, even though they were tipped employees. They split the tips they made at the bar and had a dozen waitresses contributing 10% of their take each week to the pot for the half dozen of them to split. The bartenders were earning around $250 a week in their own tips excluding their wages. A forty hour a week minimum wage job paid $52.00 a week at that time.

In another of Leroy’s almost psychically intuitive predictions, he told Junior the chef was going to leave them high and dry some night and not show up. He told Junior to spend a lot of time in the kitchen and watch how he did everything so when the cook didn’t show, Junior could step in and take over.

Sure enough, the next Friday night the prediction came true, and Junior began his first job as Executive Chef. He was scared to death.

Chef and Leroy had produced a limited but classy menu. Junior watched how the lobster tails were split and deveined, then sprinkled with paprika and completely covered and sealed with melted clarified butter. The butter would harden and protect the tails from drying out as they waited in the refrigerator.

There was a Blodgett four deck pizza oven in the kitchen with one deck set at 500 degrees. A lobster tail that had been butterflied would be placed on the 500 degree deck and baked until it was golden brown from the heat and butter. The crustacean’s shell would turn into a bright red container for the tender, juicy, slightly sweet and slightly briny delicacy.

The sumptuous cloudy white bites of lobster could then be dipped into tiny ramekins of more melted, lemony butter and chased with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc or the buttery notes of a Chardonnay.

Junior learned he needed to prep a full night’s supply of jumbo shrimp to fry. At the Plaza, the commis cooks prepared the shrimp as it was ordered, but as the only cook at the Backdoor, Junior did everything by himself.

The shrimp were dipped in condensed milk and dredged in seafood breading; the tail section was kept clean of breading so it would fan out and stay open; this was for presentation and utility.

The shrimp looked larger and more visually appealing with the tail left on them, plus the tails added extra flavor and kept moisture in the peeled shellfish. Some people eat the tails - they are a source of protein, fiber, iron, calcium, vitamin B, fiber to aid digestion, and astaxanthin, an antioxidant that supports the immune system and heart health. And the crumb-free tail was a handling device so a non-fork-using piscivore can pick up the golden fried morsel and pop it in their mouth.

One of the best tricks Junior learned from the former inebriated chef was to take the leftover bread from the previous night, cube it, put the cubes in a fryer basket, dip the basket in the sizzling deep fryer until they were golden brown, shake the basket well, spill the croutons on blotting paper and sprinkle them with parmesan cheese and a little garlic salt while they’re still hot.

This process served a dual purpose. It made great croutons for the salads and also cleaned the oil in the fryer. The bread absorbed the carnivorous oil tastes left from cooking meat, fish and fowl. The oil would also be strained through a cone paper filter every night and changed every week.

It became a challenge and a game for Junior to see just how classy he could make the food service. The salad plates were kept in the refrigerator and the salad forks in the freezer wrapped in a cloth napkin so they would be cold when they were presented at the table.

He’d butterfly a jumbo cocktail shrimp, spread it on a small plate and add a dollop of cocktail sauce and garnish. The waitress would go to the bar, place a lime wedge in the center of the shrimp and have the bartender pour a little Everclear grain alcohol on it, light it and it was carried out “flambé.” The effect of the blue flame shrimp going out into the dimly lit saloon was dramatic.

A wine glass full of ice cream was served at the end of every meal. Typically, 31 Flavors Cherries Jubilee was presented, but this was changed to pumpkin flavored ice cream at Thanksgiving and Christmas, or strawberry with a fresh strawberry on top for Valentines Day.

In the beginning, after dinner the waitress would offer a complementary cigar out of a cigar box to all the men at the table - until a woman questioned the practice. The woman was placated by taking a cigar for herself, but Junior didn’t know what to offer the “gentler” sex after the meal that was comparable to a cigar, so he stopped the practice altogether.

Beer at other establishments in Alamogordo were around $1 a bottle, draft was 60 cents a glass. High balls were $1.50, calls were about $2.00. The Back Door was also providing entertainment and trying to keep the standards up (and the riff raff out).

Back Door prices after happy hour were $2 beers, highballs were $2.25, calls were $3, and draft-beer was not served. Leroy thought the stale beer odor typical in bars came from kegged beer and that draft beer was not “classy.” There was a $2 minimum after happy hour so a customer either needed to order another drink or “they didn’t need to go home, but they couldn’t stay there!”

A big Hi-D-Ho hamburger at the time cost 85 cents. Junior used his training from Chef Foster and made ground beef from the trimmings of 10 oz top sirloin steaks. The Back Door sold the first $2 hamburger in Alamogordo. It was a half-pounder on a fresh seeded 5 inch bun, thick slices of huge beef steak tomatoes, leaf lettuce and a large, bun-sized slice of jumbo white onion. A large dill pickle wedge and fresh cut French fries circled the burger on the plate.

There were some complaints about paying $2 for a burger; but so many were sold that Junior couldn’t keep up with grinding hamburger and he had to buy extra ground sirloin from Walter Dill’s butcher shop to keep up. The menu offered the 10-12 oz Lobster tail, jumbo fried or broiled shrimp, New York steaks, and 6 oz and 10 oz filet mignons wrapped in bacon.

“Surf and Turf” included a 6 oz filet and a lobster tail. Filets were cut from the upper end of the tenders and the bottom tenders were cut for “chateaubriand for two”, chef sliced at the table. The biggest seller was the10 oz Top Sirloin. On Friday and Saturday night, Prime Rib and au jus was offered.

When Junior took a date out for dinner, he sometimes thought some of the women had chosen something cheaper rather than an expensive item they really wanted from the menu. He thought it would be special for females not to have prices on their menus, so he had extra menus without prices printed.

The menus were red leather covered and held a gold cord running between the covers to keep the printed parchment insert in place. To tell the menus apart, the priced menus’ gold tassels emerged from the top of the menu and the ones without prices were on the bottom. The gentlemen were handed a menu with prices and the ladies one without prices. If Leroy or someone else specifically requested paying for the meal, the table got menus without prices. Junior was proud of being so clever and Leroy and Cecilia thought it was “cute.”

But again, due to the times, a woman questioned the motive of not being given prices on her menu. She felt the supper club was discriminating against her. Junior was left speechless and the priceless menus weren’t used again except for catered or comped parties.

The entertainment was the biggest expense at the supper club. As he had at the air base, Leroy once again hired bands that played in Las Vegas and needed a stopping point when they traveled to perform in New Orleans. The bands cost between $3,500 to $6,500 a week, plus rooms, and discounted food and bar tabs.

Perhaps one of the most beloved bands that played at the Back Door in Alamogordo was, surprisingly, a group of Maori natives from New Zealand. They began their careers as the best musicians and most famous band from Down Under at the time. They had their own TV program in Aotearoa, toured the islands, and recorded albums. They also played Australia, Hawaii, and then seven times for the troops in Vietnam.

The Quin Tikis knew how to play everything - oldies, show tunes, jazz, blues, rock, country and western, and Top 40. They also had a floor show in Polynesium dress using traditional Māori sticks, Tī Rākau, in a performance that employs rhythm, coordination, and teamwork while singing chants and songs.

Their name, “Quin” means five, and “tiki” is the Maori word for the little, carved jade dolls that people wear for good luck charms. Weazel Taiaroa brought the band together: he, Keri, Kevin, Phil and the drummer, Gary. They were hired in Las Vegas.

The band members were hard working, total professionals with a wardrobe of seven different matching costumes - one for each day of the week. They did their own arrangements and set lists.

The Quin Tikis would always deliver whatever the room wanted. The Back Door crowd adopted them. Make Friends With the Quin Tikis was the name of one of their albums; it was apt.

Meanwhile, among the three liquor stores Leroy owned, the Alamo Courts, The Back Door Saloon, money was flowing like water - downhill. The high dollar Las Vegas acts, the bartenders, waitresses, bouncers, night watchmen, cleaners, clerks, bookkeepers, accountants, equipment and building maintenance, food and beverage inventory, advertising, salaries, taxes, utilities, improvements, and sundry other costs caused Peter to pay Paul by transferring funds from the profitable package stores to the struggling motel and the under-water finances of the saloon and supper club.

Bankers began eyeing Leroy’s collateral, discussing equity, calculating outstanding loan balances on their internal adding machines. Their shadows darkened the agreements both parties had signed under more optimistic circumstances. Friendships between the borrowers and the bankers became formal and stoic. Leroy and Junior and Jim were moving the deck chairs on their Titanic around as quickly as possible.

Hemingway related the dispossessed feeling of financial loss in his book “The Sun Also Rises.” Bill, a writer, asks Mike, a Scottsman and WWI veteran down on his luck, how he lost all his money and ended up broke. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually, then suddenly."

Alamogordo Courts Motel

Quin Tikis Youtube:

https://www.audioculture.co.nz/profile/the-quin-tikis

Leroy, Part II by JR Hightower

2025-07-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Leroy was born in Manitou, southwest Oklahoma, on January 24, 1918. He grew up in the area and went to school in Frederick. His dad, J. T. Hightower, known to the family as Pop, mother, Gertrude, and sons Harold and Leroy, lost the house they lived in early in the Depression. They all moved into an oil lease shack. It was built for a drilling crew when they were excavating for oil. The shed was deserted and rent-free.

Gertrude cleaned up the place, took rolled up newspaper to fill the cracks between the shrunken boards of the walls, then papered over the walls and rolled up chinking with more newsprint, a paintbrush and a paste of flour, salt and water. Harold and Leroy slept in one bed; some winter mornings they would wake up and find the bed covered with a dusting of snow that had blown in through the cracks in the shack walls where the newspaper didn’t hold. Pop said, “There was nothing between them and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence.”

The Hightowers fared better than many of their neighbors because they had a milk cow so they had plenty of milk and butter. They also had a few domestic chickens so the family also had eggs. With a bag of beans, a sack of flour, and an occasional side of bacon, they could eat well on a pot of pinto beans, eggs, biscuits with butter, and all the milk they could drink. They also hunted to add protein to their diets.

After the hard times in Oklahoma, Leroy would not eat rabbit. He said he ate so much rabbit during the Depression that he swore he would never go rabbiting again. At that time, a box of fifty 22 caliber short shells cost about a quarter. Pop’s rule was one shell, one critter. Leroy became an accurate sharp shooter. Leroy’s oldest sibling was Mary. She was married to Gordon Herrell and had her own family. Leroy went to live with her and Gordon for a while and always spoke fondly of his time with “Sister.”

As the Great Depression raged on, Pop was happy to get a job working on a WPA (Works Progress Administration) project on a highway. The previous “powder monkey” died in an accidental explosion, leaving the job open. Pop wanted the job because even though it was dangerous, it paid twice as much as a regular laborer, twenty cents a day. He got the job.

Harold was working in the fields around Manitou, so Leroy went with Pop and became the powder monkey’s “Mud Man.” Dynamite on the road crew was used mostly to break up big rocks and boulders, not to blow up whole mountains.

Pop and Leroy would be called over to a rock too big to be moved by manpower or mule. He would put a fuse in a stick of dynamite and set it on the rock, then Leroy would plop a shovelful of heavy mud on the dynamite to direct the charge at the rock. Pop would light the fuse and they would run for cover. If the dynamite was not covered with mud, the explosion would only result in a loud bang and would not break up the rock.

Leroy complained about sometimes having to run “a long way away” to get mud. The consistency of the mud made a difference in how well the dynamite worked. If the mud was too thin or too sandy, it took more dynamite to break up the rock. If they did not use the correct amount of dynamite, they would have to blast it again using more dynamite and the job would be shut down while they had “fire in the hole.”

Later, the WPA provided a wheelbarrow, and Pop was able to blow up rocks faster because Leroy could mix up a whole batch of good mud and wheel it along with them.

During this time, Leroy’s mother Gertrude was diagnosed with liver cancer. He nursed his mother as he watched her wither away. She went from a hearty, healthy woman to a 70-pound invalid over a miserable two years and died in 1935 when Leroy was seventeen.

The oldest brother in the family was C. T. Hightower. By the middle of the Depression, he had graduated from high school and went to college at the University of Texas in Austin. With what little help everyone in the family could give him, he managed to work his way through the University of Texas by waiting tables and working odd jobs while attending classes. He earned a degree and his teaching certificate. The certificate enabled him to get a job teaching school in Canadian, Texas.

The family was extremely proud of C. T. because he had a career that gave him security when job security was extremely rare. Several years later, C.T. moved from Canadian to Liberal, Kansas where he gave up teaching and went to work for an oil company. He met and married a city girl, Jean.

It was a big deal when they came to visit; the Hightowers were a little intimidated by the sophisticated wife of C.T. who shopped in ready made stores in a big city and had not lived a hand-to-mouth, hard scrabble life like they had. There was some tension among the adults when she was coming to visit that she might judge their ways.

Leroy working as a soda jerk

During his high school years, Leroy got a job in a drug store working behind the soda fountain counter as a soda jerk. This job was a life-changing event for him. He liked the work and especially all the local girls who frequented the short, spinning stools in front of him at the soda fountain.

Because Leroy had to work, he was one credit short to be able to graduate with his 1936 high school class and did not receive his diploma. He went to Canadian, Texas where his brother, C. T. was teaching school.

Leroy got a job in the Rexall Drug Store as an “experienced” soda jerk. The affable young man came to know all the salesmen that sold and delivered candy to the drugstore. He learned that the candy salesmen from Whitman’s, King Candy, Mrs. Stover's Bungalow Candies (to become Russell Stover’s Candies in the early 1940's) made good money.

After working at the soda fountain for a while, getting to know everyone, and garnering the adoration of the female population in Canadian, nineteen year old Leroy apparently got a little cocky. The druggist and operator of the Rexall Drugstore said, “Hightower, what you need is to be fired three times in a row, and I’m going to start with number one.”

A friend of Leroy’s had a car and no job, so with another unemployed friend, the three of them loaded up the car and drove west on Route 66 to Albuquerque, New Mexico. They found the local YMCA and checked in. Leroy was surprised and proud of the fact that in 1938, all three of them had a job before the sun went down on their first day in Albuquerque. They had arrived in “The Land of Enchantment.”

Using his contacts from working in the drug stores in Oklahoma and Texas, Leroy contacted Mr. King of the King's Candy Company in Ft. Worth, Texas. In another of those life-changing coincidences, the western New Mexico/Arizona route man had recently died, and the route was open. The salesman that had befriended Leroy in Canadian, Texas vouched for Leroy and he got the job.

He loved his new occupation where he had to be a fancy dresser and drive a nice car. He was a six-foot two-inch, good-looking kid with a big smile and a good head on his shoulders. He did very well in the candy sales business. Leroy bought a shiny new car with a big metal sun visor over the windshield, fog lights and a spotlight. He said the spotlight was, among other things, for the bootleggers when he went back home.

In much of the west, absent mountains, rivers and other obstructions, the land had been surveyed, and the roads were laid out along the section lines running north and south and east and west. Leroy remembered back in Oklahoma, in the mornings, coming up on wrecks at the intersection of the section line roads.

The bootleggers would run with their lights off at night and sometimes would have collisions at the intersections. Because they could not afford to be caught with a car full of booze, they just took the booze, walked away and left the cars where they sat.

On the dirt roads in Oklahoma at night, Leroy would turn on the spotlight shining it down the road and watch for a “dark wreck”. He could not use the spotlight on the main highways because the highway patrol would give you a ticket for blinding the oncoming traffic.

After Prohibition, fewer bootleggers practiced their trade, but Oklahoma was a dry state, so gangsters continued to satisfy the law of supply and demand until Oklahoma finally voted to go “wet” in 1959.

The coalition of those who benefited financially from Prohibition included preachers, bootleggers, cops, revenuers, judges and jailers, aka “the unholy alliance.” The 1920 U.S. Constitutional 18th Amendment was preceded in 1907 by Oklahoma’s “new” Constitution which prohibited alcohol stronger than 3.2%. The “Sooner’s” Constitution defined every place indoors and outdoors where alcohol was not allowed to be consumed. There were no indoor bathrooms in Oklahoma at the time.

When the 21st Amendment was ratified legalizing alcohol again in 1933, Oklahoma stuck with their “new” Constitution and allowed 3.2% alcohol sales. The legislature had gone to great lengths to define all the places, indoors and outdoors, where drinking alcohol was prohibited; in 1907 there were no bathrooms in homes, so in1933, Oklahomans joked that the only place they could legally drink in their homes were in their bathrooms, unless they were still using an outdoor outhouse.

In 1959, a law was passed in Oklahoma to sell 6 point beer that was not artificially refrigerated, and other alcohol could be sold at State Liquor Stores. In 1984, mixed drink sales were allowed in bars and restaurants in Oklahoma. Mississippi was also a hold out state and didn’t ratify liquor sales until 1966.

From 1938 thru 1941, Leroy traveled all over the southwest, either while working for King Candy Company and sightseeing. One of Leroy's favorite products of King Candy Company was the King's French Creams, all soft centers in milk and dark chocolate.

In his old travel photographs, Leroy always had a pretty girl on his arm or leaning on his shiny car. He went to the Grand Canyon, Pikes Peak and Denver, Death Valley, Northern California to see the Giant Redwoods and to La Jolla, California where he met Cecilia O’Hagin.

Cecilia had placed runner up in the 1939 Miss Arizona pageant, was singing with a local band at dances, church functions, local fiestas, and on local radio stations in Tucson. Someone she met at one of the radio stations told her she should go to Hollywood, California.

Cecilia left Arizona and got a job singing and dancing at an upscale supper club, the famous Florentine Gardens in Hollywood; she was briefly under contract at Columbia Pictures.

O’Hagin shared an apartment with a couple of girls who also worked at the Florentine Gardens, one being Yvonne De Carlo. Yvonne and Cecilia looked alike and people often confused one for the other.

De Carlo was billed as a Brazilian bombshell, but actually was from Vancouver, Canada. Her big break came when she played Moses’ wife, Sephora, in “The Ten Commandments.” Afterwards, Yvonne mostly starred in “B” westerns, married a cowboy actor/stuntman and had two children.

Yvonne de Carlo

Before De Carlo married, she made the gossip columns quite regularly by dating Howard Hughes, Burt Lancaster, Robert Stack, and Prince Abdul Pahlavi of Saudi Arabia. She ended her career with the part she is most known for, Lily Munster on the television series, The Munsters.

Cecilia had a few bit parts in movies; Columbia did not pay well, unless they used you in a starring role in a movie. She was successful at the supper club, but the singing and dancing job did not pay that well either; Hollywood was full of beautiful starlets and competition and wages were fierce.

The chef at the supper club was Foster Exline. He and his wife took a liking to Cecilia and Foster would feed her in the back of the kitchen because he thought she was too skinny. She was very grateful to him because the struggle of purchasing makeup, costumes, rent, food, and transportation stretched her budget to the limit.

She met and fell in love with Leroy Hightower and he asked her to choose between a career in Hollywood or a future with an Okie. She chose the more reliable Okie and they went back to Tucson where her large family of brothers and sisters, parents, aunts and uncles attended their wedding. She could now accompany him as he traveled his candy route.

America entered the war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Leroy was drafted in January of 1942. King Candy Company appealed to the draft board and got Leroy a deferment to finish the candy season. Sales only ran from late September to April because chocolate did not hold up well in the heat of the southwest since there was no refrigeration in the shipping or the drug stores.

Leroy took his now pregnant wife to his father’s farm in Oklahoma, then went to El Paso, Texas and was inducted into the Army for his basic training at Fort Bliss; he prepared to fight in the Pacific war theatre. On the appointed day in May 1942, they loaded up his outfit and took them to the train station in El Paso. On the loading dock they were stopped. After a short wait, the sergeants ordered everybody to sound off by the number, one, two, three, four, etc.

Then the lieutenants ordered the men that were odd numbers to get on the train and the even numbers to take their gear and get back in the M35 series 6x6 cargo deuce and a half trucks. Leroy was an even number; he got on one of the two and a half ton trucks and was sent as part of a base activating unit to Alamogordo, New Mexico to help build Alamogordo Army Air Base.

The odd numbers were sent to the Philippines and became part of the units that took part in the Bataan Death March. Fred and Ted Roessler from Alamogordo were part of the group that was in the Death March. Fred carried his injured brother Ted much of the time because the Japanese would shoot those that could not walk on their own. New Mexicans made up the majority of those on the march. It was a brutal stab in the heart to lose so many soldiers from the Land of Enchantment.

Upon arriving west of Alamogordo, there was little but desert, cactus, rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas and caliche hardpan dirt. The Army Corps of Engineers surveyed and marked off the base. They scraped some roads and a runway, but that was just the beginning. The troops pitched and lived in tents. They dug latrines, graded roads, laid out a pierced steel planking runway, built an officer’s club and other military buildings. The soldier’s barracks were the last buildings to be constructed.

Leroy told stories of Yankees in the outfit trying to cut down ocotillo with an ax. The tops would break off, fall and stick into the soldier’s back or whip around and stick in his buddy - the aptly nicknamed “Devil’s whip sticks” proved its point.

Ocotillo

The mesquite bushes were huge and their roots seemed driven into the center of the earth. Mesquite wood is extremely hard and difficult to cut with an ax and the soldiers did not have chain saws. The prickly pear cactus, like the ocotillo, has a bad habit of whipping back and sticking you.

The group of pilgrims finally got the base laid out and learned about caliche dirt, which when it is dry, if disturbed, turns into a super fine powder. The Yankee officers would order an inspection and before the troops could get to the parade ground walking through the two-inch thick talcum powder, their spit shined shoes would be unrecognizable and the bottoms of their khaki trousers would be white with the two-inch thick caliche dust.

The rain and the caliche made the slickest, gooiest, stickiest mud imaginable and when it dries, it turns hard as a rock until it is once again disturbed when the cycle starts all over again.

Alamogordo Army Air Base

Leroy had made some friends in the outfit. His big smile and good nature paid off. A friend that worked as a clerk in headquarters ran up to him excitedly one day and said, “Do you want to make an extra seventy-five dollars a month?”

“Sure! How?” he questioned doubtfully.

“Well, the NCO club steward was shipped out. I looked up your records and your soda jerk experience in the drug stores qualifies you as having food and beverage experience and the Base Commander says that qualifies you to apply for the job.”

Leroy applied for and got the job as steward of the Alamogordo Army Air Base Non-Commissioned Officers Club.

Because he was a private, he depended on his senior grade non-com sergeants at arms to handle the senior non-commissioned officers to keep the wheels greased; he figured out how to work around his barriers.

The first time the slot machine technician came by to service the machines after Leroy became NCO Club manager, Leroy found a bag of quarters on his desk. He thought the man had forgotten them and went running after him to return them.

The man laughed at Leroy and told him, “No, those are yours for taking care of things.” Leroy felt naive about learning the system he was working under.

He was a good food and beverage man. Unlike the Officers Club, the NCO Club served no hard liquor, only beer and soft drinks were allowed, but he sold cigarettes, cigars, candy, beer, Coca-Cola, other soft drinks, coffee and good food. That was where Leroy learned that the quality of the ingredients has a lot to do with the quality of the finished product. People talked about how good the fried chicken was at the NCO Club.

New Mexico was a wild west gambling state until 1947, when Federal Revenuers came and took axes to the gaming tables, slot machines and untaxed liquor. When Leroy was at the NCO Club there was a poker game, dice tables, punchboards and slot machines. The Base being a military installation was exempt.

The place was full of troops waiting to be shipped out to the war in the Pacific. They thought they might not come back and spent their money like there was no tomorrow.

By late October, with his seventy-five dollar a month bonus, his gambling winnings and his quarters from the slots, Leroy “was flush” and he drove to Oklahoma, picked up his wife and baby and returned (on time) to his job and Alamogordo.

Leaving for Alamogordo, NM

Alamogordo was a town of 4200 in the 1940 census. By October 1942, it was twice that. There were no new hotels or boarding houses. Everybody that had an extra room had it rented out. The town was full up. Leroy took Cecilia and baby Junior to Rousseau Hospital at 1209 Ohio Avenue and checked them in; it was only two dollars a day; they had room and board and had around the clock medical care.

He went back to the base until Mrs. Patty Patee, the hospital administrator, got them a one-room apartment around 700 or 800 block of Texas Avenue with her sister Betty. They moved in together and were a family.

Cecilia, JR with a boo-boo on his knee, Leroy

Leroy became good friends with most of the local pillars of the community. He played a lot of poker in the game over the Hermitage Pool Hall and in the basement of Henry’s bar, at the corner of 1st Street and Pennsylvania Avenue - later White Sands Blvd. Henry’s was on the south side of 1st Street making it outside the original Alamogordo town site. Leroy and Henry became friends during the war when Leroy ran the NCO Club.

Junior would go to Henry’s with Leroy and Cecilia to visit with Henry and his wife. He liked to sip on a ginger ale with grenadine in it with a cherry and orange slice garnish and listen to the live music while the adults talked and It was especially fun for Junior when they sat in the raised alcove on the south end of the saloon overlooking the hugged together dancers, women twirling and dancing backward, boots scuffing along the floor and occasional jitterbugs with feet a-flying!

After the war, Henry’s would become The Jet Bar. In 1969, Leroy would buy it from his long time friend Red Burnett, and remodel it into The Backdoor Saloon and Supper Club.

Leroy made a lot of friends with the town people while he managed the NCO club. During the war, sugar was rationed and sometimes hard to get, but in those days, a druggist mixed up prescriptions in the pharmacy and sugar was the filler in most prescriptions and a large part of the ingredients of prescriptions. It was a part of their inventory and druggists were exempt from the ration and could get all the sugar they wanted.

Mr. Loggains was having trouble-getting cigarettes for the Corner Drug Store, partly because the military had priority on cigarettes. Leroy could get all the cigarettes he wanted for the NCO Club.

Leroy talked to his friend, Mr. Felix Loggains, and they worked out a deal. Leroy took cases of cigarettes to the drug store and got a like value in sugar from Mr. Loggains. He took the sugar to the base and shared it with the Officers Club and the mess halls. He helped the base get sugar and the townspeople get cigarettes. Everyone won on that deal.

The Army being the Army, things never went smooth long. Leroy’s unit was ordered to ship out. Not wanting to lose his NCO manager that kept the non-commissioned officers happy, kept the violence to a minimum with the big senior NCO “sergeants at arms” and did not lose money hand over fist, the base commander transferred Leroy to another unit that was not scheduled to ship out.

Every time Leroy’s unit was scheduled to ship out, that maneuver was repeated. It was repeated several more times before the end of the war. Leroy was promoted and busted several times, but the Base Commander never allowed him to be transferred from Alamogordo Army Air Base. He spent the whole Second World War at his first and only duty assignment in the Army.

After a time, Leroy really got the hang of managing the club but the General Accounting Office, the GAO, blew a gasket. The Alamogordo Army Air Base NCO Club had made so much money it had “too much money in the bank”. Leroy was called on the carpet where he was told, “The purpose of the NCO Clubs was to entertain the troops, give them a diversion and to improve their quality of life, not to make money.” Leroy was ordered to do something to draw down the money in the bank, and not to accumulate enough money to upset the GAO again.

Using a contact of Cecilia’s in California, Leroy contacted a booking agent for bands and entertainers. He found out the big bands and show acts needed a gig in the middle of the country so when they were traveling from coast to coast, they could make some expense money and try out new music and new musicians. Better than that, they performed at a bargain price.

It was a “no brainer”; Leroy started hosting free concerts, with acts like Count Basie, Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. He added free fried chicken dinners and free beer and Coca-Cola. In addition, the diplomat that he was, Leroy invited the Officers to attend at no charge to the Officers Club. I saw telegrams confirming the bookings and a regret from Lewis Armstrong due to a prior engagement.

Count Basie Jimmy Dorsey

Those concerts were some of the rare times Cecilia was able to go to the NCO Club as “first lady” and mix with her friends from town. Some of her friends were Colonel Alderson’s wife, Lieutenant Frank Simpkins’ wife, Loma, (Loma Simpkins was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Tinsley - Alamogordo’s biggest landlords - at the Tinsley’s trailer park) and Lieutenant Red O’Dell’s wife Dottie, (Dottie Odell was the druggist’s Felix Loggains' daughter).

A fearful event at the NCO happened in October 1943. The local suppliers were unable to get any beer because of all the rationing during the war. The base Commander called Leroy to his office and ordered him to go find some beer for the troops.

In some of the most unusual language in military orders ever, “Sgt. Leroy Hightower is ordered to proceed to Texas and points east, for the purpose of procuring beer for Alamogordo Army Air Base and to return when his mission is accomplished”.

They struck out on finding beer in Dallas and Ft. Worth but struck gold getting tickets to the Oklahoma University vs. Texas University football game. The “Red River Rivalry” is always played in Dallas. That game was played at the Cotton Bowl at the Texas State fair in Dallas. After the game, they had a great time at the Texas State Fair (wearing civilian clothes of course). The Texas State Fair is where the corn dog was first introduced the year before.

They went to San Antonio to the Pearl Brewing Company where they had heard there might be beer available. Sure enough, the President of Pearl told them he had four train cars of Pearl beer loaded and on the siding.

It had been loaded to be sent to a base in Texas but all the troops shipped out to the Pacific and the base did not need it anymore. Leroy bought the beer, signed for it to be delivered to the NCO Club, and they left to get back to Alamogordo in time to meet the train.

Leroy got one of his NCO Club board members that ran the motor pool to take all of his deuce and a half trucks to meet the train in Alamogordo. There was no railroad spur from Alamogordo to the base yet. They loaded the beer on the trucks and convoyed it to the base, sending the first trucks to the Officers Club of course. He was not busted for fraternizing with officers this time.

By 1944, the Hightowers had moved to an apartment at 507 16th Street owned by Lon French, the Firestone storeowner. It was a one-bedroom three-room apartment with hardwood floors which Cecilia did not enjoy keeping dusted and waxed.

Junior liked the big mysterious barn out back to play in (he wasn’t ‘spose to go in it) and apple and pear trees and fig bushes. Cecilia grew hollyhocks on the west side of the building next to the driveway. North of the French’s was open pastureland all the way to Indian Wells Road with big 50-year-old pecan trees on each corner of the blocks and smaller ones scattered throughout the area.

Cecilia’s sister, Jo O’Hagin, married Roger K. O’glesbee who was a test pilot at the air base. One night they were all having dinner at Helen and Harold’s, they were living in the original ranch house of Senator Aubrey Lyle Dunn’s father, James C. Dunn. His place was on Indian Wells just east of Pecan Drive. Senator Aubrey Lyle Dunn, 1893-1959, was the father of Senator Aubrey Lee Dunn, Chairman of the New Mexico Senate Finance Committee in the 1960’s and 1970.

Jo O’Hagin Oglesbee, U. S. Navy

They were all sitting outside when they heard a boom and saw a column of smoke out over the Air Base. Uncle Roger was piloting a test flight of the experimental jet airplane that later became the legendary F86 fighter jet. Jo sensed something was wrong and started crying. In a little while a car came rolling up to the house to tell her that Roger was alive and to take her to the base hospital. He survived, but always had some health problems after that.

World War II ended and Leroy’s experiences from his early days as a soda jerk, to a candy salesman, to NCO manager, to the Plaza Cafe set his course in the food and beverage industry. In 1968, Leroy asked Junior what he thought about selling the Plaza Cafe. He said that Amelia and Mike Musgrove wanted to buy the cafe and Junior agreed that they should sell it to them.

Junior adored Amelia since he was a little guy when she had waited tables in the Plaza; he’d sit at a table to eat by himself, and she’d take his order like he was an adult. She wouldn’t baby him when he had trouble cutting up his steak, and, he’d always thought she was so sweet and so pretty.

In late 1968 Leroy bought the Jet Bar from his old friend “Red” Burnett. The Jet Bar had been Henry’s in the 1940’s and 50’s. Unlike Henry’s, the classy nightclub, The Jet Bar had become a beer joint. It was located at the corner of First Street and White Sands Boulevard. Due to The Eddy brothers’ alcohol prohibition covenants in the original city limits of Alamogordo, the Jet Bar was on the south side of First Street, outside the original city.

Leroy purposely let the bar sit closed and dark for about three months hoping the beer joint image would evaporate some. Then he started the renovations in the late summer of 1969.

To be continued…

Democratic Party Meeting at the Plaza Cafe

Leroy by JR Hightower

2025-07-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

Plaza Café - Excerpt from "Leroy"

JR Hightower grew up in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
He is a restauratuer , entrepreneur, and raconteur.  "Leroy"
(not yet published) will be JR's second book. His first book,
"Alone on Pasture Ridge" is available on Amazon.

In 1946, Judge Howard Beacham who owned the Plaza Café, decided to retire from the restaurant business and work at just one job - being Magistrate Judge.

Leroy took possession of the Plaza Café on Christmas Day, 1946. He had convinced his brother Harold to come to Alamogordo to help with painting and cleaning up the café during the week between Christmas and New Years; closing and cleaning the restaurant that week became a tradition for many years. The inside of the Plaza Café was presented with a new coat of paint every Christmas.

The whole family scrubbed, cleaned and removed the mounted deer and antelope heads, Mexican sombreros and serapes from the walls.  Harold refinished the counter and the twenty-four swivel seats. The wooden counter was beautiful; the back bar behind the counter was a lighted pie case with sliding glass doors on the front and storage cabinets underneath. Small individual breakfast cereal boxes were stacked on top and a big mirror ran the length of the counter.

Leroy Hightower re-opened the Plaza Café under new ownership on January 2, 1947. The dining room seated 86 people and another 75 would fit in the banquet room in the back- not big by today’s standards, but after World War II in Alamogordo, New Mexico in a town with a population of less than 7,000, it was impressive. The Plaza Bar, the only bar with a liquor license in the city limits, used the banquet room as a dance hall on weekend nights.

The cafe’s lunch counter ran almost the length of the dining room. It turned and went to the east wall, leaving just enough room for a row of chairs by the front wall for guests waiting for a table.

On the east wall, in the center of the mirror over the pie case that served as the back bar of the counter, there was always a big bouquet of fresh flowers, a nice touch in the desert. The counter and chair backs were crafted from durable oak. The same sturdy woodwork was still beautiful and in use when Leroy sold the Plaza Café twenty-five years later.

A filling station was on the corner of the property at 10th and Pennsylvania Avenue (later named White Sands Boulevard). The bar on the north side and the cafe on the east side formed an L around the back side of the parking lot.

The adobe buildings were covered in stucco in traditional Mexican style with vigas (large pine logs) serving as rafters for the roof. Vigas are often topped with latillas (sticks laid in patterns over the logs) to finish the ceiling, but the Plaza ceiling was more appropriate for a restaurant. (Latilla sticks can attract bugs, little critters, spider webs, and dust bunnies). The area between the vigas was stuccoed into a half-moon concave arch halfway up each side of the log to create a bright, clean look.

The traditional New Mexico adobe building - made from mud and logs and sticks, served as the main architecture in southwest towns and villages. Filled with oak furniture and counters, the cafe looked especially inviting during the dark, desert evenings. The vigas outside the bar were encircled in neon; the roofline of the cafe and the filling station were outlined in the bright white light which cut through the dark.

Noble neon gas ran through long tubes which had been twisted into shapes with a torch by a skilled glass bender. Internal electrodes were inset into the cylinders filled with neon and then hermetically sealed by clamping and melting the glass ends together.

Each letter had its own transformer and when a bombardment of electric volts were applied to the electrodes, the gas ionized in the tubes causing it to emit brilliant liquid fire. The internal electrodes in the luminous tubes prevented degradation of the neon by sputtering and crackling.

The first sight travelers saw as they approached Alamogordo at night were two competing signs over the gas station edged in neon cutting through the darkness: one, a metal Mobil Oil sign with its Pegasus logo, and one a polished aluminum rocket about 20 feet long, outlined in blue and green neon with an exhaust tail of orange flashing neon. The rocket had Plaza Café written on both sides in red neon directing hungry customers to their future meal.

                                 Plaza Cafe at Night

V-2 rockets had recently been captured from Germany, and along with former Nazi scientists and engineers, who had rather come to work at the White Sands Proving Grounds instead of face punishment for their collusion with the former German government, had secretly arrived in the desert to help the Army begin experimenting with rockets.

The military's effort to emulate Germany's rocketry had thus far proved disastrous. The first rocket tumbled end over end and bounced off the mountain above Alamogordo. The second ended up in Juarez, Mexico's graveyard - an appropriate ending. "Operation Paperclip," was put in place by the federal government and deals were made to sneak the formerly fascist scientists and their families out of Germany and into the United States.

When the program became successful, Alamogordo became known as “The Rocket City,” and Leroy joined the city's booster promotion with his highly identifiable, silver rocket gleaming in the sky above the Plaza parking lot. The German families slowly integrated into Otero County's acceptance. Their children enrolled in local schools, they joined local Catholic or Lutheran churches, moved into existing neighborhoods, and eventually the pain of the war quelled between former local soldiers and foreign "Hun" scientists until the former hatreds are practically unknown by their grandchildren and great-grandchildren today.

Former Plaza owner Judge Howard Beacham agreed to stay on for a while to help Leroy in the kitchen. Leroy’s wife, Cecilia, who had flirted with a career in movies in Hollywood as a singer and dancer, got the contact information of her friend, Foster Exline, an executive chef at a supper club in California. Leroy talked him into moving to Alamogordo so the Plaza Café could have a bona fide chef.

                             Cecilia O'Hagin Hightower

Foster settled right in and went to work about 3 a.m. He began each day with a 5-gallon pot of Farmers Brothers brand coffee using city water that was plumbed into the coffee maker so he and early customers and staff could help themselves.

The natural gas fired Bunn coffee maker had two 5 gallon coffee pots with site glass tubes to view the level of the coffee. Each side had a spigot at the bottom and was heated to 210 degrees; hot water was available on demand through a third spigot in the center between the two rectangular coffee containers. This water was used for hot tea and Sanka (the modern powdered decaf of the 1940’s and 50’s).

A clean towel was tied over the spigot of the freshest coffee in order for the staff to know to use the other pot first. If there was no towel on either of them, they knew to watch the level of the only pot they had and brew a new pot before they ran out. The wait staff would fill their glass bubble-shaped pots from the 5-gallon dispenser, then set the coffee carafes on single burner hot plates in the wait stations.

The combination of Alamogordo water and the Farmer Brothers brand created a robust coffee. A pungent, carmelly fragrance filled the cafe when the hot “rocket fuel” was brewed in the morning.

The coffee maker was enclosed so oxygen did not get to the coffee. This enabled it to stay fresh longer because the oil in coffee oxidizes quickly when it is exposed to air. Oxidation makes the oil in coffee beans rancid and causes the coffee to taste bitter and old.

Ground coffee oxidizes when exposed to air, too, so it needs to be sealed in an airtight container after it is opened. Coffee companies vacuum the air out of coffee cans to remove oxygen - which is why a new can of coffee goes “swoosh” - sucking in air when the seal is broken.

Foster would put twenty to thirty pounds of bacon to blanch in the oven and about as much link sausage and par cook it. All of Foster's delicacies were made from scratch. Sausage drippings were the secret ingredient in the waffle batter, giving a subtle hint of flavor to the puffy, crispy gridded cakes. Bacon drippings were added into the pancake batter and to season the beans and vegetables. The par cooked bacon and sausage would later be browned to order on the 36-inch flat grill, along with individual orders of eggs, hash browns, toast, and pancakes.

Two huge old waffle irons were set up every morning on the line that was converted into a steam table for lunch and dinner. Three 4-slice toastmasters were on the shelf where the bread was stored, over the table where finished orders were picked up by the wait staff.

The waitresses called out their orders to the cook, there was no ticket hung. When you were feeding 150 to 300 people breakfast, it would get intense and the cooks were incredible in organizing plates and other clues to remember all those orders.

Leroy’s nephew, Tommie Carl Herrell, started washing dishes at the Plaza and worked his way up to cook. Tommie and his friend, Jimmie Randall, both cooked at the Plaza in their teen years; Jimmie also cooked at Holloman Air Base in one of the military club’s kitchens.

Foster put big pots of stock, one beef and one chicken, on to boil all day for soup and other ingredients. He started the lunch specials with “Boiled Beef” on Tuesdays. It was just cubed beef but the long stringy muscles of the shoulders were skillfully cut short so when they were boiled in the beef stock from the day before, the meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender.

Boiled beef, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken potpie, and beef stew daily specials ran Monday through Friday. Meat specials were served in 8 ounce, oval green china ramekins in the entrée section of the plate so the juice would not run off. Other lunch specials were served on sectioned luncheon plates without the ramekins to eliminate washing more dishes. The special included an entrée, two sides, and endless hot, fresh, yeast rolls.

Foster made rolls every day from scratch. The daily special cost around 65 cents. On Sunday, it might be turkey and dressing with all the trimmings, roast beef, or roast pork for 95 cents. The favorite after-church entree was turkey dinner. Five or six thirty-pound turkeys were cooked. If there was any meat left, it was used for open-faced hot turkey sandwiches or in the club sandwiches.

Newspaper Flyer

Foster made 12 to 24 pies three times a week and kept the big pie case full - or tried to; he just could not seem to bake enough pies. He bragged that he could whip up a baker’s dozen (13) egg whites and sugar into enough meringue to top 10 pies.

The chef called the newspaper weekly, and told them the lunch and dinner specials so they could have the menu inserts printed and delivered in time to be placed in the lunch menus. Foster never seemed to be in a hurry or flustered because he was so organized and efficient. He cooked and baked the best food imaginable.

The slight, balding chef wore a long sleeve, white dress shirt (instead of a chef jacket) with his checkered chef pants and a long white apron. He rolled the shirtsleeves up and somehow managed to stay clean. Foster stayed with Leroy until he sold the restaurant 25 years later and then stayed at the Plaza Bar with Amelia and Mike Musgrove after that.

The café was a success from the first day partly because of the location, an increasing military population stationed into the area, Leroy’s skill running a restaurant and his ability to put the right person in the right place at the right time, and moving out of the way to let his staff do their jobs.

After the first year, Leroy paid his loan back early from Felix Loggains, bought his father, Pop, a ’47 Mercury, and bought himself another ’47 Packard. He became a part of the community even though he was a “come-to-town soldier” and not one of the “old guard” families of ranchers, farmers, or businessmen who had been there since the end of the last century.

The late 40’s and early 50’s were great economic times in Alamogordo; the town doubled its population in the 1940’s and doubled again in the 1950’s. Leroy’s sister, Mary, and brother-in-law, Gordon Herrell, arrived after their Oklahoma farm “blew out,” and they had a big auction sale and moved to Alamogordo in the Fall of 1950.

Mary had severe arthritis and the dry climate of Alamogordo was said to be good for her and she did seem to get around much better than she did in the humid Oklahoma air. With all the building and construction going on in Alamogordo, Leroy’s brother, Harold, had shown up and done well with his paint contracting business; he welcomed his brother-in-law, Gordon, to help him.

In 1954, Leroy allowed his son, Junior, to work in the restaurant operation of the Plaza Café and he began to report to Foster after school. Twice a week the Peyton Packing Company in El Paso brought swinging beef carcasses in a truck to Alamogordo and occasionally sent in special shipments because the cafe's walk-in refrigerator was not very big.

Leroy thought it would be helpful for Junior’s football weight training to help with hoisting the carcasses. Foster would not allow Peyton Packing Company to unload any side of beef that weighed less than 400 pounds. That would insure that it came off a minimum 1,200-pound steer. The young bovines’ weight before butchering was one-third head, horns, hooves, hide and innards, one-third right side, and one third left side.

When the Peyton truck came in, Foster would climb up into the back, inspect and select his sides of beef from the swinging beef hanging on big hooks suspended from the rails on the ceiling of the truck. After Foster chose his beeves, the drivers could unload the meat and hang the beef quarters on hooks close to the cutting table in the back room of the kitchen.

Even then there wasn’t much market for “prime” grade beef, a grade higher than choice. Prime beef is marbled (fattier), better tasting and from bigger beef cattle, making the meat to bone ratio better (i.e., a 300 pound side has almost as much bone in it as a 500 pound side), so it is more expensive per pound of meat.

But sometimes Peyton had “prime” beef they would sell to the cafe at the “choice” price because they knew Leroy and Foster liked the best grade available and because the Plaza was such a steady customer.

Leroy’s son, Junior, was a big ol’ kid and his new job was to help the chef “work up” the beef. With a couple of knives and a handsaw, Foster would cut up the beef quarters - he was a slight man but strong as a bull. Junior received an invaluable education, learning which cuts came from which parts of the steer.

He learned how grocery stores sell beef “round,” a section of beef from the cow's hindquarters, as sirloin tips. The round is connected to the sirloin, but it has two big tendons (gristle) running the full width and length of it. It does not have enough fat to roast, will dry out before the gristle breaks down, and is too tough to cook quickly like steak. The best thing to do with it is to grind it up.

Junior and Foster carried the large beef quarters to the walk-in and hung them up on the meat hooks. The chef would not let the boy unhook a whole quarter and carry it to the table alone because he said the youngster didn’t know how to lift that much weight yet.

But the tough, slight man must have been strung with tendons and gristle running through him because he deftly handled 150 pound beef quarters on his back yelling for everyone to get out of the way as he wrangled the seven cubic feet of meat onto the cutting table.

Quality cuts of the side of beef needed a good deal of fat trimmed off; the fat would be thrown in a big stew pot and saved in the walk-in. A bull hindquarter would come in about once a week. Bulls do not have the fat steers do; they are almost all red meat which cooks up with great flavor but tastes tough and dry. The bull meat would be ground up with the fat in the walk-in to create a good grade of ground beef. (Bull meat can no longer be bought for human consumption because of added hormones and gene alteration. It is sold for pet food, though).

The Plaza sold lots of hamburger during the lunch specials: stuffed bell peppers, spaghetti and meatballs, ground sirloin steak, and hundreds of hamburgers and cheeseburgers every week at lunch and dinner. There were also mock filets on the menu (a 12 or 14 ounce ground beef patty wrapped in bacon).

Foster took the rounds, deboned them, and then used the eye (part of the round) and top rounds for chicken fried steak and the bottom rounds were used for roast beef. The trimmings went in the ground beef and the bones into the stockpot. New York steak and filet mignon were customer favorites and #109 bone-in ribs were used for prime rib on weekends.

Occasionally, when they did not need all the #109s for prime rib, the rib bones were cut off and put in the rib pot and Delmonico steaks were cut from the lip of the rib eye. The beef ribs and short ribs would be used for evening specials. The chuck was used for boiled beef and roast beef, and the remaining forequarters were ground. Every part of the cow was used except the moo.

One of the biggest sellers was the Plaza Club Steak. It was a 9-10 ounce top sirloin. The short loin was cut up for porterhouse and T-bone steaks. In addition, the loin strips became New York steaks and the tenders were cut into filet mignons.

The porterhouse steaks were huge, about 35 to 40 ounces, with part of the tail left on that hung over the edge of the platter. The remaining bones and blubbery parts were put in Foster’s stockpots with onions, celery, carrots and whatever other fresh vegetable trimmings were around.

Vegetable beef soup was on the menu every day to help use up the beef stock the chef constantly boiled. The broth was made into gravy for hot beef open-faced sandwiches, and used in roast beef dinners.

Occasionally Foster would make French onion soup with toasty bread and cheese melted like lava on top of the comforting concoction. Chicken necks, giblets, tails, and other trimmings went into the chicken stockpot and ended up as cream of chicken soup, chicken noodle soup, chicken and rice soup or chicken and turkey gravy for hot turkey sandwiches, turkey and dressing and chicken potpie.

After the beef was cut, put away and the table cleaned, Foster went home and Junior became the pot washer. The bakery table was scrubbed with Clorox water and the top layer scrubbed off with a Chore Girl copper mesh pad, until it almost made a paste of water and wood. A dough cutter was used to scrape off the paste and water into a trash bucket so the table would not be contaminated; it was air dried and not wiped down with a possibly tainted cloth.

At closing time, the butcher-block table had to be done the same way. The cut marks from the knives were scraped off so the bacteria would not have a place to grow and the chlorine in the Clorox killed any bacteria on the table and sanitized the scraper.

On the weekdays when there were no meat deliveries, they baked pies. Junior rolled out pie crusts as quickly as possible, but Foster would get disgusted and roll out a crust or two himself in quick time just to show his rookie how it was done. On Sundays, Foster went home right after lunch. He worked a short day on Monday, too.

Leroy would not allow Junior to operate the big dishwasher; it was an automatic conveyor fed dish-washing machine which used 210-degree water to rinse. Leroy warned Junior that he might get his shirt tail caught in it and be pulled in, but he did wash glasses on the double sided glass washer with the center turned one way and the outside turned the other. An unfortunate lesson was learned about what happens if a finger nail gets caught by the whirling brushes, ripping the nail right off.

Added to the staff was a rotund, wizened cook that would sit on a 50-pound lard can next to the butcher block and smoke. If Junior had all the pots washed, the cook would let him make food orders. The growing boy had to be careful over the grill so he wouldn’t burn his belly because he was not yet quite tall enough to reach all the way across it.

The kitchen equipment included a large automatic potato peeler that held about 20 pounds of potatoes. It spun around and grated the skin off with friction, then the “eyes” needed to be cut out of the potatoes. Carrots and turnips could be peeled in it, too, but Foster did not like that new fangled contraption and preferred it be done the old-fashioned way.

The prep staff tended to leave the potatoes in the peeler for an extra amount of time so they did not have to “eye” them. The potatoes would come out almost perfectly round with about half their original weight when they were left in the peeler too long.

Junior would work up five or six, 5-gallon buckets of raw French fries every afternoon. The peeled and cut fresh French fries were soaked in water with a little “Tater White” (a chemical additive to keep potatoes from turning brown - now banned). Then, the five gallon buckets were put in the walk-in for the cooks to use on the night shift. A bucket sat on the floor by the fryer that had a big strainer on top to drain the potatoes. If they were not drained before they were put in the fryer, the water would cause a fuss making the hot oil foam and pop.

At first, Junior had a little trouble remembering all the orders without tickets and the cook would sometimes have to bail him out. He was ribbed about potentially burning his belly and when he did not dry the potatoes enough before letting them down into the grease, the grease would fly into his face like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

The cooks prepared and put the entrées and garnish on the plate, and then the waitress would get her own sides from the steam table. Fresh yeast rolls waited on a rack over the hotline to proof. Junior learned to estimate from the number of previous orders when another pan needed to go up to proof and to put the proofed ones in to cook, and to take them out and not burn them. A waitress would sometimes remind the cook when the rolls were getting low; everyone fussed if the endless, yeasty rolls ran out.

The Plaza’s competition was the Coronado Café across 10th Street on the Southeast corner of the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 10th. It was owned and operated by a Mediterranean man who everyone called “the Greek.”

One-half block south of the Coronado was the Wagon Wheel Café. The Wagon Wheel was a lot smaller than the Plaza and the Coronado. It was run at that time by an energetic, saucy woman who looked a bit like country singer Patsy Cline. Lola Mae always wore a white starched hat held on with bobby pins and she was quick with a hearty greeting when a customer entered the door situated between two wagon wheel windows.

The Alamogordo Hotel at 9th Street and New York Avenue also had a coffee shop. In addition, there were three drug store soda fountains: Felix F. Loggains’ Corner Drug, on the southwest corner of 10th Street and New York Avenue; Walter Lafferty’s Alamo Drug, on the northwest corner of 10th and New York; and Johnny Rolland’s Rexall Drug a few doors south of the Corner Drug on New York Avenue.
All three had good soda fountains, sold sandwiches, and light faire in addition to sodas and ice cream items. However, nobody else had an executive chef like Foster Exline.

Eber McKinley opened the Desert Aire in 1957 and leased the restaurant to Ramona and Bill Duncan. Ramona was one of Leroy’s former waitresses. Denny O’Hara opened the new Rocket dining room about the same time. A small café at Seventh and Pennsylvania later became Margo’s. There was the Mountain View Cafe just north of Indian Wells on the west side of Pennsylvania. (It stayed open all night and had a good pinball machine).

Leroy said that when a new restaurant opens it won’t take all your business, it will take some of everybody's business. He said when new cafes opened, you had to do a better job than they do to compete. That’s why competition makes everybody better, or you don’t stay in business.

In the 50’s came the Hi-D-Ho Drive-In on south Pennsylvania Avenue and the Red Rooster at 1500 North Pennsylvania, right across the street from the north end of the Alamo Courts that Leroy would eventually own.

jrhightower50@yahoo.com

Emma Hamsher, Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher - Part IV

2025-07-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

New Mexico Institute for the Blind Campus

The 1919 school year at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind began without a hitch. Emma met her students and their parents at their designated train stations and they easily transferred trains in El Paso to Alamogordo with the help of the Pullman Red Caps who were friends of Emma’s by now. For the first few weeks, it seemed they were all settling down to a wonderfully productive year. Then suddenly children started becoming ill; everyone feared another flu epidemic. It wasn’t flu, it was worse -- smallpox!

The school was put in quarantine. Fortunately, a new health center had been built on campus during the summer and a nurse from El Paso had been hired. She was well-versed in nursing smallpox - there was little to do but comfort the children who were sick, try to keep their fevers down, and clean up the bodily messes from diarrhea and throwing up.

Small children and Natives were especially vulnerable to this virus. Thirty percent of its victims would die, be blinded, or have short term syndromes, horrible facial and bodily scarring, or lifelong illnesses from the disease. In the Native population, the mortality rate was much higher; the European disease had killed 90% of the first Americans within the first hundred years Anglo settlers set foot on Eastern shores.

Few of the children had been vaccinated; the nurse lined students and unvaccinated staff up to be given the vaccine. If the injection site didn’t form a blister within the first two weeks, they would be re-vaccinated. The dime size scar on a person’s arms was their proof of vaccination. Meanwhile, the strange little nurse scrambled around the medical center mumbling to herself, tilting her head and answering herself. She was always busy, but never seemed to mind.

Emma went to the health center to talk to the children through the windows. They were greased down with oil from their heads to the bottom of their feet to keep them from developing scars. This was probably the best treatment to apply because when it was all over, the children suffered little scarring.

Small Pox Victim

During all this time, everyone was in complete quarantine, even the dog. No one could leave campus, and the fence was the limit, even though the school was surrounded by desert. They were all becoming tired of each other and then finally, three days before Christmas, when everyone had been successfully vaccinated and the health center was child-free, the quarantine was lifted.

Arrangements were hurriedly executed and the activity of getting home for Christmas was exhilarating. If home was too far away, teachers and staff found places to go where they had a change of scenery and could relax.

Emma delivered her charges north and decided to spend her holiday in Santa Fe. She loved the farolito lights, colorful decorations, the red pork tamales, religious processions like the La Posada, posole, biscochitos, and piñon bonfires. She thought everyone should spend at least one Christmas in Santa Fe during their lifetime.

But Emma was not one to rest on her laurels. She had heard of a child with eye problems at a mining camp near Gallup. She arrived around noon the day after Christmas and was directed to a rough building that held a large dining room. Because of the holiday, the miners were not working, and many of them were having lunch there. There was a little 11-year-old girl who was serving bowls of food to the tables. She was being paid 50 cents per week for a seven day work week that began at dawn and ended in the dark.

The child’s eyes were extremely red and oozing. Emma located the girl’s father, a large, rough Polish miner who told her he did not know the whereabouts of the mother and the girl had never been to a doctor. Emma convinced him that she had State authority to take her to get treatment and go to school.

The father got his daughter’s coat and the few other pieces of clothing she owned. They got in Emma’s waiting car and the driver took them to Gallup. At the hotel, she bathed her and with some washcloths and warm water, greatly improved the appearance of her eyes, although they were still inflamed.

After breakfast the next morning, they wandered over to the station to await their train. Suddenly, two men appeared - - one who came up only to Emma’s shoulder with a face twisted into perpetual anger- the other was a big man wearing a Stetson, a badge and a gun at his belt. The cruel looking man ran the restaurant at the mine and according to him, Emma had no right to take the child. She asked him if he had the 11-year-old under a contract. He said he didn’t need a contract and was taking her back where she belonged.

“Over my dead body,” Emma said. Words flew between the two. Finally a big, hearty laugh came from the sheriff. He said, “Come on man; I'm taking you back to camp - - you're not getting anywhere here." He steered the mean, diminutive man back to the mine, and Emma and the girl boarded the train to El Paso for an ophthalmological appointment.

At Mr Pratt's request, but much against Emma’s resolve, she was told to carry a revolver in her satchel. She was often offered advice that the place she was headed was dangerous; she said she could predict what words the warning would begin with,”I have a daughter of my own…”

She said she had never needed her revolver, and never used it except for target practice, but fantasized this time of bopping the child’s raging employer on his noggin with the grip of her gun. Fortunately, she did not act upon it.

In El Paso, two doctors examined the child and came up with the diagnosis: trachoma. The doctors turned her eyelids inside out and scrubbed them with a medicated brush. Each week she was to go to the nurse at the school clinic where she would receive the same treatment. It took four months before her eyes were infection free. Some of her vision was saved, but her eyes were badly scarred.

Around this time, a former teacher at the school visited the Institute. She was Elizabeth Garrett. Her mother was Spanish from Northern New Mexico, and her father was the famous sheriff, Pat Garrett. Pat was renowned for having captured the notorious Billy the Kid. In fact, he captured him twice! The first time, Billy was jailed and sentenced to be hanged, but managed to escape. Patrick followed Billy to Fort Sumner and there, shot him. Pat was known as a tough man when necessary, but always very gentle and kind to Elizabeth.

Emma was enchanted with Miss Garrett who then lived in Long Island, New York and earned her living by singing. She told wonderful tales of growing up in New Mexico Territory and of her parents, particularly her father. In the evenings, the students and staff would sit around Garrett on the lawn and listen to her tales, some exciting, some sad, but most of them a living history lesson of New Mexico.

Pat Garrett and Elizabeth's Youngest Sister

The evenings during the few weeks Elizabeth visited were glorious. Her entourage would sit on the lawn while the sunset crept behind the San Andres Mountains. Then the moon rose followed by millions of stars. Under the expansive sky, Elizabeth told stories and sang song after song, all in Spanish. Emma’s favorites were “La Paloma” and “La Golondrina.”

In 1915, three years after New Mexico was admitted to the U.S. as the 47th state, Garrett wrote ”O Fair New Mexico.” Written in the form of a tango, it was officially adopted as New Mexico's state song in 1917. John Philip Sousa, famous military march composer, made an arrangement of the song in 1928.

Garrett was in the process of moving to Roswell, where she would teach piano, continue writing songs, devote her time to serving as a Board of Regent’s member for the Institute for the Blind, and perform around the country.

Elizabeth was friends with the blind/deaf author and political activist Helen Keller and her former teacher and lifelong companion, Anne Sullivan. The two would visit the “Songbird of the Southwest" at her home in Roswell and in Santa Fe to help Elizabeth lobby for the Institute in Alamogordo, and for the blind in the State of New Mexico.

Their lobbying activity to convince legislators to give state taxpayer money to her causes often began with a joke from Elizabeth Garret. She said she was there to fight for the blind and deaf in New Mexico. She quipped, “Quite frequently, my father had to bring harmony with a gun. I always have tried to do so by carrying a tune.”

Around the time Garrett’s visit ended, Emma began to receive letters from her fiance, Harold Minturn, with a return address of a post office box in New York City. Since German Kaiser Wilhelm II, Queen Victoria’s grandson, abdicated and the war ended at 11 o’clock, on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, Emma had received no correspondence from Harry. She assumed he was in Europe and was cleaning up the mess the “Huns” made with their destructive war. “Huns” was a derogatory term used by the Allied forces to define the barbarism of the German forces.

Harry explained that he had not been sent to Europe but had served as a mechanic in upstate New York. Now he was in the city trying to make his fortune as a salesman. Minturn had grown up with his parents and brother in boarding houses in Kansas, Missouri, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and several places in between, so he knew that a post office box was the best place to receive his mail while he was “transient.”

Emma’s tall, slender, dark haired, blue eyed soldier had been mustered out of the Army with no missing limbs or eyes, no mustard gas respiratory problems or chemical burns that disfigured his face or caused blindness. Unlike many soldiers who returned from Europe, he had not suffered from the loss of fingers or feet from trench foot, frostbite, or gangrene infections.

He was not one of the disfigured “gueules cassées,” - “broken faced men,” missing noses, jaws, cheekbones, ears or eyes. These men often went to a Tin Nose Shop to have custom, thin copper masks made. The prosthetic masks, crafted by sculptors on painted copper, were designed to resemble the soldier's pre-injury appearance as closely as possible with eyes, eyebrows, cheek definition, mouths, and ears painted over a base coat matched to the soldier's skin tone.

The copper coverings were held on by a tin wire or a ribbon and kept civilians from recoiling at the sight of the veterans’ disfigurements of missing cheekbones, jaws, noses, or eyes, but did not always cover the psychological trauma the wounded had suffered from the Great (horrible) War.

Tin Nose Masks to Cover Missing Face Features

Emma was far away from the consequences of World War I. Her brother had been drafted, but like her fiance, stayed state side and was now safe and sound back in Chambersburg. The nearest Emma had come to the war was when an incident occurred during the Mexican Revolution. Pancho Villa and his Villistas had raided Columbus, and General Pershing from El Paso’s Fort Bliss was ordered to keep Pancho Villa out of New Mexico and back where he belonged.

After General Pershing's unsuccessful invasion of Mexico, his 6000 troops headed back to the borderland. Several squads of his soldiers were making a summer foray into the Sacramento Mountains to train in the fresh mountain air. Pershing’s entourage of gallant cavalrymen passed through Alamogordo to get to their destination and camped in the park under the trees which Alamogordo was named after. They were staying under the fat cottonwoods over the weekend and would head up the mountain on Monday.

A dance soiree was held for the troops in town on Saturday evening; the orchestra from The Institute for the Blind furnished the music and one of the students whose home was in Alamogordo attended the dance. Several months later, the teenage girl told Miss Hamsher she didn’t feel well enough to attend class.

Emma sent her student to the health clinic where they discovered that she was pregnant. The girl didn’t know the soldier’s last name; she only knew that he was a homesick, terribly unhappy boy from the South who had told her that she was a wonderful dancer, how lovely she was, how he had never met a girl as understanding and kind as she was, and had asked her if he could see her again as soon as he received a leave of duty. By the time the girl discovered her predicament, Pershing and his troops had been sent overseas to France.

The pregnant girl’s mother had been dead for several years and her older sister had taken over raising the children. The big sister did not allow her littler sister back in the house. The school nurse suggested the girl go to El Paso where there was a home for unwed mothers; she remained until the baby was born and adopted. She then came back to live on the campus until she graduated.

Emma shook her head at the girl’s naivete and the opportunism of the young man. The school was quite strict with boy/girl activity on the campus and during field trips. The students and staff were warned of hereditary blindness and discouraged relationships between students. Emma vowed to keep a more diligent watch on her female charges and spoke to them about piety and purity. Society placed a high value on a woman's virtue, and warnings were given against activities that were considered detrimental to a girl's moral standing.

Meanwhile, Emma was contemplating the end of her five year teaching stint in New Mexico with mixed feelings. She was anxious to begin a family of her own, but leaving the children with whom she lived and worked was going to be gut wrenching. This had been the most interesting, exciting, and rewarding experience she had ever encountered. Her blind children had been her teachers; she said she had learned more from them than they had from her.

As the school year ended in 1921, it would also grieve her to leave the land of enchantment; she would miss the grandeur of the mountains, the desert, the indescribable sunsets, the homey little adobe houses which grew out of the brown land, and the friendly population of Anglo, Spanish, and Native people.

Emma had made close friends in Alamogordo; one was a priest who corresponded with other churches to help Emma locate blind children. The Father came from Germany for the “cure.” He had tuberculosis and the dry, desert air helped him heal and he fell in love with the area and remained.

Emma became friends with an English couple - the husband was also a “lunger” with tuberculosis. The gentleman was a billiard buff and they had one room built onto their adobe house which was known as the Billiard Room. They taught the young school teacher to play billiards and frequently invited her to spend an evening with them doing nothing but playing billiards after dinner.

Superintendent Pratt and Mrs. Pratt also doted on Emma. The school doctor who brought his children and his tubercular wife from New York to Alamogordo were also quite close with Miss Emsher. Everyone wished she would stay, but understood she had extended her engagement for a long time and was at the upper end of the age for marriage. It was time to be taken care of by a loving husband.

Before she left, she had taken a group of children for a picnic at a mountain park on top of a small canyon several miles from school. After lunch, Emma told the students she was going to hike down to the stream close by to fill a bucket with drinking and washing-up water. She made them promise to stay just where they were until she returned. Several of the children had partial vision and she knew they could be trusted to make sure this happened.

As she hiked down the hill, the bucket fell out of her hand and dropped noisily, clang, clang, clanging down the rocky mountain to the stream. She retrieved it, filled it, and hiked back to the children where she found everyone where they had been, but now on their knees, some crying, with hands folded, praying for her. They thought she had fallen with the bucket.

She wondered how she could leave them and never see them again. It was a difficult decision to make, but she wanted to finally marry the man she had kept waiting for so long. When they returned to school, she began packing for the trip back east. Mr. and Mrs. Pratt put her on the train the next day. She found her seat and waved to them where they stood on the platform; she had tears in her eyes and a pain in her heart while she watched little Alamogordo, sitting at the foot of the Sacramento Mountains, and her dearest friends roll out of sight.

Alamogordo Train Depot Grounds

Emma was married in Chicago in August of 1921 in a civil ceremony in a courtroom, no family nor friends attended. Her husband, Harold Disney Minturn, was reported as being a stockbroker in the Windy City. Emma’s achievements were listed extensively in the Chambersburg newspaper wedding announcement - graduate of Temple Baptist College, teacher, field officer, accomplished public speaker. Her father was the late artist, T.O. Hamsher. He had died of tuberculosis when Emma was five years old.

Unbeknownst to his bride, Harry had been married before in 1917 in Kansas City to a young, local woman. Harry worked as an advertising man while living at the Densmore Hotel when he married Roby Singleton, daughter of the recently deceased Dr. J.M. Singleton; she had inherited a healthy fortune. They were married for less than a year during which time, the man of the house (Harry) typically controlled the household purse strings.

The tumultuous alliance ended in a lawsuit which was eventually settled with his first wife’s family. Harold Minturn had accused his spouse’s household of alienation of affection and sued them for $50,000, over $1,250,000 in today’s money. They reached a settlement just to quell the town gossip and he was paid a secret sum and given a motor car to leave town.

Toward the end of the divorce settlement, Harry was drafted at age 29 (just missing the 30 year old cut-off) and preparing to leave for Pennsylvania where he would soon be introduced to Emma Hamsher.

When the judge overseeing the divorce trial told Mr. Minturn he had to leave Kansas City, Harry replied that the U.S. Government had superceded that command and that he was a former Cavalry soldier and was glad to be going back to the military. As he was catching his train bound for boot camp in Pennsylvania, he lied to a newspaper reporter that he was leaving to attend Officer Training School in Illinois.

There are no military records of Minturn serving in the U.S. Cavalry. Census records showed him working as a messenger and a stenographer in Kansas while living with his parents and brother in a boarding house. His father worked in a department store and his brother Raymond went to business school and was drafted the same time as Harry; Raymond would later become a successful engineer.

Near the end of 1919, Harry’s address changed from a New York to a Chicago post office box. Harry wrote that the job prospects there were much better and that he was working as a stockbroker. He said he would live cheaply in a boarding house until they married and he would be looking for an apartment for them in a nice area - near the Loop.

Apparently, when Harry mustered out of the military, he moved to Manhattan where he married a woman six years younger than he was, Beatrice Bovee, who had a peddler’s licence at a pier in Brooklyn. The couple moved to Chicago in 1920 for financial reasons; they lived with his wife's mother, Belle Bovee, a dry goods saleswoman who also took in boarders to make ends meet.

Harry Disney Minturn married Emma Hamsher in August of 1921. He had found them an apartment on the fashionable North side of Chicago, walkable to Lake Michigan and not too far from the elevated train known as the “Loop.” Chicago fascinated Emma; it was beautiful, exciting, interesting, and enjoyable. A year and a half later, a son was born, Raymond Hamsher Minturn. He lived for nineteen days. A year after that, a daughter arrived stillborn.

Emma took a job with the Chicago Public Schools as a teacher after the painful experience of losing two babies. The rules had relaxed and married women could teach in Chicago as long as they did not become pregnant or have children.

Emma had come into the marriage with a savings account from her five years of teaching and summer field work duties. Harry began to work on a project as a contractor, becoming a founding member building a private country club with a 26 acre lake.

In 1928, Emma resigned from her job when she discovered she was pregnant. She had a healthy baby girl, Anne Leigh Minturn, who required every bit of Emma’s attention. Six months after she was born, her parents took her with them on a celebratory cruise from Florida to Cuba.

The year 1929 was a banner year for Cuba until the Wall Street Crash in October. Gerardo Machado, President of Cuba, was willing to pocket any bribe from any foreigner who wanted permits to own and operate hotels, restaurants, gambling casinos, and brothels. Tourism increased markedly in Cuba and tax revenues allowed for a central highway to be built; money for public education spending increased, and investment in industrialization began - until it all crashed along with the Stock Market.

The Great Depression ended the bubble of the Roaring 20’s. Emma was not working and slowly became a “grass widow.” A “sod widow’s” husband is six feet under; a grass widow’s husband stops coming home. But Emma announced to all that she had in fact become a “widow,” to avoid the shame of whatever there was to be ashamed of with a husband who had disappeared.

Emma eventually became the manager of an apartment/hotel overlooking Lake Michigan. She and Anne lived there until Anne matriculated from Chicago Girls’ Latin School and then attended Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, where she graduated in 1949.

Meanwhile, Harry married Helene Smith in Panama City, Florida in 1937 and five years later, a Florida newspaper's legal posting ran for four weeks announcing that Helene Minturn of Panama City, Florida was divorcing Harold Disney Minturn of Biloxi, Mississippi who had vanished.

After World War I, divorces increased notably during the Roaring Twenties. Hasty marriages were common during war time. A husband sometimes returned a stranger after the trauma of battle but divorce was still stigmatized, especially for women. Divorcee was synonymous with “loose woman.”

Divorce was fault-based and difficult to prove and obtain. Some churches did not recognize divorce; it was easier in a time before computer databases, social media, facial recognition and tracking devices to simply disappear a few states or a coastline far away.

Three years later, Harry died in Los Angeles, California, less than ten miles from his second wife, Beatrice Bovee Johnsan, now a Hollywood socialite whose soirees made the newspaper thanks to the wealth of her new husband.

An application was submitted by an anonymous person to the Veterans Administration requesting a headstone for Harry at Los Angeles National Cemetery; he had died two months after the end of World War II, twenty-five short years after his military service ended following World War I.

Emma and Harry’s daughter, Anne Minturn, had been given a research assistantship at Harvard and Emma decided to apply for a job in nearby Boston’s Perkins School for the Blind. She called Perkins to set up an appointment for an interview, but since Emma’s teaching credentials had lapsed, the only job available was an office secretarial position for the bursar.

The bursar was extremely helpful and asked Emma what type of job she was really looking for. He suggested she go to The Statler Hotel in Boston the following week to attend a meeting of administrators from various schools for the blind; he arranged for Emma to meet some of the superintendents. She met with Dr. Francis M. Andrews from the Maryland School for the Blind.

Emma told Dr. Andrews that she had presented a speech twenty-seven years ago at a conference on his campus. She remembered how beautiful the grounds were - lawns filled with magnificent elms and oaks, an orchard, woods filled with birds, wild flowers, and a brook running through the forest. At 19 years old, she had sat by the brook to practice her progressive presentation that she later gave to hundreds of educators dedicated to working with the blind.

The vacancy at the Maryland School for the Blind was for a dietitian. She was not a dietician, but she no longer had a teaching license and the Superintendent convinced her she could do the job until something became available that she preferred. She asked about budgeting and he replied that as long as she fed the children, the teachers and staff well, there would be no problem. She accepted and stayed at the school until she retired in 1972.

But, Emma would not rest on her laurels. She began lobbying her Superintendent to create a new position called “Home Visitor.” The Home Visitor would travel the State of Maryland to advise and counsel mothers of babies born prematurely who developed blindness. Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) beat out venereal disease after the advent of penicillin as the leading cause of childhood blindness.

The Home Visitor would teach the mothers how to teach their children until they were old enough to attend school. The Home Visitor would provide resources and referrals for the families of children with vision problems and would go from town to town to seek out new babies who qualified for the services.

After the position of Home Visitor was established, Emma nominated herself for the job. The Superintendent hired her and she spent the next twenty years as the Maryland School for the Blind Home Visitor. She traipsed the state from north to south, east to west in her automobile, no longer needing to take a train nor a horse. She hand typed a memoir after she retired; her last chapter oddly mimicking her first chapter.

Maryland School for the Blind

In 1974, Emma went to live with her daughter, Dr. Anne Leigh Minturn, professor of social psychology at University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Minturn’s publications included women’s and children’s issues, cross-cultural perspectives and extensive research she gathered in India. “Mothers of Six Cultures,” “Sita’s Daughters,” and “Rajputs of Khalapur” were a few of her publications.

Emma’s obituary in 1985 was titled, “Emma Minturn, She Taught the Blind.” Her story of teaching in Alamogordo, New Mexico was premier, along with the “fact” that she had been a widow for many years. Her adventures of riding trains, travelling horseback, riding in wagons, and in rented automobiles through the desert to make sure she found every blind student in the state defined her life.

Emma’s daughter, Anne, named after Anne Sullivan, teacher of Helen Kellar, died in an Egypt Air plane crash off Nantucket in 1999. She was seventy years old. In her will, she bequeathed a collection of New Mexican artifacts, (gifts from parents of blind children to Emma), to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. The Pueblo storyteller clay dolls, figurines, bowls, Navajo and Apache baskets, and other artifacts were each small enough to fit into Anne’s mother’s leather shoulder bag she'd carried onto trains, horse’s backs, and in rented cars. Even the santo of Joseph, caretaker of children, now displayed in the Harvard museum, once fit perfectly into Emma’s well-traveled satchel.

Story Teller

Part III - Emma Hamsher - Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher

2025-07-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

In the Summer of 1918, when Emma returned two weeks early to the New Mexico Institute for the Blind to do her field work, she decided she would begin her first trip in an area where there were sufficiently good roads. She took the train to Albuquerque, rented a car, and with the help of medical professionals, clergy, teachers, and just talking to people, she discovered several blind children in the area.

Perhaps one of the saddest cases Emma experienced was a family consisting of a father, mother, a toddler around two years old, and a two-month old baby. The family was living in a box car on an unused siding in the desert. The box car was filthy and had a horrible odor of excrement, body odor, and rotted scraps.

Both of the parents had sores around their mouths and the father’s lesions also covered his hands and arms. The toddler was also developing symptoms. Emma had studied syphilis as a cause of blindness and seen pictures of the abscesses and was sure these were the same. The children both still had sight but had not been treated with the cure of the times - an arsenic extraction, and they were too young for the school for the blind where they could receive medical care. They needed help but the best she could do was report the case when she returned to Albuquerque.

Emma spent the night in Albuquerque, not getting much sleep from worrying if it was possible to become infected from being around the family. She went to a doctor and explained her concerns. He was an understanding elderly doctor and they discussed that Emma had not touched the sores and was unlikely to have contracted the disease. He said, “Little girl, if you are a good little girl, you won't have to worry.” His “scientific” advice did not completely alleviate her fears. She kept seeing that poor family in her mind for a long time.

Heading west to Gallup, Emma passed many villages and pueblos on her route. Her best sources of information in these small towns were the itinerant priests. Walking around Laguna and about to head to a different town, she came up on four little boys shooting marbles in the dust. Speaking in Spanish, she told them she used to play marbles with her brothers. One of the boys asked if she wanted to play. Each boy passed her a few marbles, and the one who invited her gave her a shooter. She folded her skirt under her knees and joined them in the dust.

After a while, she asked them if they knew of any ciegos or ciegas close by. They put their heads together, conferred with each other quietly and decided they did. They took her to a little adobe house; behind the casita was a strange structure which looked like a large dog house. The boys told her to open the hatch and they scampered off. There appeared a site that Emma could not fathom: a blind teenage boy - a ciego - with very long hair and the beginnings of facial hair was inside the crate. His face appeared green.

Emma said hello and asked his name. He told her. She didn't have time to ask any more questions because a raging fury, the mother, ran from the house screaming at her in Spanish so rapidly she couldn’t understand her. Her husband appeared and Emma managed to get through to them that she wanted to help the boy.

She said she was representing the State of New Mexico and had the authority to see that their boy was in school. Emma told them she would be back at a certain date to pick up all the blind children in the area and that she expected them to have the boy at the train depot at that time.

The mother had not wanted anyone to know she had a blind child. She hid him in his little hut all day and brought him into the house at night. She thought God was punishing her for being sinful by giving her a blind child so she hid this from her family and community. Apparently everyone did know, but went along with her ruse.

On the appointed day, Emma started in Santa Fe and picked up the children at their designated stations. One of the students was a young teenage boy who had worked in a lumber camp. He had been struck on the head by a falling limb which caused him to lose most of his sight. Prior to the accident, the lumberjack had been in boxing matches; he was big and very strong. The young man was anxious to learn Braille so he could read again and to learn skills which would help him be able to earn a living. He was excited to begin school in Alamogordo.

Emma wondered if the teenage boy who had been kept hidden in his hutch would be at the station. The father and his son appeared just in time. As Emma and the boy were getting on the train, the engine blew the whistle. The poor boy had never heard a whistle and panicked. He ran over Emma trying to escape the train but her new charge, the blinded lumberjack, picked him up, threw him over his shoulder and, with his free arm, maneuvered the car steps.

The lumberjack sat with the boy the whole way to El Paso and helped him change cars to Alamogordo. He took care of him and sat with the formerly caged boy the whole way to Alamogordo where they became fast friends. Emma thanked her lucky stars for his help.

The young man who had lived his life secluded except for evenings with his mother and father began to realize there were many things, nice things, that he had known nothing about. His hair was cut, he was shaved, he spent a great deal of time in the sunshine, and he was well fed. By Christmas time he was thriving and he and the lumberjack had learned the craft of making brooms and chairs. This was a turning point for both the young men; knowing there was something they could do to earn money was a great lift to their egos.

The fall of 1918, as most people remember, was the year of the Spanish Flu. The Institute for the Blind was situated a mile and a half from Alamogordo and though they had read and heard the horrors of this flu, the virus had not yet reached them.

One Sunday afternoon, Emma was called from dinner to go to the Superintendent’s office; her thought was, ‘Now what have I done’? The school doctor was with Mr. Pratt. They informed her that Mrs. Pratt was very ill after a trip to El Paso and had the symptoms of the flu. They had tried to find a nurse who could take care of her, but there were not enough nurses in the state to take care of all those afflicted. Emma said she would stay nights with Mrs. Pratt to dispense a certain medicine she needed on the hour every hour. She recovered but was weak for weeks afterward.

By the time Mrs. Pratt was better, the children were becoming ill, one after the other. There were still no nurses to be had though they had put out newspaper ads in the southern half of the state. Many of the teachers secluded themselves for fear of catching the flu. The kitchen staff saw that everyone was fed, but even they eventually became ill.

A partially-sighted young man from Illinois School for the Blind had joined them that year as a house parent and he volunteered to help Emma. Each morning she saw each sick person, charted their temperatures, intake, and elimination before the doctor arrived.

The volunteer carried trays and ran errands if something was needed and was particularly helpful with the boys. Emma learned that she did not know the words for “elimination" in Spanish. Her new student was just learning English and they got nowhere, growing more confused. The volunteer suggested to her, “Ask him if he stood up or sat down!” Problem solved.

When all the sick beds were empty and the children were back in the classrooms, Emma finally caught the Spanish flu. She was so sick she thought she would die. It took her a month to get over the symptoms. Over 675,000 died in the United States during the 1918 epidemic, but not one was lost at the NM Institute for the Blind.

Christmas was now not far away. Letters to Santa were written, a humongous pine tree was cut, and a holiday menu was planned. Several days before Christmas, two wooden boxes arrived by express from Emma’s mother. The boxes contained six cakes, white fruit, dark fruit, palmetto, chocolate fudge, coconuts, dozens of spice cookies, all sorts of homemade Christmas candies, nuts galore, and toys made of hard candy on sticks which could be bitten or licked. There was enough for the teachers, staff, and children to have tea parties almost every afternoon until the holiday ended.

During the 1918 Spring semester, the social dancing parties continued. The students and staff made the trip to the White Sands and came back by full moon which rose from behind the Sacramento Mountains and lighted the desert like daytime. On weekends they had lots of picnics at interesting and educational spots and dug and searched for fossils and collected quite a few. The basin and range of southern New Mexico had once lain at the bottom of the Permian Sea and fossils from marine life were treasures there for the finding.

Millions of years later after the sea receded, giant fauna would tromp across this area - mammoths, dire wolves, mastodons, sloths, camels, and some species of rodents that were as big as a cow. Siberian tribes hunted and followed these animals over the Bering Strait more than 20,000 years ago. Native storytellers told origin myths about the creatures whose fossilized bones and teeth they found in stream beds or buried in the strata of mountains or earth.

One of the most exciting happenings for the students was when a local farmer gifted the school with two burros, Punch (a gelding Jack) and Judy (a Jenny). The two were tame and friendly creatures who seemed to enjoy the children as much as the children enjoyed them.

The farmer told the children that the cross on the burros’ backs, which ran horizontally across the front shoulders, and vertically down their spines, were there because a burro carried Mary into Bethlehem to give birth to baby Jesus, and 33 years later, Jesus rode a burro into Jerusalem to face the Romans. The farmer said God blessed the burros by giving them a cross on their backs to show they were devoted creatures. The children ‘aaahhhed’ at the man’s story.

A gymnastic and dance exhibition was being choreographed and produced for the end of the school year. The dancers and gymnasts worked like little Trojans. Costumes were sewn and a program was written and printed. About this time in New Mexico, oil company men were in the state buying up land for oil production. One of the oilmen attended the school’s exhibition, was delighted with it, and quit claim deeded 1/40 of a section (16 acres) each, one to Mr. Pratt and one to Emma. The two educators had fun for a while counting the millions they were going to make. Their acreage didn’t pan out; it was too far outside the boundaries of the oil-rich Permian Basin.

School ended and once more Field Secretary Emma Hamsher was preparing to take the children home to their parents. The parents were all at their assigned stations to pick up their children except for the Santa Fe station. Here, Emma was left with 6-year-old Cepriano Chavez whose parents did not show up to fetch him. Fortunately, Emma had been to his home once and remembered where he lived. They walked the crooked, winding, 400 year old roads to his house.

The neighbors said his parents had moved but no one knew where. Emma went to the courthouse to have a look at the names of registered voters. There were several hundred people named Chavez on the register. About two hours later, she located a Señora Chavez who knew Cipriano - it was his grandmother. His abuela didn't know where his parents had gone, but like most grandmothers, she loved the little boy and was happy to take him.

This time Emma decided to remain in the field until she had taken census of the blind children in the state, county by county. She had not received a letter from her fiance in quite some time and blamed it on the war; and she did not feel her former homesickness to get back to Pennsylvania, so she began her summer child-find adventure.

Emma spent the night in Santa Fe and left the next morning, determined to find blind children who needed to be in school. She planned to start in the north and work her way down the state. Her first stop was Raton, a mining town near the Colorado border. The train into Raton arrived at dusk and she felt fortunate to find a small hotel just across the road. She registered and was shown to a room. She had some food sent up, wrote some letters, and having had a couple of exhausting days, went to bed early to be in good shape for the next day.

The next morning after breakfast she used the hotel telephone to call the Miner’s Hospital and was referred to the Chief of Staff. He suggested she come to the hospital to discuss the condition of several of the children whom he thought might be candidates for the school.

They began their tour of the grounds and suddenly the Chief of Staff was staring at her rather strangely. He asked, “When did you arrive in Raton?” She told him right before sunset yesterday. Then he asked, “Where did you stay?” She told him. His reply was, “Oh my God!”

He immediately called one of the hospital employees over, explained the situation, and sent him immediately to the hotel to pay her bill and bring her belongings to the hospital where she was billeted for the next two nights without charge. Apparently, she had spent the night in a house of ill repute! When she had entered the lobby the day before, she thought nothing of the fancifully- dressed pretty girls sitting lazily around the front room.

She seemed to recall a lot of moving around in the hallway that night, and someone had knocked on her locked door. She had paid no attention to the knock, thinking the visitor had the wrong room and she was too exhausted to get out of bed to respond. She poked her temple and said, “ How could I have been so foolish! I’m not that naive. I must have had other things on my mind.”

A few days later she was looking for a little town that was horse riding distance from a narrow gauge railroad. She began in Española. The conductor told her about a recently built resort at Ojo Caliente. It was about ten miles from the tracks to the spa but the owner had a telephone booth next to the tracks where, if you called him, he would pick you up to take you to the spa.

The conductor stopped the train at the phone booth, unloaded Emma and her baggage, called the spa, got back on the train, and away he went. After the train left, there was complete silence. Emma sat on a ledge feeling abandoned for what seemed an endless amount of time. Finally she heard a putt-putt off in the distance, gradually getting closer.

She was picked up and taken to the spa. The little hotel was delightful, well laid out, with all the conveniences - lovely furniture, good beds and excellent food. The staff was small but helpful. The hotel faced a small mesa, at the bottom of which several mineral springs bubbled up. There were three guests while Emma was there, a group of adventurous women from Colorado.

After dinner, Emma asked if the owner knew of anyone who might rent her a horse. She was lucky because the owner’s wife, for whom he had recently bought a beautiful horse, had left him and her filly behind. He offered Emma the horse saying the sweet little mare needed exercise and he would appreciate her riding her - she’d be doing him a favor. So she did and off she went!

Emma followed an arroyo where she had been told there might be a young blind boy. There were few adobe houses scattered about, but the one she was looking for was plastered with white stucco which made it easy to find. She was invited inside and marveled at a conical adobe fireplace from floor to ceiling curved into one corner.

There was a nicho several feet above the firebox filled with three carved wooden saints painted in bright colors. There was also a shelf attached to an adobe wall that looked as if it had grown out of the plaster. The shelf displayed saints with swords, saints with wings, saints with sheep and crosses and children, and several Virgin Marys. Emma commented on how beautiful the saints were and the woman said her husband was a santero, he carved saints.

The mother had a child with limited vision but he was too young for school. They conversed for several hours. Emma looked the child over, gave suggestions, and told the mother she would return next year for a visit. As she was leaving, the mother offered her one of the little saints. She chose one of Joseph holding baby Jesus. The mother told her that was the perfect saint for her; Joseph was the saint that protected children.

As Emma left, she noticed a man sitting in the shade on a stump, working over another large, flat stump that served as his table. Wood shavings surrounded his work area. He was shirtless and had his back to her. He jumped up, leaving his saintly work in progress behind him, and headed toward a little nearby shed. As he walked through the sunshine, Emma noticed that his back was crisscrossed with welts and scars. His back looked like the photographs of the backs of slaves she had seen who had been beaten with whips.

Her host at Ojo Caliente later explained that this was a Penitente family. They were a secret religious sect that had rituals of flogging themselves to punish themselves for their sins. Another day she was riding in the arroyo and saw a cross on the top of a hill. She stopped when she noticed about ten men climbing the hill, each with a switch of some sort hitting the back of the person in front of him. Emma turned her horse around and went a different direction where she later discovered a family with seven deaf and speechless children. She would give the information about the family to the school for the deaf in Santa Fe.

Emma enjoyed returning from a long dusty ride to bathe in the mineral baths at Ojo Caliente. She wondered why anyone would name a place “Hot Eye” but she supposed there were strange town names in Pennsylvania, too - Peach Bottom, Mars, Panic, and Hazard, to name a few. She left her tiny Hot Eye spa with regret and traveled to El Rito, a little town about 20 miles away with one small hotel that served excellent meals.

While in El Rito, she heard about a family with nine totally blind children aged 18 to 6. She visited the family and saw that the children were dressed in rags. Their eyes looked bright, shiny and healthy but without an optic nerve in sight. The locals gossiped that the reason for the children’s blindness was an epileptic mother and an alcoholic father. Emma didn’t know if that was the cause.

Before the advent of penicillin in the 1940s, the leading cause of blindness was from parents who were infected with venereal diseases. Another cause was trachoma, an infectious eye disease particularly prevalent among Native populations in the Southwest; lack of clean water and poverty contributed to its spread. Meningitis, measles, smallpox, and a host of syndromes also affected the possibility of blindness. Cataracts, fetal alcohol syndrome, work accidents, inbreeding, and premature birth round out the list of potential causes.

The family of blind children in El Rito were all very lively and enthusiastic. Emma learned that the well worn, outgrown frayed clothing they were wearing was all they had to wear. She did not want to take the children to school in such raggedy circumstances. There was a large building in the village which was empty. Emma sought out the owner and asked if the building was ever used for dancing. He said it was but they hadn’t held a dance for a long time. He said she could use the building if she wanted.

Ten Cents a Dance fundraisers were popular at the time. Emma, with the help of the locals got the word out to all the ranches and their cowboys and to surrounding farms and villages. There wasn't a Victrola in town, but there was an out-of-tune piano in the building and a local woman who could play it by ear. The oldest blind boy, Tom, had a fiddle and could fiddle by ear. Another brother, Manuel, could play the drum, and the orchestra got together to practice. Emma sang and whistled some new dance tunes for two days which the small pieced-together band learned quickly.

The Saturday night for the dime dance arrived and cowboys, girls in newly sewn frocks, and families from all around came. Not one man nor boy attempted to get on the dance floor without dropping his dime in the pail before choosing a dance partner. The music wasn’t perfect but the rhythm was superb.

Two sons of Helen Hunt Jackson, an activist for Natives and the famous author of “Ramona,” had checked into the hotel. One son was a Denver lawyer and the younger son was a Rhodes Scholar just back from England. They were researching Spanish land grants in the area and at dinner one night, Emma invited them to the dance. They came and helped work the dance and made generous donations.

The community earned enough money to dress each one of the nine children and provided them with what they needed to head off to school. When the time came to pick them up, people in El Rito escorted them to their train station. They were all nice children and turned out to be good students.

From El Rito, Emma went to Española where she visited a couple she was fond of. Tony had gone to Carlisle Indian School where he had studied law. Emma was from Cumberland Valley, very near Carlisle, Pennsylvania and had met Tony at a sporting match. Her friend had recently married an Osage woman who owned a Franklin car which was grandiose, making their house look small. She owned a few oil wells on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma and their beautiful adobe home in Española exhibited her wealth through her treasures.

The floors were covered with Navajo rugs; she displayed Pueblo pottery on her shelves and in her nichos, and her blankets and silver jewelry were extravagant. In one corner, there was a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary made by the santero with the blind son that Emma had visited.

Tony took Emma to his pueblo in Taos so she could check for blind children. She needed to get permission to visit the Pueblo from a very old gentleman. She asked if there were blind children and the elder was insulted that she would think that there was a blind person in his Pueblo. He told Tony to take her in to see for herself.

She marveled at the five story adobe “apartment” complex with wooden ladders leaning against each level. The horno ovens, looking like mud beehives, held freshly baking bread which was shared with her. Shy, shiny- eyed children with straight jet-black hair giggled behind their mother’s skirts peeping at the funny looking stranger. Men wrapped in colorful blankets stood or sat on the buildings’ ledges and watched this strange Anglo woman poking around their village which had been here before Columbus, Spanish Conquistadors, Jamestown, or the Pilgrims ever wandered in.

Tony was going to stay in Taos for a few days and arranged a car for Emma to return to Santa Fe to catch the train for Alamogordo. She had been away almost a month and needed to get back to school to report in. Her driver arrived at the pueblo gate and she felt there was something “strange” about him. Whenever they stopped the car to move to the edge of the road to let another car pass going in the opposite direction, he disappeared, bending over in the front seat. Emma suspected he had a bottle.

It was a very worrisome trip to Santa Fe. At one point there was a small stream that the driver went through slowly instead of gaining momentum to rush down one creek bank and up the other. When they had just about reached the other side, the car started to sink. Emma climbed from the back seat to the top of the car, down to the hood, and slogged to the bank of the stream. The driver packed rocks, twigs, branches, everything he could find under the car and finally got the vehicle out. By this time, she could not stop glaring at him as he sobered up from the gravity of the situation.

She brusquely told the driver she’d missed her train and needed to find a hotel near the station. Then the worst part of her travails began. She fell asleep quickly in her hotel room, but woke up soon after when she began feeling little pin pricks all over her. At first, she thought it was just exhaustion and nervousness. She turned on the lights and saw hundreds of little apple seed-shaped brown bedbugs on the ceilings, on the walls, on the bed and on herself. She shook out her clothes, dressed, and went to the lobby where they told her she was welcome to sleep in one of the chairs.

Emma left for Alamogordo the next morning and Mr. Pratt met her at the train station that evening. “How was your trip?” he inquired.

Emma replied, “Wonderful! I enjoyed every minute!”

To be continued…

Taos, South Pueblo

Ojo Caliente, New Mexico

Santero

Listening to a Christmas Story at NMIB

Caning Chairs

Crafting Brooms

Jest 'Fore Christmas by Eugene Field

2025-07-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

Jest 'Fore Christmas

by
Eugene Field

Father calls me William, sister calls me Will,

Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill!

Mighty glad I ain't a girl--ruther be a boy,

Without them sashes, curls, an' things that 's worn by Fauntleroy!

Love to chawnk green apples an' go swimmin' in the lake--

Hate to take the castor-ile they give for bellyache!

'Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain't no flies on me,

But jest 'fore Christmas I 'm as good as I kin be!

Got a yeller dog named Sport, sic him on the cat;

First thing she knows she doesn't know where she is at!

Got a clipper sled, an' when us kids goes out to slide,

'Long comes the grocery cart, an' we all hook a ride!

But sometimes when the grocery man is worrited an' cross,

He reaches at us with his whip, an' larrups up his hoss,

An' then I laff an' holler, "Oh, ye never teched me!"

But jest 'fore Christmas I 'm as good as I kin be!

Gran'ma says she hopes that when I git to be a man,

I 'll be a missionarer like her oldest brother, Dan,

As was et up by the cannibuls that lives in Ceylon's Isle,

Where every prospeck pleases, an' only man is vile!

But gran'ma she has never been to see a Wild West show,

Nor read the Life of Daniel Boone, or else I guess she 'd know

That Buff'lo Bill an' cowboys is good enough for me!

Excep' jest 'fore Christmas, when I 'm good as I kin be!

And then old Sport he hangs around, so solemnlike an' still,

His eyes they seem a-sayin': "What's the matter, little Bill?"

The old cat sneaks down off her perch an' wonders what's become

Of them two enemies of hern that used to make things hum!

But I am so perlite an' tend so earnestly to biz,

That Mother says to Father: "How improved our Willie is!"

But Father, havin' been a boy hisself, suspicions me

When, jest 'fore Christmas, I 'm as good as I kin be!

For Christmas, with its lots an' lots of candies, cakes, an' toys,

Was made, they say, for proper kids an' not for naughty boys;

So wash yer face an' bresh yer hair, an' mind yer p's and q's,

An' don't bust out yer pantaloons, and don't wear out yer shoes;

Say "Yessum" to the ladies, and "Yessur" to the men,

An' when they 's company, don't pass yer plate for pie again;

But, thinkin' of the things yer 'd like to see upon that tree,

Jest 'fore Christmas be as good as yer kin be!

Part II - Emma Hamsher, Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher

2025-06-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

In 1917, Emma Hamsher, a thoroughly modern, Progressive teacher, taught high school Latin, algebra, geometry, English, history, girls’ athletics, drama, dancing, and directed Industrial Arts at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. The school’s classrooms were light and airy and class sizes were small - six or seven students. For the first few days as the children arrived at school, she visited them when they were being put to bed, starting to get to know them. She went to bed feeling depressed and wondering if she was capable of teaching these children.

Emma found her students delightful, cooperative and willing to learn, with one exception - - the school's greatest athlete, a Navajo boy totally blind from smallpox. Yiacero had never been taught by anyone but a male, and every time she asked him a question, he said, in a staccato voice, “ I don't know.” She was sure he did know.

She tried all the teaching tools she had learned in college; she knew she needed to be a role model, not a critic, but one day she had heard the last “I don’t know,” she ever wanted to hear! She stopped being a role model, walked down the aisle to the young man, slammed a huge Braille book on his desk, and shouted, “I know you are a big strong man and I'm just a young woman, but so help me, if I get another ‘I don't know’ from you, I shall bash you over the head with this book!”

There was absolute silence. Yiacero's shoulders began to bounce and he laughed and the laugh became so infectious that she laughed too, and the rest of the students followed suit. He began to help the struggling teacher who was younger than he; he taught her Braille and they became good friends.

8th grade graduates - Louise Jones, Yiacerro Gastea, Glen Stemple, Lila Warnock

Emma wrote that she loved teaching these children and that she was learning more from them than they were learning from her. Alamogordo had very little to offer in the way of entertainment, so any time she wasn’t teaching or exploring the desert or mountains and canyons, she was with the children.

One day, she took a group of her students for a walk. Louise, totally blind from birth with sockets rather than eyes, was walking at her side holding her arm. They came to a deserted ranch with a dilapidated corral and she pointed toward a lone post. She asked, “What is over there?” They stepped over to the post, she felt it, and Emma asked how she knew it was there.

“I could tell by the change in the breeze as we walked past it,” she explained.

Emma began to learn how her blind students understood the world and their heightened sense of hearing to navigate their environment. They taught their teacher how they used sounds to determine the location of objects or position or movement of people, how they could feel the presence of obstacles in the terrain by echo location, how touch plays a role in recognizing the features of people and objects, and how smell can help the blind navigate and orient themselves. A new tool, the white cane, was beginning to be promoted and distributed by The Lions Clubs International as its signature program. The cane used tapping to locate obstacles and sounds for reverberation to hear where objects were nearby.

Emma and the children created games using sensory testing. The students had fun interacting with each other and competing for the number of identifications they could make with sounds, smells, taste, and touch. They insisted their teacher close her eyes and participate, too. Emma thought their descriptions as to shape, size, texture, pretty/ugly, sweet/sour, and loud/quiet were poetic. She combined the lessons with discovery and writing and determined that their sensory perceptions were much sharper and their descriptive writing skills much improved.

Emma quickly learned about the perils of frontier life in the West. While perusing through Braille books in the basement, she tipped over an open box which revealed a rattlesnake. She left the snake to the handyman to “handle;” he later showed her the six foot long skin.

One afternoon during a gym class outdoors, while giving commands standing on a mound, she yelled, “Class dismissed,” and began running to the showers while doing a strip tease at the same time. She had been standing on an ant hill and was covered and beginning to get bitten.

She liked to ride up into the Sacramento Mountains, take a little picnic and read. On her way home one afternoon, she came to a small mountain stream and stopped to water her horse. There was a shady nook up the stream a bit where she could drop the reins for her horse to graze, and she took her book and sandwich out of her saddlebag. After she had settled in, a man came dashing through the woods, down the bank to the stream; he washed his hands and arms while looking behind himself and was unaware of her. He crossed the stream, ran up the bank diagonally to the left, and on through the woods.

Shortly after, a posse rode to the stream, saw Emma and her horse and asked if she had seen a man come by that way. She said he had stopped at the stream to wash off and then ran. They told her the runaway had killed a man with a knife in a lumber camp and was probably washing blood from his hands and arms. She pointed her finger and said the stereotypical line, “He went that-a-way!” The posse rode off and Emma left in the opposite direction.

Many Easterners crossed the Mississippi after the golden age of the Wild West with the impression from reading dime novels that cowboys were hard, tough, mean scoundrels. Emma described the cowboys that she met as ‘perfect gentlemen.’ She found them to be kind, helpful and knowledgeable, and having wonderful senses of humor.

Her first encounter with a cowboy happened on the way from town to school one day. She was following a path that was thick and tall with overgrown weeds. She passed a wrangler going in the opposite direction and he commanded her to stop. She didn't, so he bellowed, “Miss, I said stop!” She stopped out of fear; he rode over and removed a tarantula as big as a fist from her skirt. She had never seen a tarantula before and couldn’t stop thanking him. He just nodded, touched the brim of his hat and sauntered off.

There was an ongoing war between the ranchers and coyotes whose ghostly howls at night warned of their frequent marauding, doing harm to the livestock and picking off wobbly newborn calves. One weapon the cowboys used against the coyotes was putting out poisoned food. A problem with this approach was that other creatures might find the same food.

The school had a dog, a collie named Lassie, who roamed the campus and whom the students adored. She had a litter and one was a beautiful albino pup that was snow white. Emma was given the pick of the litter and she chose the albino and named him Prince. She wrote her family and fiance that Prince was completely different from any dog she had ever had; he was smarter and had a great sense of humor.

Emma would sit on the grass and Prince would creep up behind her, and very precisely with his teeth, remove her hair pins one by one. These were the days of very long hair with lots of pins to hold it above the nape. When Prince had enough pins out and her hair came tumbling down, he was delighted and danced around and made sounds like he was trying to tell her something. Apparently, he liked her better with her hair down than with it up.

When Emma was not on the school campus, Prince was outdoors and spent most of his time at the campus gate to greet visitors and await her arrival. One day when she returned, he was not there and she went to the office where Mr. Pratt gave her the bad news that Prince had gotten into some meat meant for the coyotes. He was in such agony that he had to be put to sleep. Emma was stunned with the loss of her best friend and it would bring tears to her eyes for the rest of her life whenever she reminisced about her snow white dog.

Many of the students who were boarding at the school were from homes scattered across the large State of New Mexico - you could fit all of Great Britain in the Land of Enchantment and still have room for a couple of Rhode Islands. Consequently, many of the students were unable to get home for Christmas. Some were invited to spend the holiday with friends whose homes were nearby, but most of the children remained at school.

The teachers who had the same geographic problems stayed on the campus and did all they could to keep the children happy. Some of the students had never experienced a Christmas tree nor heard of Santa Claus and the presents he slid down the chimney. They trimmed a tree, sang Christmas songs, and wrote letters to St. Nick. Emma took the letters and bought presents for the children at the stores in Alamogordo. Many businesses, churches, and citizens helped her financially and the young teacher was amazed with the community’s generosity.

On Christmas morning after breakfast, and after the children had opened their presents with many oooohs and aaaahhhhs, everyone was off to church. They returned to the campus where a turkey with stuffing and all the trimmings were waiting. The tables were festively decorated and at each place was a little trinket. The children were excited about everything. After the meal, they were free to do as they pleased.

Emma was asked to give a reading to an organization in Alamogordo that was staging a charity function. She gave a motivational reading and as an encore, she read Eugene Fields “Jest Fore Christmas” about a little boy who only starts behaving right before Christmas. She wasn't aware that a group of cowboys was lined up at the rear of the hall until she heard them chuckling as she read, “any cocky little boy might brag that Buffalo Bill and cowboys is good enough for me.” She made a hasty exit through the rear door to avoid their ribbing.

After the holidays, Pedro Suarez from Mexico City came to Alamogordo to establish a Protestant church, but he couldn’t speak but a few words of English. Someone in town sent him to Mr. Pratt as his was the only school around that might teach English as a language. Emma told Pastor Suarez that she was willing to teach him English if he would teach her Spanish.

This went on for two years. Suarez's Spanish was Castilian, and Emma learned from her student the differences of Spanish in the northern part of the state which was different somewhat from the southern part. Students would argue about which words were the proper name for something. At birthday celebrations, northern New Mexicans would ask for “quéqué” and southern Spanish speakers would request “pastel.” Emma learned her Spanish and Spanglish quite well and was able to communicate with her Spanish-speaking students and their parents; this would be extremely helpful when she started her child-find work later on.

Spring was just around the corner and the school was planning for summer vacation. World War I was full on. Emma was homesick and took a job teaching swimming lessons at Wilson College near her parents. Her fiancé was training with his tank unit in upstate New York and she was unable to visit him.

When Emma received her new contract from Mr. Pratt, she learned that the school board had doubled her teaching salary for the coming year. She discovered she missed the school and was chomping at the bit to get back to New Mexico. Emma wasn’t quite sure if the reason her salary doubled was for what she had accomplished or for her greenhorn notoriety and entertainment and gossip she provided for the Alamogordo community.

In the fall, Emma was eager to be at school when Mr Pratt arrived with the children. She traveled the three days from Pennsylvania in Pullman cars which were very elegant at the time. The porters were friendly and gave magnificent service. They pressed your jackets, polished your shoes, answered every beck and call, the cars were clean and comfortable, and the food was delicious. The Pullman porters, maids, and cooks were well respected in their communities and some would later become leaders in the Civil Rights Movement.

It was extremely difficult to reach the homes of many of the students and particularly impossible for parents to make the trip to school having to leave jobs and families behind. Consequently, the school took the responsibility for rounding up the students. Well before the opening of school, parents of those living in the far away areas were notified as to the opening day, the station on the main line at which the children would be picked up, and the time schedule for the trains arriving and leaving. Rarely ever was a parent negligent in getting their child to the train station.

Mr. Pratt would start at the extreme northern part of the state and then work his way south by local trains. He would pick up the children at the scheduled stations, arrive at El Paso, then change trains and travel the ninety miles to Alamogordo and deliver the gaggle of children to the campus. When the school year was over, the procedure was reversed; parents were notified to be at the station to meet each child as they were dropped off.

The children were glad to be among their friends again but a few were a bit homesick. Emma was happy to have her students back and anxious to teach. She had much more confidence in herself than the year before. She had researched progressive education trends and had written lesson plans during the summer to broaden her curriculum. Her goal was to make drama, physical work, and Industrial Arts more sophisticated and follow what schools in the East were doing.

John Dewey was the Father of Progressive Education. Former President Teddy Roosevelt had been an apt accomplice in the Progressive Movement - demanding fairness in all concerns of government regulation and deregulation. Education to this point had been mostly for those who could afford it. Nineteenth Century learning was a rigid process; teachers were supposed to fill students with knowledge through lecture and retain information through rote memorization. The 3 R’s were the curriculum. Punishment was doled out generously.

The new, progressive ideas of Dewey appealed to Emma. She believed students learned best through active engagement, "learning by doing" and hands-on experiences; these included learning through projects, field trips, and other real-world learning opportunities. She wanted to nurture the emotional, artistic, and creative aspects of her students along with academic knowledge. Developing students' critical thinking and problem-solving skills, encouraging them to question, explore ideas, and construct their own understanding was her goal. Her ideas did not always bode well with those with more old-fashioned principles.

The staff and faculty were the same when Emma returned for her second year of teaching. There was one new person who was known as Matron. She was responsible for the upkeep of the dormitories and the welfare and discipline of the girls. Several weeks after she had been there, Matron asked Emma to come to her room. A student named Manuelita was sitting on a chair. She had been mischievous, daring, and a bit disobedient. The staff at the school doled out discipline “in loco parentis,” a Latin phrase meaning "in the place of a parent.”

Matron explained that Manuelita had been troublesome, disrespectful and should be spanked and Emma should do it. Emma had never hit anyone, much less a young adult, and as she stood there with her mouth hanging open, Manuelita took over. She said, “Come on and get it over with.”

Manuelita handed her an antique hairbrush, bent over the bed, her feet squared on the floor, and her derriere very much in evidence. With one light SWAT the brush broke into pieces. The girl, a few years younger than Emma, rolled on the bed, covering her head with her arms, and Emma could see her shoulders shaking. She grabbed Manuelita’s arm and scurried her to her room, where they both covered their mouths trying to stifle laughs.

Emma felt guilty about finding the situation humorous, and the two talked about respecting Matron because she was so elderly, probably in her 50’s, and had to work at such a difficult job where she was responsible for so many children. They decided together that Manuelita would try to help Matron or at least be respectful to the haggard woman.

Another time, Matron sent a message to Emma that she was having trouble getting Petrita to bed. Petrita was Emma’s favorite student; she was beautiful, smart, strong willed and well spoken - but she had a raging temper. She was lying on the floor and would kick and scream if anyone came near her. She was keeping the other children awake and it was impossible to get her to listen. There was a bathtub nearby and Emma ran cold water in it. When it was half full, she rushed Petrita, picked her up, and dumped her in the tub. It stopped the screaming but the girl would not talk to her.

After a few days, Emma received a knock on the door and Petrita’s head stuck through the opening. “Are you mad at me?” Petrita whispered. She assured the young girl that she was not mad. “Who is with you,” Emma asked, suspicious that Matron had put her up to apologizing. “No one but God,” she replied. Emma stood up and went to the door to give her prize student a hug and all was well between them after that.

Emma’s last experience with solving discipline problems involved a new faculty member - after this incident, Emma declared she was on strike from being the behavior problem solver. This teacher was a magnificent musician and a good teacher, but was also very dramatic. One Saturday morning she went to the superintendent's office dressed in a negligee. Mr. Pratt informed her that she was not properly dressed to be in his office. She ran to her room shrieking hysterically and she began wailing so loudly it could be heard all over the campus.

Emma was called into Mr. Pratt’s office. He asked if she could do something to calm this woman down. Emma asked what she should do? She couldn’t pick the full grown woman up and put her in a cold bath. Mr Pratt said that maybe a slap on the face would set her back to normal. Emma said, “I can't do that.” Mr. Pratt assured her that she would figure out a solution.

Emma climbed the stairs slowly hoping the teacher would be worn out by the time she got to her room. The door was slightly ajar; Emma pushed it open and encountered the woman who was like a caged animal striding from wall to wall and howling a diatribe of complaints. The woman started toward Emma and when she got near enough, Emma landed the palm of her hand on her cheek. She stopped screaming immediately and they stared at each other for a few seconds. She kissed Emma on her cheek and said, “Thank you. That’s just what I needed!”

Emma gave notice that she refused to do anyone else’s dirty work because she felt she compromised her character by swatting and dunking and slapping other people. They did not call on her again to solve their problems.

Emma felt she had accomplished a great many things during her second year as a teacher. In Industrial Arts they knitted caps and scarfs for the Army in Europe and each child knitted at least one personal item. They turned pottery and wove basketry. The school had a wonderful orchestra program under the direction of Mrs Pratt, the Superintendent’s wife. Emma taught ballroom dancing and the orchestra would play for a party about once a month. The students danced as though they were pros; there were refreshments and everyone enjoyed the activity, even the staff.

In the evenings after study hall, the older children liked to play cards, Hearts and simple games with the Braille markings on the cards. Emma was a bridge buff and taught some of the older students the game. Their concentration was magnificent and they remembered who played what cards better than Emma did.

They also played pinochle and simpler card games with the younger kids plus checkers and dominoes. Dramatic skits were given during the year and Emma taught folk and interpretive dance classes for performances. The high school classes read literature and analyzed what they had read.

Several Latin students were a shining light; Spanish speakers learned the root of their language quickly and easily. Her students became interested in geology, so on Saturdays and holidays, Emma took them on picnics to the canyons where they hunted for rocks. shards, arrowheads, and gold! The gold they discovered turned out to be pyrite, fools gold, but the prospects of discovering it were exciting.

The students learned geology by touch and feel; the density, weight, texture, strata, and compositions of the rocks revealed their origins. They visited a prairie dog town and learned about "wards" and "coteries” - family groups that recognize each other by sniffing or kissing. They discovered that the prairie dogs groom each other, build burrows, play, work together to raise their young, and fight to defend their territory.

They acquired the names of the desert plants on their field trips - some of the flora was not conducive to learning about by touch; they chased tumbleweeds and picnicked on blankets on the ground. The most exciting day trip was to the White Sands. Riding in the back of a wagon drawn by two strong horses to the snow white sand to roll down dunes, chase each other on tops of ridges, dig a hole to bury a friend up to the neck, and fill ears, noses, hair, and every bodily nook with fine granules was as good as it could get!

The school term ended; Emma’s Spanish teacher went back to Mexico and the children were ready to return home for the summer. Mr. Pratt said he would not be taking the children to their parents, Miss Hamsher would escort them. Emma had 40 children to deliver via the railroad. All 41 of them were put on the train at Alamogordo headed to El Paso. She was worried about changing trains in El Paso. She briefed the children on their behavior and who was responsible for whom. She need not have worried; the children were responsible and reliable and three Red Caps efficiently assisted her and her 40 students making the train change. Not one of the Pullman baggage and children handlers would accept a tip - they claimed they were happy to help.

Pullman Red Cap Baggage Handler Pullman Porter and Passenger

Several hours passed and the children were excited to be going home; they were playing games and reading Braille books they brought to wile away the time. Children were dropped off at their villages, ranches and farms along the way. The train came to a stop and Emma looked out the window for a station but there was no station.

They were told that there would be quite a delay because a large section of the track had been washed away by heavy rainstorms. Hungry children sat for several hours with nothing to eat and a diminishing amount of water. Emma knew the parents were anxious and worried waiting for them. The washout was on a curve and Emma stood on the steps of a car and caught sight of a hand car just around the curve.

She learned that the next little town was only three miles away and had a small station with a lunch counter. She told the engineer that if she could get across the washout to the hand car, she could come back with food and water. Emma explained the plans to the children and left the older boys and girls and the agreeable conductor in charge of the little ones.

Two men wearing high water waders carried her across the mud to the hand car. One of the men climbed up with her and they got to the station in a very short time. The attorney for the Santa Fe railroad was at the lunch counter and when she told him her story, the hand cart was loaded with baskets of food and two big cans, one full of milk and the other with water. When she arrived back at the train, she was carried by one of the men to the train first, followed by the food. This movable feast was enjoyed more and talked about longer than any other meal she shared with the student.

The children were becoming sleepy from the long wait before they were on their way again. Emma felt bad for the poor, tired and worried parents but the station master had informed them all along the way that their children were safe and why there was such a delay.

Her last student was picked up by his parents in Santa Fe, and Emma made it just in time to take the midnight train back to El Paso. She was asleep when her head hit the pillow in her cozy berth. The porter woke her in El Paso.

When she returned to the school, Mr. Pratt decided that in addition to being a teacher, she was to serve as the field secretary, locating blind children whose parents were unaware of the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. Emma left for summer vacation; her new contract had her returning two weeks before school opened to begin her new duty finding children and increasing the campus’s enrollment. She reluctantly left New Mexico for the East; she couldn’t wait to begin her new job.

To be continued…

Part 1 - Emma Hamsher, Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher

2025-06-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

New Mexico Institute of the Blind - 1917

The hero an individual admires says a lot about a person’s character. But, educators have not often been high on the list of superstars. Teachers have historically had marketing problems - Miss Frizzle on Disney’s Magic School Bus may be the most definable teacher youngsters know. Her catchphrase embraces a learning style: Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy! Miss Frizzle's colorful dresses match the day's lesson with pictures, and her thematic earrings glow when she's about to start a new field trip.

Mr. Rogers, of children's TV fame, is quite the opposite in his conservative cardigan, white shirt, and tie. His big smile, soft spoken voice, and calmness are near saintly. He once said, "... anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me". Many former student have teachers who have been heroes to them, helped them find their purpose, helped them stay on course. They often are the one adult who cares about them and motivates them to succeed.

Miss Emma Hamsher from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania was so inspired by the hero tale of Anne Sullivan, a teacher for the blind and deaf, that in 1917, at age 17, Emma took a train to Alamogordo, New Mexico, to become a teacher at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. Miss Sullivan became the inspiration for Emma and thousands of other young idealists to become educators. Emma admired Anne so much that she would name her daughter after her.

Anne Sullivan's history was told by her student in a book published in 1903 called, The Story of my Life by Helen Keller. Anne was a legally blind woman whose parents were Irish Potato Famine immigrants. In 1866, when she was five years old, she contracted a painful bacterial eye disease, trachoma, which caused a series of infections and made her nearly blind. Her mother died from tuberculosis three years later and her father abandoned her and her younger brother two years after that. Her younger sister was left with an aunt.

(left to right) Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan Helen Keller's autobiography, 1903

Anne and her brother, Jimmie, were sent to an almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Jimmie died from tuberculosis four months into their stay. In 1875, following reports of cruelty to inmates at Tewksbury, including sexual abuse and cannibalism, the Massachusetts Board of State Charities launched an investigation. The investigation committee included Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston.

Sullivan was sent to the Soeurs de la Charité hospital in Lowell where she endured several unsuccessful eye operations. The trachoma she suffered from causes the eyelashes to turn under the eyelid and scratch and irritate the corneas; pus drains from the red, swollen eyes and lymph nodes are swollen in front of the ears. It is a chlamydia based bacteria and is transmitted by flies in poverty stricken places - unwashed bedding, clothing, and hands help spread the most common cause of blindness worldwide.

When she was transferred back to Tewksbury, she begged not to be sent back to the ward with ill and insane patients; instead, she was housed with single mothers and unmarried pregnant girls. During a subsequent inspection of the almshouse, Sullivan implored the chairman of the committee to allow her to go to the Perkins School for the Blind, considered the best school for the blind in the United States. Within a matter of months, her wish was granted.

Anne Sullivan began her education at Perkins without reading or writing skills. She graduated at age 20, in June 1886, as the valedictorian of her class. She was a feisty Irish girl who knew she had to speak up to be taken seriously. She made friends with Laura Bridgman, the first blind and deaf person to graduate from Perkins and she learned the manual alphabet from Laura - a sign language transmitted by creating letters into the palm of a deaf-blind person’s hand.

The summer after Sullivan graduated, the director of Perkins School for the Blind was contacted by Arthur Keller, Helen Keller's father. He wanted to hire a teacher for his seven-year-old blind and deaf daughter. Sullivan was recommended for the position and she began her work in 1887 at the Keller's home in Alabama. Upon arrival, Anne argued with Helen's parents about the Civil War and over the fact that they had owned slaves. But, she quickly connected with Helen and for the next 49 years, Sullivan went from teacher to governess to companion and friend.

Sullivan's curriculum was strict; she constantly introduced new vocabulary based on Helen’s interests by spelling each word out into Keller's palm. Within six months her student learned 575 words, some multiplication tables and the Braille system.

Sullivan encouraged Helen's parents to send her to the Perkins School in Boston in 1888 and stayed there with her. Sullivan’s protégé became famous for her remarkable progress. Keller became the public face of the school, helping to increase its funding and donations and making it the most famous and sought-after school for the blind in the country.

Alexander Graham Bell, telephone and phonograph inventor, met Sullivan and Keller and was greatly impressed by their success. Bell’s mother and wife were both legally deaf and he spent a lifetime trying to create inventions to make their lives easier. He famously put his pocket watch against Helen’s cheek to feel its chimes to tell time. Bell donated funds to send Helen to Radcliffe College, now part of Harvard University; Anne accompanied her. Sullivan and Keller went on lecture tours under the auspices of the Y.W.C.A and both became global celebrities at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Emma followed the two women’s fame in newspapers and books. She decided to become a teacher for the blind. To be fair, Emma’s role models and career choices were limited during the “Progressive Era” she grew up in. Women had very few vocational options at the turn of the century. Domestic servants made up the largest sector of the female workforce; factory workers, store clerks, dress makers, nurses, and teachers were other income-producing possibilities for “the weaker sex” needing or wanting to work.

There was a “marriage bar” in the United States that persisted until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, outlawing hiring discrimination based on sex. The “bars” were based on the idea that married women should not be distracted from their home lives by a job and should not take a job from a man who needed to support his family. Female teachers at this time could not be married and were expected to resign before their nuptials because they would no longer be able to focus on their teaching with a man in the house!

In 1916, Emma was completing her year of teacher training at Temple Baptist College in Pennsylvania. At the same time, Elizabeth Garrett, the blind daughter of Pat Garrett who shot Billy the Kid, was finishing an eight year teaching stint teaching music at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. She would move to New York to begin a musical career and would become known as “The Songbird of the Southwest.” Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller began a speaking tour across the United States in 1916. Meanwhile, Emma’s future husband, Harry Disney Minturn, was in Kansas City, having just married a young heiress whose father had been a successful pioneer physician in the city that straddles two state lines.

Elizabeth Garrett

The Kansas City newspaper's story about Roby Singleton Minturn did not shock the local residents because they knew she had a reputation for being an unbridled filly. Roby had filed for divorce and petitioned to change back to her maiden name from her married name. She had married an advertising man who lived at the Densmore Hotel, Mr. Harold Disney Minturn. Her husband had a counter-lawsuit against his mother-in-law, and six other inlaws for $50,000 for causing alienation of affection from his wife. They also had a custody suit over a motor car - each claiming the other drove too fast and would crash the brand new automobile.

The couple had been married for less than a year when Roby filed divorce papers. The wealthy daughter of the late Dr. J.M. Singleton of Kansas City, admitted that she supported Harry financially. The couple tried to make reconciliation with a trip to New Orleans, but this failed. Harold dismissed his lawsuit in order to reach an undisclosed settlement from the Singleton family. He promised to “get out of Dodge,” (Kansas City) and he said he planned to go to Pennsylvania to join the military with the U.S. 's looming inclusion in the world war.

In 1917, Emma and Harry met at the military base near her home several months before her departure for the West and his potential deployment. The whirlwind romance ended that summer with an engagement ring (slightly used), and promises to write.

Minturn was training in Pennsylvania with the 334th Tank Corps as a mechanic when Miss Emma departed from Pennsylvania. She promised her fiancé, Harry, a man of medium height and medium build, dark brown hair and light blue eyes -according to his draft card, that she would marry him in five years. The war should be over by then and Harry could establish himself in a career while Emma worked at her dream job teaching high school at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. She promised Harry that she would return to begin a life as a wife and mother.

High schools barely existed in the nineteenth century; then suddenly, because of new compulsory education and child labor laws, a quarter of all 15 to 18-year-olds were going to school. Educators were suggesting that at least an eighth grade education was necessary in the new fangled world. New inventions included the toaster, the tommy gun, tanks, movie cameras, the passenger plane, the bra, the zipper, the assembly line, and a summer candy that wouldn’t melt - the Life Saver! Children needed more education for an increasingly complex mechanical and scientific world, and compulsory schooling became de rigueur.

Emma boarded her train for a three day trip to Alamogordo, New Mexico. The last night on board, there was a young mother with a very young child. Several friends the mother had made en route stopped by and invited her to the observation car. She left her child in the seat and went to the observation car with the other young people. The baby became restless and began crying. Men in the car near the baby tsk-tsked. Emma picked up the child and signaled the porter over to her. She said if he would make up a berth, she would put the child to bed. He did, and in a short while the train car was once again quiet.

She was reading when a man sat down beside her saying, “That was a nice thing for you to do.” She did not respond. He finally asked, “Are you afraid of me?” She assured him that she was not and warmed up a bit; they had an interesting conversation until stopping in Tucumcari. From there, he was taking another train crossing the mountains to the Mescalero Indian Reservation.

Meanwhile, the train taking her to Alamogordo was being filled with hundreds of gallons of water and heaps of coal. The passengers went outside to stretch their legs by walking back and forth on the station platform. She noticed a man in a large Stetson hat swinging his legs as he sat on the baggage truck, its long tongue stretching out to trip passers-by. When the engine on her train was filled with thousands of gallons of water and holding as much coal as it could bear, the passengers climbed into their assigned cars and were set to arrive the next morning in Alamogordo.

Emma arrived three days before the opening of school. She was in awe of the grandeur of the desert and the mountains, the pure air and the exhilarating light. She had arrived from a low altitude and was around 4,000 feet higher in altitude and was not used to the dry desert air. A house parent invited her to play tennis but the game did not last long. Blood streamed from her nose at the 30-30 score when she became a gory mess. It looked like “murder on the tennis courts.”

The following day the students were returning - all three New Mexico cultures were represented: Native, Spanish and Anglo. Superintendent Pratt gathered everyone and the students were turned over to the house parents. He called the teachers to the office.

When the Superintendent was introduced to Emma, he joked that they were together in Tucumcari on Tuesday. She decided not to let him get away with the cheeky remark. " Sorry,” she said. “I didn't recognize you without your hat.” The other teachers looked puzzled about the relationship of these two who had never really spoken before - Mr. Pratt had just nodded while sitting on the baggage truck, swinging his feet in Tucumcari. He took her joke well and they would have a good working relationship for the next five years.

Transportation was not always reliable in the Tularosa Basin surrounding Alamogordo. There was a narrow gauge into the Sacramento Mountains, and during summers it was possible to rent a car or horse, but Emma wanted to explore the area and felt she needed a horse. She saw a sorrell listed for sale in the newspaper and she set off for the livery stable for a test ride.

The horse had all of his teeth and seemed to have the appearance of being strong and healthy. She found he handled easily, so she let him out. They were going at a fast clip when, without slowing, the horse turned sharply to the right and slid on all four hooves to a hitching post in front of a saloon. The sorrel had put his head down on his way to the saloon and Emma lost her reins. She grabbed the hair on his mane and left the saddle head over heels, cartwheeling over the hitching post boots hitting the wall next to the swinging saloon doors.

Two cowboys were heading out of the saloon at the same time. They picked her up, dusted her off and asked her if they could buy her a beer. She declined and informed them that it was the horse's idea to stop, not hers.

One cowboy had been looking over the beast and announced that this was Jake's horse. After they stopped laughing, they explained to her that Jake had left the community but had sold his horse before leaving. They explained that, rain or shine, day or night, going or coming, Jake and his horse would never pass the saloon without stopping for a drink. She climbed back into the saddle and took the horse back. She wondered where else that horse was conditioned to stop - places probably not fit for a school teacher!

Several days later, Mr Pratt sent a message that Emma needed to come to his office. He laughingly told her that she had created quite a sensation and a great deal of gossip in the town about how she was dressed in her Tweed English riding habit (an long apron over pants) and her acrobatics at the saloon. The story had probably improved with the telling.

He suggested that until the ladies in town got to know her, she should probably ride in a full split skirt, so they wouldn’t know she was riding astride. She eventually found a horse that didn’t stop at saloons, ordered a split skirt from the

Sears and Roebuck Catalog, lowered her stirrups, and rode around the countryside without creating the hullabaloo she had first ridden into town with.

English Riding Habit Students in front of New Mexico Institute for the Blind

View of Institute for the Blind from Alameda Park

To be continued…

The Bomb: Sending Arecibo’s Message of Breathing Caesar’s Last Breath - a New Mexican’s Musings and Family History Lesson

2024-03-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

Sending Arecibo’s Message of Breathing Caesar’s Last Breath -

a New Mexican’s Musings and Family History Lesson

Fermi’s Theory devised on July 16, 1945 Trinity Site, NM

Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American physicist, simplified the problem of the order of magnitude estimation in physics at the 1945 Trinity test site, less than a hundred miles from my family’s farms in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. Before and following the Gadget’s test, Fermi correctly predicted and calculated the power of the first atom bomb using shredded paper.

While observers at the test site beheld the searing golden, violet, gray and blue explosion of light - ten times brighter than the midday sun - Fermi scrutinized strips of paper he had placed at the periphery of the blast and then measured the distance they traveled when the air pressure from the explosion reached them. His estimation corresponded exactly to the measurements produced by precise instrumentation - greatly surprising his fellow scientists.

During Fermi’s scrap paper chase, the scientist missed the beauty and clarity that exposed each crevasse and ridge of the surrounding San Andres mountains and the Capitan and Sierra Blanca peaks; he ignored the 1,200 ft. diameter fireball, the same temperature of the sun, that rose over 10,000 feet into the high desert sky.

At exactly the same time, less than a hundred miles to the southeast, my grandfather was starting a pre-daylight breakfast of biscuits and gravy peppered so intensely it looked like a black constellation on a white sky. He said the morning became so bright that it couldn’t be described with words - the dark sky splitting open into light so bright it felt electrical - and then the glare suddenly fell back onto itself into darkness.

The Las Alamos assemblage at the Trinity Site were spellbound by the test’s success. After the emergence of light and the disappearance of sound, there were cheers and the participants congratulated each other and shook hands. The nearby farmers, ranchers, Mexican villagers, and Apaches were told an ammunition dump exploded at the nearby White Sands Proving Ground - just the beginning of many lies, thievery and collateral damages inflicted on them in their fateful proximity to the military base.

In a later casual conversation with fellow scientists back at Los Alamos Labs, Fermi analogized about the distribution of his scattered paper scraps, the equal distribution of atoms in our atmosphere, and then simply clarified his proposition by postulating on how we all breathe Caesar’s last breath.

The physicist explained that every atom on the planet has been here forever and when we take a single breath, we intake a single molecule from Caesar’s last exhalation. He wrote his equation on the blackboard, and then he left to meet his wife, Laura, for dinner.

Enrico and Laura Fermi both had salmon and sour cream sauce for dinner. They washed it down with a crisp, lemony, Vermentino bottle of wine.

2049 years earlier - Ides of March, 44 B.C. - Caesar’s Last Breath

On a perfect 63 degree day in the Roman Forum, Julius Caesar was circled by Senators hiding their knives in the folds of their togas; Caesar blocked Cassius’ first stab toward his shoulder and prepared to battle the twenty-three assassins around him. "Why this violence?" Caesar stammered. Upon seeing his dear friend, Brutus, colluding with the murderers, Caesar covered his face with his toga and cried with unbearable grief at his friend’s betrayal.

Two dozen knives blindly slashed around Caesar, some slicing and puncturing fellow conspirators’ faces, arms, chests, thighs; rivulets of blood streamed into Senators’ bodily crevices, clumped on their old scars and hair, and dripped stickily into their sandals. Caesar gasped in fresh air and spat out a gory, stale final gasp - expelling atoms which began to evenly displace into Earth’s atmosphere. His death rattle shook atoms from Caesar’s breath into Brutus’s heaving lungs. "Peace, freedom, and liberty!" Brutus roared as his friend fell and the rattling of knives ceased.

As successive battles augured badly for Rome, a civil war brewed in Marcus Junius Brutus’ chest. He plotted a delusory attempt to save the Roman Republic but haunting consequences accompanied murdering his beloved companion; he did not comprehend that every atom on the planet had been here forever, that with each single breath until his own self-demise, he would intake a single molecule diffused from Caesar's last exhalation.

In due course, weighted with the recognition of his naivete, burdened with the brutal tonnage of his shame, and seized by the impossibility of saving Rome from itself, Brutus surrendered onto the sharp point of his own sword and gasped in molecules of his beloved companion’s breath, which mingled with his own, which commingled back out into the atmosphere.

Side Bar

Jesus and Judas would inhale atoms of Caesar’s breath in their day, as would Africans and Vikings, royalty and slaves, infidels and true believers, dogs and cats. Every atom that has ever been here does not practice discrimination; they evenly displace without ration, allocation, commission or dividend. Incessantly, atoms respire into water and sugar and release to grow a talon on a raptor or fuel the fabrication of tusks on an elephant. Every atom that our ancestors breathed in and out, every atom that we are built of, is still held tight here by Earth's gravitational pull - so, please take your due.

Ovid wrote, “The spirit wanders, comes now here, now there, and occupies whatever frame it pleases. From beasts it passes into human bodies, and from our bodies into beasts, but never perishes.” From the atoms we bequeath - salmon leap, hawks uplift, bears sleep, fawns slip onto earth, ink dots paper, dust stirs, musical notes form, floods cross plains.

Fourth Wall

I’m going to break the fourth wall here to tell you that this rambling was initially written as a first draft of an eulogy and sat unfinished and undelivered due to the plague. It resurfaced after watching Oppenheimer with my mother. We ate popcorn during the movie and she had water and I succumbed to a rare, crispy diet Coke (which Mother repeatedly says will destroy my bones). There is no profound moral in this undelivered encomium which was merely an attempt to say, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust; a fancy pants contrivance in hopes of significance.

Post Script

4.4 billion years ago, carbon arrived on Earth - probably due to a car-crash-like event between earth and a small, embryonic planet. Stony-iron meteorites fell hard onto and into Earth and it was the beginning of something big - relatively - as Einstein (as played by Tom Conti in Oppenheimer) would say.

4.4 billion years later - mas o menos - in 1954, Ann Hodges was taking a nap on a sunny afternoon in Alabama when a meteorite traveling 30,000 mph crashed through her roof and bounced off her hip, creating a bruise which was uncannily the size and shape of a pineapple.

During that same year, 1954, Robert Oppenheimer was being probed about his loyalty to the U.S. due to his flirtation with commies fifteen years prior.

During the same year, 1954, my parents, living a mere 75 miles from Trinity Site, where Oppenheimer’s Gadget was first tested, were expecting the first of their Baby Booming brood - me - a fact that my father said was made possible because at the time of the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his Naval ship, the New Jersey, was headed to Japan and he swore that the bombs saved his life by ending the war.

In 1945, under the unforgiving rule of the Emperor and Imperial Japanese Army, around 250,000 Chinese, Southeast Asians, and Indonesians were dying each month. Nearly a million Japanese men and thousands of kamikazes (plane, torpedo, boat, frogmen) were positioned in anticipation of the U.S. invasion of Kyushu scheduled for November 1. It was estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans would be killed or wounded at the upcoming confrontation. According to accepted military doctrine, an amphibious force must enjoy a three-to-one manpower advantage over dug-in defenders onshore. In fact, the Navy would have faced a one-to-one disadvantage if they had landed on the shores of Kyushu.

In August 1945, most Japanese were living off meager diets. By Christmas, blockaded Japanese would have been starving to death by the millions. The army, with their stockpiled food, would starve last.

One bomb was not enough to disintegrate the Japanese military’s fanatical resolve nor the emperor’s commitment to his own self-regarding, self-preservation. The second bomb and the threat of more bombs offered a face-saving excuse to surrender—a glimpse into a sky splitting open a light so bright and electrifying the heavens so unimaginably, would make the Japanese surrender and allow my father to survive and return to New Mexico to participate in the next behemoth boom - the Baby Boom.

Side Bar

New Mexico provided more military volunteers and suffered more casualties than any other state per capita. Patriotism ran high even in marginalized Hispanic and Native communities. The Navajo code talkers secreted military communications to commanders. 1,800 New Mexican troops fought the Japanese invasion of the Philippines just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor; New Mexicans died in droves during the subsequent Bataan Death March - 900 died, 900 returned to the Land of Enchantment. And my father, at 17, ran away from his Sacramento Mountain home, less than a hundred miles away from where the bombs had been tested, and hired a woman to pose as his mother to sign the papers that allowed him to join the Navy immediately instead of waiting a year until he turned 18.

Lastly, the Arecibo Message

The Arecibo Message is an interstellar radio message carrying basic information about humanity and Earth that was sent to the globular cluster Messier 13 (M13) about 25,000 light years from Earth. The message was sent in 1974 from the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico. It was meant as a demonstration of human technological achievement rather than an attempt to enter into a conversation with extraterrestrials. When correctly translated into graphics, characters, and spaces, the 1,679 bits of data contained within the message describes our DNA, our understandings of science, and includes Fermi’s order of magnitude estimation - aka Caesar’s last breath.

In conclusion, there are atoms that conspire, ones that inspire.

Ann Hodges might have been inspired to use her time more productively than taking a nap if she’d known that space debris has a difficult time hitting a moving object; one never knows when a star-dust laden meteorite is going to car-crash through your roof. It might be 4.4 billion more years before another woman lying on a couch receives a pineapple shaped bruise from a space rock.

My father was inspired to believe the atom bombs saved his life from a self-regarding emperor who conspired with an imperial army’s fanatical resolve to maintain an authoritarian military empire. My future dad was grateful to not have to face the odds on the beaches of Kyushu. I’m inspired to believe we need to be constantly on the look-out for the Probability of a Series of Independent Imperialists, Fascists, and Fanatical Racist Supremacist Events. Watch Out!

Robert Oppenheimer might have been inspired to tell Senators who conspired against him about Brutus’ misplaced, delusory attempts to save the Roman Empire. As U.S. Senators brandied their career slashing knives against him, their name-calling schemes slicing and puncturing scientists’ reputations, their democracy destroying, self-serving machinations spewing rivulets of spittle into their aged crevices, clumping on old scars and thinning hair, and dripping stickily from their jutted chins, they were in fact unknowingly spewing out gory atoms of Caesar’s and Brutus’s final breaths.

“Peace, freedom, and liberty,” Oppenheimer might have howled at them during his character assassination. But relatively speaking, scientists and Senators are not always aiming at the same target…conspiring to inspire…splitting atoms…must be something in the stardust.

The Town Turkey by Clif McDonald

2023-11-20T20:49:00.000-08:00

I was born in 1927 and the Stock Market crashed in 1929, so I grew up during the Great Depression in the Sacramento Mountains east of Alamogordo, NM. The mountain people, as we referred to ourselves, supplemented our food supply with meat from deer and wild turkey. Mountain people paid little attention to hunting season or hunting licenses. The Forest Service had the responsibility to protect the game but these laws were pretty lax for the local citizenry.

As a young boy, part of my duties was to keep meat on the table and not to use too much ammunition in doing it. Out of necessity I became a very good shot at a very young age. Each year just before Thanksgiving I had a flock of turkeys located and I would kill a couple for my family's festive dinner. In those days everyone had a large cast iron pot in the yard to wash clothes. You would fill the pot with water, chop some wood and build a fire around the pot and boil the clothes. I needed hot water to dunk the turkeys in so I could remove the feathers and these clothes washing pots were perfect for this. I would get the turkeys dunked, plucked and gutted - all out in the cold, fresh mountain air - and take them inside ready for my mother to cook.

After I grew up, I married the most beautiful, charming girl in the mountains and we moved down the mountain to town. In Alamogordo we lived at the Tinsley Trailer Park on Millionaire's Row - so named because our "modern" trailer could hook up to indoor plumbing and we did not require the bathhouse as the majority of the other residents did.

Despite our luck, our first Thanksgiving in town was traumatic. Since we no longer lived in the mountains, we lost our unwritten right to hunt out of season and buying a turkey seemed to be a huge amount of money. My dilemma was solved when I learned of a civic club hosting a turkey shoot. In this contest, groups of ten people could each buy a ticket for one dollar and shoot at a target; the one with the best score would win a turkey. I was the winner with a one-shot bull’s eye so I got my turkey for one dollar. I had the choice of a frozen turkey or a live turkey; since I had no experience with frozen turkeys, I chose the biggest, fattest, white-feathered live turkey available. It would just take a second to circumvent the "live" part of the turkey and get the gobbler in the truck.

When I got home my wife asked “How are you going to get the feathers off?” I said, “No problem. I will use the hot water in the bathroom.” Those of you who know what dressing a turkey and scalded turkey feathers smell like know that this was a very bad idea.

Soon, a blood-poop-feather-mud-sour-metal odor began roiling out of the fogged-up bathroom in our little trailer house. I cut off the turkey’s feet and began scalding and plucking the creature in the shower. The hot water from the water-heater under-scalded the bird and the feathers didn’t come out easily. In addition to blood, turkeys have dirt and sometimes manure in their feathers,. A horrendous brown soup of hot water, blood, feathers, and manure stunk up the little trailer house bathroom; feathers and “parts” dammed up the shower drain, and I kept clearing out the sludgy, smelly drain to keep water from backing up.

There was water everywhere and a giant mound of soaking wet feathers several feet high. I took the bird outside, clipped off the head and then began gutting. At least I could breathe fresh air outside, but by the end of my endeavor, I was covered in mud, water, and blood. Between me and the turkey, the smell was so strong I could feel my lunch thinking about making a return trip.

Our entire house smelled so sickeningly pungent that we had to eat Thanksgiving dinner out on the patio. The turkey skin was full of pinfeather pokes that couldn't be pulled out under water-heater temperatures. We opened all the windows and let our little trailer air out for hours and counted our blessings there on Millionaire's Row. We have been married almost 70 years and ever since that first fiasco, we’ve had almost 70 Thanksgivings with almost 70 store-bought, frozen turkeys.

Thanksgiving in the Sacramentos

2023-11-20T19:34:00.000-08:00

Dear Dad,

This morning the air smelled like autumn and I noticed a few leaves beginning to change colors. The fall season always reminds me of hunting turkeys with you. You would grab the shotgun off of the back porch and invite me to go along. Sorry I wasn’t the son that you probably wanted for a hunting partner, but you were wonderful to let me be your buddy. I really didn’t enjoy hunting but the individual attention I got from you was worth the effort it took to search for those elusive birds.

You always seemed to know where they would be and always said that hunting turkeys was a skill few people had. Most hunters would accidently run across a flock but to set out to find a turkey was something else altogether. Remember how you would caution me to be quiet and not walk in the dry leaves and to tread softly. I remember you stopping to listen and telling me not to breathe so loudly. You would take that old cheap watch out of your pocket and turn the hands backward so it would stop ticking while you cocked your head at a funny angle to listen. You taught me how to make a turkey caller from a sleepy grass straw. Turkeys would come to you but I never quite got the hang of it. Yes, I know you are supposed to suck on the straw to make the call
but it seemed I always ended up with a lot of spit and noises that were loud enough to scare a bear. I remember a time you shot into a flock and turkeys scattered in every direction; you grabbed the caller and one old stupid Tom turned around and came back to you. He was on our dinner table that night.

Usually after our long climbs up the mountain we would find a place to rest; this is when we had our best talks. I loved your stories about your childhood adventures in the Sacramento Mountains; you taught me the name of trees, plants and birds and how to survive in the wild. We talked about the boys I was dating and you gave me advice. Of course, I thought I knew more about boys than you did, after all, this was a new time and things had changed a lot since you were young. It will soon be Thanksgiving and the juicy Butterball store bought turkey on our table will be delicious, but It will never replace the memories I have of a young girl and her dad hunting those scrawny, tough wild gobblers we put on our Thanksgiving table.

Your Loving Daughter, Barbara

Junction, TX by Clif McDonald

2016-04-15T19:12:00.001-07:00

Junction, Texas

Emma Evans and Clifford McDonald

I was born in 1927 at San Angelo, Texas. My father was Clifford McDonald and my mother was Emma Evans McDonald. Milton McDonald, my older brother was known as Mack. My father was born at Roswell, New Mexico and my mother was born at Junction, Texas. My father died before I was a year old so I have no memory of him. Mother then married Alvy Smith; he had a son called Sonny who was much older than me and I very much admired my new big brother.

In Junction I also had my Grandma McDonald and my Grandpa and Grandma Evans, my mother, Emma; Uncle Delmer, Aunt Margarete and Lola Mae. Aunt Lola was a great favorite of mine, she was only five years older than me and she had a very sweet personality that everyone loved. Everyone especially treasured Mother and Aunt Lola.

On the McDonald side, I had Aunt Allie and Uncle Aubrey Sanders who had lots of kids. These cousins were Herbert Lee, Emma Dell, Odell, Henry, and Barbara Ann. My stepdad’s mother was Grandma Lettie Smith.

I can remember Grandma McDonald telling me about living west of Roswell, New Mexico when there were trouble with the Apaches and Grandpa moved the family back to Texas and he went back to New Mexico to get the cows and was never heard of again. I can remember living west of Junction near the North Llano River. There was a South Llano River also and these two rivers came together at Junction.

Evans' home near Junction

Pecan trees grew all along these river bottoms and along the small streams on our place but there was not much demand for pecans locally and most people let their hogs harvest them.

During the early 1930’s during the Great Depression there was no money to be had so Daddy and Uncle Delmer, Mama’s brother, got this idea to spend the winter gathering pecans and hauling them all the way to New Mexico and sell them house to house. He was intrigued with Grandma McDonald’s stories about New Mexico and wanted to visit the Sacramento Mountains in those parts. At my very young age of four, New Mexico sounded like a different world. It was about 400 miles away and everyone called it Mexico. Grandma Mack was the only person I knew that had ever been that far away.

Bodarc Store near North Llano River

Finally Daddy and Delmar loaded up the pecans and made the rounds telling everyone goodbye. They expected to be gone for a couple of months and to me they were gone forever before they came back. I worried that they had gotten lost and would never find their way home again.

I was so excited when they returned. I said, “Daddy did you find those mountains?” He said, “Yes I did and you won’t believe how big they are and how tall the trees are. They have a train that comes into the mountains and gets logs and saws them up into lumber. We are going to move to New Mexico. I rented a place where we can graze some livestock and farm some land and has a house on it.” Mother wanted to know all about the house. We had a new brother prior to Dad leaving. His name was Alvie Junior, later known as Curley.
Our place is near Avis School and it is between Weed and Piñon. There is a store and post office at both Weed and Piñon. To the northwest is a small town called Cloudcroft and our nearest real town is about 50 miles away; it is Alamogordo and is the county seat of Otero. There were a few paved roads around Alamo but no paved roads that went all the way through Otero County. And all the roads in the mountains are unpaved. Well, we were used to that. Nearly all road in Junction, Texas weren’t paved either!

I had mixed emotions about moving. I didn’t want to leave my grandparents and cousins and especially Aunt Lola. I knew it was so far away it would be a long time before we could come back for a visit. And sure enough it was seven years before we returned to visit.

Well, we got rid of all our belongings on the North Llano River, loaded our truck and went into Junction and made the rounds to tell all of our friends and relatives goodbye. Everyone shook hands, hugged, and cried. Then we headed west.

Just before sundown we pulled off the road, built a fire, unloaded the chuck box, and cooked supper. Then we rolled our bedrolls and spent the night. In the morning we cooked breakfast and headed out again. Our truck broke down several times and Dad and Sonny had to work on it a lot and sometimes had to catch a ride to the next town to buy parts. We slept in our bedrolls every night and cooked every meal on a campfire, which was the normal way to travel in the early 1930’s. It took us nine days to make the 400 miles because the truck broke down so much. Finally Dad pulled up in front of our house at Avis and said, “Well, this is it. What do you think?” We all jumped out, looked around, ran through the house and cried and hugged each other. We were finally at our new home in the Sacramento Mountains.

A Most Memoriable Otero County Christmas - 1932

2015-11-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

A Memorable Otero County Christmas - 1932
(Told to me by my father, Clif McDonald, Nov. 2018)

My family moved to the Sacramento Mountains in Southern New Mexico during the Great Depression. We left our grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins in Junction, Texas - a town where the North Llano and the South Llano rivers join up to become the just plain old Llano River. Daddy rented a farm in Avis, New Mexico, which was far away from our  home on the river's south fork. We loaded up our truck and we four boys, Mama and Daddy lined up to say our goodbyes. It was like a funeral when we left; everybody was crying and hugging and telling us to be safe in "Mexico." We set out on the Texas Pecos Trail, a couple of ruts set in dust, that would shake and rattle our teeth for the next 450 miles of our westward journey.

We stopped each night before dark to set up camp; unrolled our bedrolls, found kindling, made a fire, and cooked out in the west Texas desert. We'd have our supper and the next morning we'd eat the cold leftovers. Mama and Daddy would drink some cowboy coffee boiled in the coffee pot and we'd set off down the rutty road until our car broke down or until dusk, then start all over again the next day. We made the trip in a little over three weeks but it felt like a year of waiting and stopping and fixing. When we finally got to our place at Avis, it was beautiful! We had a house and a school nearby and we could farm and raise animals. It was pretty close to Heaven.

In 1932, there was a persistent drought in the Sacramento mountains; our potatos only grew to the size of shooter marbles which Mama would boil, then clap into patties and fry up into "bread" because we couldn't afford flour for real hot cakes or rolls. Beans and corn were also our staples, and chickens provided eggs and sometimes a Sunday dinner. Our farm was best at raising children; the number of kids in our family eventually doubled, despite losing two sweet boys who left to become angels in Heaven.

In 1932 there wasn't any money for Christmas.  Daddy decided to cut a wagon load of nice wood specially sized for cook stoves. His plan was to peddle the handy, time saving fuel to housewives in the treeless, flatland towns nearby. My dad worked for days sawing, chopping and splitting hardwood down to the perfect size to fit in the firebox of 500 pound cast iron, heat producing, water boiling, bacon frying, chicken and biscuit cooking contraptions. We helped load the wagon with the perfectly sized kindling and split logs. Daddy told us all goodbye then hauled his freight down the trail through the settlements of Pinon, Duncan, Hope, and on to the barren plains of Artesia - stopping at every house to try to sell his cookstove wood.

After several days we began to expect him to return and we would look down the road to try to see his horses and wagon coming. At night we would sit outside to listen for him. We were about to give up one evening when we heard the rumble of wagon wheels and the clinking of trace chains. We all ran down the road to meet him. He stopped and we all climbed on the wagon asking, "Did you sell the wood, Daddy?"

"Nobody has any money," he said. "But

I traded the wood for a load of apples." We looked under the tarp and saw the most beautiful red apples we could imagine and we all got one and started eating. They were sweet and crispy and juicy and we were so excited and so proud of our dad for making such a good trade.

On Christmas Eve we hung our stockings by the fireplace and finally went to sleep. We woke in the morning to the sound of a crackling fire in the fireplace. We excitedly ran in and found some candy and peanuts in our stockings. I also got a pair of shiny new shoes. I put them on, laced them up and waited for daylight to see how fast I could run in those new shoes. I thought to myself, "It just doesn't get any better than this!"

Every Christmas now I think of how hard Daddy worked to make a Christmas for us, how good a new pair of shoes feels and how much faster they can make a young boy run. And, when I eat an apple during the holidays, I recall how the perfume of a thousand cold, sweet apples smells when a tarp is lifted from where once a load of chopped wood lay.

Clif McDonald

2015-11-27T08:50:00.002-08:00

Junction, Texas

I was born in 1927 at San Angelo, Texas. My father was Clifford McDonald and my mother was Emma Evans McDonald. My older brother was Milton McDonald, known as Mack. My father was born at Roswell, New Mexico and my mother was born at Junction, Texas. My father died before I was a year old so I have no memory of him. My mother married Alvie Smith, who had a son named Sonny who was much older than me and I very much admired my older brother.

Pecan trees grew all along these river bottoms and along the small streams on our place but there was not much demand for pecans locally and most people let their hogs harvest them.

At my very young age of four, New Mexico sounded like a different world. It was about 400 miles away and everyone called it Mexico. Grandma Mack was the only person I knew that had been that far.

Finally Daddy and Delmar loaded up the pecans and made the rounds telling everyone goodbye. They expected to be gone for a couple of months and to me they were gone forever before they came back. I was afraid they had got lost and would never find their way home again.

I was so excited when they returned. I said, “Daddy did you find those mountains?” He said, “Yes I did and you won’t believe how big they are and how tall the trees are. They have a train that comes into the mountains and gets logs and saws them up into lumber. We are going to move to New Mexico. I rented a place where we can graze some livestock and farm some land and has a house on it.” Mother wanted to know all about the house. We had a new brother prior to Dad leaving. His name was Alvie Junior, later known as Curley. Our place is near Avis School and it is between Weed and Piñon. There is a store and post office at both Weed and Piñon. To the northwest is a small town called Cloudcroft and our nearest real town is about 50 miles away, it is Alamogordo and is the county seat of Otero. There is a few paved roads around Alamo but no paved roads all the way through Otero County. And all the roads in the mountains are unpaved. Well we were used to that. Nearly all road weren’t paved.

Just before sundown we pulled off the road, built a fire, unloaded the chuck box, and cooked supper. Then we rolled our bedrolls and spent the night. Then cooked breakfast and headed out again. Our truck broke down several times and Dad and Sonny had to work on it a lot and sometimes had to catch a ride to the next town to buy parts. We slept in our bedrolls every night and cooked every meal on a campfire, which was the normal way to travel in the early 1930’s. It took us nine days to make the 400 miles because the truck broke down so much. Finally Dad pulled up in front of our house at Avis and said, “Well, this is it. What do you think?” We all jumped out, looked around, ran through the house and cried and hugged each other. We were finally at our new home in the Sacramento Mountains.

Sacramento Mountains - 1932

Avis

Avis was a good place to live. Our house didn’t have electricity, telephone, or indoor plumbing, but we never had those utilities before. We had a good fireplace and a wood cook stove. We hauled our water from a dirt tank about a mile away.

We were about a quarter mile off the Weed-Piñon road and the mailman delivered three times a week, keeping us in touch with the outside world. We had no radio or newspaper. Our closest neighbors were Whit and Edith Atkins, they had two grown children, Charley and Pearl. Charley broke horses and sold them. Edith was a midwife and she delivered my only sister. We named her Angelous Edith but we all just called her Sis.

Game was plentiful, we had lots of deer, turkey, and quail and the game warden was very liberal with the residents. We were so happy when we got a letter from our relatives or friends back in Texas. One day we got a letter from Grandma Evans that said they were going to come and see us. And we just counted days until they came. I could hardly wait to see Margarete and play with Lola.

Charley had taught me how to make a figure-four live trap and I liked to trap small animals. There was a prairie dog town near our house and I liked to catch young dogs and gentle them down and make pets out of them. I knew Lola would want a pet prairie dog so I had one all ready for her. Grandma missed her church so she had church services in our front yard on Sundays while she was here. All the neighbors came and we had a big old time singing and visiting. We had a wonderful visit while they were here. They decided this would be a place they would like to live also, so they started making plans to move to New Mexico.

We had planted crops but a bad drought hit and the only things to survive were pinto beans and potatoes and with the dry weather the potatoes were about the size of a golf ball. We were out of money and couldn’t even buy flour to make bread. So mother made potato patties as a bread substitute. So we survived the winter eating venison, beans, and potato patties. Dad couldn’t get a job because no one had money to pay a hired man.

Mack and I started to school in the Avis School House. There were no school buses but we lived less than a mile from school so we had no trouble walking to and from school. The kids that lived a long way away rode horses to school. We had a total of eleven kids and one teacher to teach from first to eighth grades. So we first graders mostly got taught by the older girls.

The older girls taught me to recognize each letter. Then they wrote down the entire alphabet across the page and told me to memorize them. When I finally learned the say my letters I told the teacher and she called everyone’s attention and told them, “Clif has learned all his letters and is going to recite them.” So I proudly got up in front of the room and said them backwards. Everyone looked puzzled and the teacher said, “What?” and I started saying them backwards again. She stopped me and said you learned them backwards. The girls had forgot to tell me the read them from left to right.

Our teacher was pretty and single and very often a young cowboy would ride up to the porch, lean over and knock on the door. She would go to the door and talk to him but leave the door open so we could see and he would stay on his horse.

We only had three or four books and no money to buy more, but the government started buying books for all the kids. We also had lots of sick kids so they started a vaccination program and sent a nurse around the county to immune the children to childhood diseases. I was one of the kids that didn’t have shoes and it was starting to get cold. My good friend Grubbs Munson had just got a new pair and I ask him what he did with the old pair. He still had them so I traded him a pet prairie dog for his old pair.

The first year Mack and I started school at Avis, the government hadn’t started buying book yet. And we needed 10 cents to buy a speller book that we could share. But we couldn’t get the money to buy it with, so we would borrow a book from someone and copy the words for the next day so we could study them at home. And it was embarrassing to have to borrow a book everyday. Our problem was solved when our cousin came to visit from Carlsbad. He had a job in the mines there. He was in the house one day and took the change out of his pocket, dropped a 50 cent piece on the floor and it rolled out the door where we were. Mack grabbed it and we ran with it. He came out and looked for it for a long time but of course never found it. We went to school and bought a book of our own. But then we had a problem. We had 40 cents change and didn’t know what to do with it. We finally buried it. Only time in my life that I had more money than I knew what to do with.

Mack died a few years ago. He was in his late 70s and he wanted to be buried in the little Avis cemetery just west of our house near the prairie dog town where we had so many happy hours so many years ago.

Because of the depression, the government was trying to put some money into circulation so they started the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC’s). They brought dozers, trucks, all kinds of road equipment, lived in camps and built roads and fences all over the county. They paid them $25 per month. They gave the worker $5 and sent his family $20. They also started the WPA to build public buildings. They appropriated $13,000 to build the gymnasium at Weed. We didn’t know what a gym was and when Dad found out what it was he said, “What a waste of money. When the weather is too bad to play ball outside, you ought to go in the schoolhouse and study.”Then they started building rural electric lines and he said, “Next they will be playing ball at night.”

They did finally do something Dad liked though. With the big drought and the Great Depression no one could sell their livestock so to cure the overstocking the government came around buying and killing livestock. They gave $12 for cows, $8 for yearlings, and $1 for goats or sheep. They would buy them and shoot them and you could butcher them if you wanted the meat. We got ready for the big kill. Mother cooked and canned meat. We cut meat in strips and hung it on the fence to dry for jerky. I made it just fine through most of it but I knew our pet milk cow was getting old and Dad had probably sold her. And sure enough when it came her turn she stood still and looked at her executioner as if to say, “I understand.” I got a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow so I put my head down and went back to cutting strips for jerky. With the money we got we paid some debts and bought a few badly needed clothes.

Once when I was a little boy at Avis. We were digging a tank to catch floodwater. We started digging up big gigantic bones and teeth that would barely fit in a gallon bucket. They said they were dinosaur bones, but all dinosaurs were dead now. But I thought they might be mistaken and out there in the woods there might be some live ones that could eat you in one bite.

It’s been over 80 years since I started to school at Avis but I still have some friends around that I made there such as Roberta Miller and Mildred Bell.

We didn't have any money for Christmas during the Depression and Daddy didn't know where to get any so he cut a wagon load of nice cook wood and hauled it to Artesia trying to sell it. He worked several days on it, got it loaded, told us all goobye and left.

After several day we began to expect him to return and we would look down to road to expect to see him coming. At night we would sit outside to listen for the wagon. We were about to give up when we heard the rumble of wagon wheels and the clinking of trace chains. We all ran down the road to meet him. He stopped and we all climbed on the wagon asking, "Did you sell the wood?"

"Nobody has any money," he said. "But

I traded it for a load of apples." We looked under the tarp and saw the most beautiful red apples we could imagine and we all got one and started eating. They were sweet and juicy and we were so excited and so proud of Dad for making such a good trade.

On Christmas Eve we all hung our stockings by the fireplace and finally went to sleep. We woke to the sound of a crackling fire in the fireplace. We excitedly ran in and found some candy and peanuts in our stockings. I also got a pair of shiny new shoes. I put them on, laced them up and waited for daylight to see how fast I could run in those new shoes. I thought to myself, "It just doesn't get any better than this!"

Weed, New Mexico

The drought got so bad by then, we moved up to Weed so we could irrigate out of the Agua Chiquita Creek the next year and we went to school at Weed. This was a much bigger school. That year my brother W.L. was born but he died at birth. The government started an agricultural loan program and we borrowed $350 and mortgaged our equipment for collateral. Dad bought a little gasoline engine to power his shearing machine and we sheared sheep and goats for other ranchers. He got five cents a head for sheep and three cents for goats. I went with him and my job was to sack the wool and gather firewood. We slept in our bedrolls and cooked all our meals on the campfire. We sheared for ranches in the Sacramento and San Andreas Mountains.

One of my favorite places to shear was in the Jarilla Mountains near Oro Grande. We would camp at the Oro Grande lake about a mile northwest of town near the Little Joe mine. My friend Felix Work, lived nearby and we played together in some of the mines. We also swam together in the lake after 5:00. The lake was built for the Southwest Smelter Company and it was the Oro Grande water supply so you couldn’t swim in it until the guard left at 5 o’clock. A lot of people were mining in that area, trying to eek out a living during the Depression. One Sunday I walked down to Tom Bell’s store and bar and bought a nickel ice cream cone and started back to camp slowly licking my cone to make it last as long as I could. When I got to the bottom of the cone there was a note that said this note is good for an ice cream cone. I couldn’t believe it but I had to find out so I turned around and walked back to the store and asked Tom, “Can I get another one with this note?” He said, “You sure can” and made me another cone. I said, “Well, this is the luckiest day of my life.”

Tom Bell was a likeable comical person and was running for Sheriff against Boog Prather. Dick Raley, another character, was campaigning for Boog, came into Tom’s place for a beer one evening and Tom said, “Dick, how come you’re telling people I’m a sorry S.O.B?” and Dick said, “Tom, I didn’t tell ‘em. I don’t know how they found out about it.” On the way from Oro Grande to Alamogordo we came upon some road that had been paved and I was amazed how smooth a road could be. When we got to Alamogordo it was getting dark out and very hot. Dad said, “It would be nice to stay in a tourist court with an electric fan.” So he went in to check on a room. He came back mad and I asked, “Did you get us a room?” He said, “Yeah, cost a dollar. Highway robbery!” Next morning we ate breakfast at the new Plaza Café. It cost almost another dollar and Dad said, “We better get the hell out of here or we will spend all the money we made on this trip.” It took us most of the day to get back home. We had moved ten miles east of Weed because our irrigation water had dried up and some of our shearing customers couldn’t pay us money, so they paid us with goats and we had more room to run goats on McDonald flats where we now lived. It sure was nice to get back home and sleep in a bed inside a house and eat Mother’s cooking and not have to gather firewood at daylight. My brothers and Sis were excited to see me and we talked for hours.

While we lived there, my twin brothers, Donald and Don were born. In those days we had no way of knowing we would get two instead of one so we were pleasantly surprised. About two weeks Don had trouble breathing and his lips would turn blue. The CCC camp over at Mayhill had a doctor so we took him over there. The doctor said he was probably born with a bad heart valve and might not live. Sure enough, he only lasted a few more days. We took him up to the Weed graveyard and buried him next to his little brother W.L. Within a few days Donald started having the same symptoms. Carlsbad had a hospital at that time so Mom and Dad took him to it. The doctor said he had pneumonia. They put him on oxygen and he was well in just a few days and they brought him home. Now he and his beautiful wife, Ronnie, live in Roswell, enjoying their grandchildren and great grandchildren.

We rode the school bus to Weed school which was about ten miles but we had to walk about one and a half miles and catch the bus so if we were late and missed the bus we would walk that ten miles on to school because if we went back home we had to work so we had rather walk than work. One time Dad got all us boys together and we went out and dismantled the quail trap and said, “The game warden wants to come down here and hunt quail so you boys keep your mouth shut while he’s here and you won’t get us in trouble.” So a few days later he came and killed his limit of quail and us boys and Dad was watching him clean the quail and his said, “I should give you boys some of these birds. There’s more here than I can eat.” And Curley said, “No we don’t like them that’s been shot.” The warden laughed and laughed and Dad just hung his head down, shook his head from side to side and said, “Damn, damn, damn.” Us older boys knew Curley was in a lot of trouble.

Grandma and Grandpa Evans to Weed along with my aunts, Marguerite and Lola Mae had grown into beautiful young ladies by then and they married some local mountain boys, the Roach twins, Valon and Vaughn. They had a brother who was married to a woman named Edith. The thing that really impressed me was they had an almost new 1931 Model A Ford coupe with a rumble seat. Two couples rode in front and one couple rode in the rumble seat. They had irrigated farms on Rio Peňasco and they came to see us a lot. With that beautiful car I thought they must be very rich. One time when they came, Vance and Edith brought with them a new baby girl. Her name was Barbara Ann. I looked her over and she was a quiet little towhead although I was disappointed that she wasn’t a boy cause I liked lots of boys to play with. Later on I was glad she was a girl because she has been my beautiful, charming wife for more than 60 years.

After we moved east of Weed, I remember, late one evening I was walking home and a cold wind was blowing. I heard a car coming and I thought, maybe he will give me a ride. Sure enough, he drove up and it was Orville Gernagin and he said, “Get in.” He had bought a new 1938 Chevy, the first car I had ever been in that had a heater. And I said, “What will they think of next year. This is pure luxury.” I could hardly wait to tell my brothers about my new experience.

Our close neighbors, the Fishers, lived about one and half miles away and they had a radio and we wanted Dad to get one but he said, no use us getting one, the Fishers said we could come up and listen to theirs any time we wanted to. Late one evening, Mack and I were coming back from the Fishers’ and just before we got to the house a skunk ran across the trail. A skunk had been catching mother’s chickens and we was determined to kill him. We used rocks and sticks and finally got the job done, but not before he had got us sprayed real good. When we got home Preacher Colburn and his wife were there to visit but as I remember, they didn’t stay very long.

One day at Weed school, when I was in the 5th grade, we were playing baseball at the noon break. I hit a double and when I got to second base, I fell and broke both bones in my arm above my wrist. Just then the bell rang and we all went in. I was in terrible pain and the teacher said, “What’s wrong with you?” And I said, “I bent my arm.” He looked at it and said, “You sure did, it’s broke but I’ll set it for you. Hold on I’ll be right back.” He lived near the school. He soon came back with an old sheet and some wooden shingles. He tore up the sheet, wrapped the shingles, then got hold of my hand and elbow and straightened my arm out. The pain was terrible and I could hear the bones grinding together. He placed the wrapped shingles around my arm and wrapped my arm with more sheet. Then he made a sling to put around my neck and put my arm in it so I didn’t have to go to a doctor. After I was grown, I broke other bones that the doctor set but my arm is the only one that grew back straight.

I had a friend at school that raised pet rabbits and I made a deal with him to buy a bred female so I could get a start of rabbits of my own. The next day, he brought the rabbit to school and I gave him the 50 cents I had brought to pay for the rabbit. As we were going home on our bus that evening, she started having babies and had twelve of them. So I got thirteen rabbits for 50 cents, so I thought I had got a good deal, but the seller felt like he had got cheated.

The Depression hung on in spite of all the government programs to put money back into circulation. However it was getting a little better all the time. At least now we had food, clothing, and each kid in school and had their own books. We were eeking out a living shearing sheep and goats all over the country. We were also building up our own herd of goats and Dad told us that Sam Gililand had talked to him about buying some goats from us and would be coming to have a look the next morning.

y Clif McDonald

Sam Gilliland knocked on our door just at daylight. My brothers and I had been waiting in euphoric anticipation for this moment for several days. I was twelve years old and didn't know Sam, but I had seen him roping at rodeos. He was six-foot plus, red-headed, strong, and tall and straight in the saddle.

One reason the Gillilands were heroes to me and my brothers was the gun battle at Wildy Well. Sam's brother, Jim Gilliland and Oliver Lee had been attacked by Pat Garrett and his posse while they were asleep. We believed the sheriff had taken an unfair advantage. Of course this happened before we were born, but we had heard the story, and our loyalties lay with Gilliland and Lee, who fought back and defeated Garrett and his posse, killing one of Pat's men.

Dad had told us a few days before that Sam was coming to possibly buy a herd of goats from us. Not only were we happy about meeting Sam, but we were also hoping to get some money from the sale of the goats to buy some new school clothes.

There was a fire in the kitchen stove and the coffee pot was percolating. Dad got up, opened the door and said, "Come on in, Sam." Sam said, "I brought my wife." and Dad said, "Bring her in. Breakfast is about ready." They came in, introductions were made all around, and everyone sat down at the big kitchen table, waiting for Mother to finish cooking breakfast. Sam and his wife had been married just over two weeks - and she was a beautiful lady!

Soon, breakfast was over and we went out to the corral. Sam walked around through the herd, looking the goats over. He would occasionally catch one and check its teeth for age. Dad wanted two dollars per head and Sam wanted them for a dollar seventy-five. Finally, Sam said, "We are going to have to drive them cross country on foot 'cause so much of this country is fenced up now."

We knew what he meant. the goats could go through fences but saddle horses could not. Sam took off his hat, scratched his head and said, "Tell you what I'll do. I'll give you two dollars a head for all the goats we get to my ranch. If we lose any of them along the way, I can't pay you for them." Dad said, "Fair enough. I'll send this boy here with you. He's a good herder; he'll get 'em all there. His name is Clif." I was elated to be the one chosen out of eight boys!

We filled our canteens, got our slickers and a pocket full of jerky and headed out to Sam's ranch which was south of Carrizozo. Sam's wife met us in the truck with food and bedrolls where we made camp that night. Next morning we had finished breakfast when it started coming daylight. Sam and me and his dog had all become good friends by then. His dog was a well trained, good herder. When we got the herd strung out and grazing, we would sit down to rest and drink out of our canteens. Then Sam would pour some water in his hat and hold it for his dog to drink out of.

We left Tulie Creek the next morning, headed north through the saddle just west of Cat Mountain. We were to meet Sam's wife that night in Coyote Canyon near the Indian reservation. About noon it started raining and we put on our slickers. It was almost dark when we reached our next campsite. We found a good tank of water but the corral had deteriorated to the point that it wouldn't hold our goats, so we had to take turns watching them so they wouldn't run off and get lost.

Sam's wife didn't show up with our food and bedrolls so we figured the roads had been washed out because a lot of the road was in the arroyo bed. You don't know how hungry a twelve-year-old boy can get. I had run out of jerky about noon the day before. Sam asked me if I thought I could eat some goat meat if we butchered one, and I said, "If we could find some dry wood to cook it with, I can."

About that time the moon started coming up and got very bright. Sam said, "You know with this cool night air and moonlight, we can maybe see good enough to move this herd. We sure could make lots of miles before it get hot tomorrow and it's only about twenty-five miles to Three Rivers. We can get something to eat there." So we moved them out. We could see well enough on the ridges, but when we had to cross a canyon, some of the goats would stop under the trees and I couldn't see them. So, I would take the dog and bark them out in the open. This worked well, but I also woke several rattle snakes which was kinda scary in the dark; and, I was afraid maybe I wasn't getting all the goats out of the brush.

Next morning when it came good daylight, I looked over the herd but I couldn't tell if I had lost any goats. We were on the lower slopes of Sierra Blanca Mountain. Looking to the west across the Tularosa Basin, we could not see Three Rivers, a ranch house, nor any sign of life. We were so hungry and tired, and the goats were so tired that they couldn't make much mileage. I suggested we rest, but Sam said, "If we stop, we're going to stiffen up and it will be worse. Besides, our canteens are dry."

About that time we spotted a windmill and we could see the blades turning in the morning sun. We figured there might be a ranch house there, too, and we could get food and water. However, it appeared to be several miles away. This kind of gave us a second wind, and Sam asked, "Can you make it, Kid?" I said sure! If these goats don't sull on us, and, if it don't get too hot, we can be there in about four or five hours."

About an hour later I could see a long dust plume going north down in the basin beyond the windmill and we knew it was a car on Highway 54 between Tularosa and Three Rivers; Highway 54 was not paved then. Soon after that, we saw a train. This gave me assurance we could eventually come back into civilization. I had never been in this part of the country, but I knew there were people and food down there somewhere.

As the day got hotter, the herd got tireder and slower; I didn't have any trouble with any of them trying to break out of the herd. I was so tired, I couldn't have done anything about it. Sam and I were both punching up the drags this time. After an hour of silence, Sam finally said, "The windmill is just over this next mountain. Can you make it, Kid?" I said, "Sure I can!" But in my own mind, I was not at all sure I could climb that next mountain. When we did finally make it to the top there was good news - there was a big trough of water, but no ranch house. When we got to the water, the goats were climbing on top of each other trying to get a drink and we joined in the competition.

As soon as all the goats got water, they bedded down to rest. It was about three in the afternoon, and I tried to figure out how many meals I had missed in a row, but the days and nights ran together. I lay down in the shade of a mesquite bush and I immediately went to sleep. I sprang to my feet an hour later, aware of my responsibility to keep the herd together, but they were all still bedded down. Sam said, "They ain't going nowhere." We had become good friends by then, and I felt proud to be pardnering with a man like Sam.

Sam said, "Well, we got several options. We can cook a goat and spend the night here, or one of us can walk on into Three Rivers and bring food back, or we can just wait awhile. My wife may find us before long if she ain't stuck somewhere. What do you think we should do?" My hunger was overcome by the joy that Sam was including me in the decision making. I felt like I had gained his confidence.

We didn't have to make the decision because we heard a truck engine coming up the arroyo bed. He cupped his hands behind his ears intently for a moment and said, "Yeah, that's my truck." We were waving our hats as Sam's wife came up over the rise. She pulled up and said, "The roads were washed out yesterday. I been lookin' for you all day." After we had eaten everything on the truck, Sam said, "Let's spend the night here. Let's get the herd up and graze 'em awhile, so they won't be restless tonight."

The next night we spent near Three Rivers. We herded the goats back into a box arroyo and I unrolled my bed in the mouth of the divide so I would wake up if they started to leave. Sure enough, I woke with them walking out over me. I looked to the east and it was beginning to be light, so I knew I could have enough light to gather them in about thirty minutes. The following night we bedded them down in a big, dry dirt tank and took turns watching. We could skylight them as they went over the tank dump. The next evening we reached our destination at Sam's ranch, which was south of Carrizozo, right next to the lava flow. I sure slept good knowing the goats were all corralled.

When we counted them out in the morning, and we had only lost five head, I was very relieved because I knew it could have been much worse. After the count, Sam said, "Would you do me a big favor?" I said, "Sure, anything!" And he said, "I've got to go to Roswell and hire another herder to help this one I've got. I'd like you to help my herder till I get back and I'll get you home in a couple of weeks before school starts." So I said, "OK. I'll write and tell my folks if you'll mail the letter tomorrow in Carrizozo." (There were no phones or electricity in the ranch country at that time). So I wrote:

Dear Mom and Dad,

We finished the drive. Be home in two weeks. I'm working for Sam awhile. We

only lost five head.

Clif

I got a whole new experience herding on the lava rocks. There was lots of good brush for browsing. But again, we couldn't ride horseback because it was too rocky. So when I finally got home, I had completely worn out my shoes.

Sam came back and brought me a new pocket knife for a present. It was a Barlow with good metal, the first expensive knife I had ever owned.

When we got home and Sam paid my dad for the goats, he shook my hand and said, "Enjoyed working with you, Kid, and I'll see you again." He still called me Kid when I was fifty years old. He would come to my barber shop and say, "Hi, Kid, how about let's cook a goat?" Sam is long since gone, but I think about him often and I miss him. I'm eighty-five years old now, and I'll probably be seeing him again before too long. He will probably ride over from the side of the arena and say, "Hi, Kid, how about let's cook a goat."

When Dad would get a shearing job, he would have some help for a few days, and then he would lay them off. One day he laid off O.H. Lane and he saddled his horse and rode off to Weed and stayed there for a few days. He made the mistake of getting very friendly with the postmistress, who also happened to be the deputy sheriff’s wife. One day he and some more men were loafing in the store when one of the men said, “O.H., here comes the sheriff and he’s got his gun in his hand. You better get out the back door.” O.H. said, “He won’t shoot me in the back, so when the sheriff came in O.H. turned his back and raised his hands up over his head and the sheriff shot him in the back.

The bullet barely missed his backbone and went into his lung. They took him to Alamogordo and got the bullet taken out. O.H. didn’t have money to pay his hospital bill and had nowhere else to go so they brought him back to our house to heal up. When he rode away the second time he didn’t stop in Weed. No charges were filed against the sheriff. Everyone said it was justified.

I remember another shooting happened when a job opening at the sawmill occurred. Two well-qualified men were competing for the job and the one that was chosen was shot the night before he was to start working. The other one filled the vacancy that same day. No one was ever arrested for the shooting. People would do just about anything for a job.

In spite of how hard we worked, we never could get together the $350 to pay back the government agriculture loan. So we got a foreclosure notice. We had to get together all our equipment and livestock on a certain day for the foreclosure sale. We had seen this same thing happen to a lot of our friends and neighbors. It was a sad time for us. When the sale was over it still didn’t bring in enough money to pay off the debt. The worst part for me was when they led my horse, Old Chub, away. It was like the end of the road for us. We had fought the good fight but we had failed. Where to go, what to do?

About that time the Roach brothers showed up (my uncles by marriage) along with Vance, their brother, and all the wives. It was a happy gathering. After they found out that Dad had no plans they said, “Alvy, we have got a lot of fence to build and lots of farm work come spring. Why don’t you come and go to work for us ‘til you get back on your feet. We’ve got that big old chicken house we can clean up for you all to live in. We ill pay you 20 cents and hour and we will pay Clif and Mack 10 cents an hour.” I was twelve years old and I could do more work than Dad but it was the custom to pay a man more than a boy.

Dad jumped at the offer and we moved to the Penasco. I was so happy to live near Lola and Margarete and work with those Roach boys, who were my idols. Everyone was aware that the job offer was more to help us out while we were down on our luck.

I hated to leave Weed school but there was a little school nearby that we went to. It was about 15 kids and one teacher in a little church house. I learned a lot about irrigated farming, how to set cabbage plants, make seed beds, pack lettuce, and irrigate. When I worked for Vance and Edith I had a two-fold responsibility; one was to irrigate and the other was to babysit Barbara, who was a very active and mischievous little girl and a good friend of my little sister. But at that time I had no idea that Barbara would be someday become my wonderful wife and lifetime soulmate.

We worked there about a year and saved quite a bit of money. Of course, during that time, Dad got all of the wages that Mack and I made. Working boys had to give all their wages to their Dad. However, the Roach boys paid me five cents for each gopher I could catch. So I got up at daylight and run my traplines before work time for my spending money. Dad bought a used 1936 Pontiac car for $200. It was a very good car and we kept it all through World War II.

West Texas had an unusually good cotton crop that year and was offering 75 cents per hundred pounds to have it picked, boles and all. You didn’t have to pick it out of the bole, just pulled the bole. Dad told the Roach boys, “I hate to leave, but with all the kids working, this is an opportunity to really make some money. We could pick cotton ‘til about Christmas, then come back and put the kids in school.” We never got to go to school anyway if there was a lot of work to do.

So we headed to Texas. We never had pulled boles but were confident we could do good. We had no trouble getting work. I was the top producer; if we got a long day, I could do 800 pounds. We had to wait ‘til the dew dried in the morning before we could start but if there was a breeze blowing you could get a long day and make a lot of money. We never was out of work all fall and made lots of money.

When work was over, we went on down to Junction and saw all our relatives we had left so many years ago. A lot of them suggested we move back to Texas, but we had become loyal New Mexican by then. World War II started while we were picking cotton. We had been expecting it for a while. We had a radio now and we kept up with the war news every night. I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was, but I wondered if the war would last long enough for me to become 17 so I could go. I wanted to be in the Navy.

Carlton, my youngest brother, was born while we were in Texas. Grandma McDonald came and helped for a while and gave him his name. We came back to New Mexico just before Christmas and Dad rented an irrigated farm on the Penasco and we started to school at Cloudcroft right after Christmas. We never got to go to school as long as there was work. School had second priority. We rode Clevey Dockrey’s bus. I loved the mountains, especially the log trains. The school didn’t have a lunchroom then, so you had to carry a lunch or eat at Flossie’s café for 25 cents but she (also) had slot machines, so sometimes I ate good and sometimes I went hungry. But it was a good way to learn about gambling.

At that time we bought most of our groceries at Mayhill, Bear Canyon store, and Marcia, which was a logging town where the train came down Peňasco and across to Wills Canyon and Agua Chiquita. Nothing is left now of Marcia except the graveyard.

I especially liked going to Mayhill because Billie Brantley’s father ran the store and she had a bicycle that she sometimes would let me ride. She was the only kid I knew that could afford a bike.

We hardly ever got candy so when Mom and Dad left for a few hours we would build a fire in the cook stove and melt some sugar and let it cool and harden. Then we’d wash the dishes and clean the kitchen so they wouldn’t know what we had been doing. The melted sugar was good but it was so hard we could hardly eat it. So we decided next time we would read the cookbook to try to make better candy. We understood the recipe until it called for a cup of nutmeat. We didn’t know what nutmeat was, so we assumed they had made a mistake in the spelling and had meant to say nutmeg. Well the candy wasn’t as hard but candy with nutmeg in it is not very good, so we went back to melted sugar.

Dad always made a keg of cider with apples that he traded for yearly. He would keep the cider til it turned to vinegar and Mom would make pickles with it. One year, he put the stopper in the cider keg and rolled it under the bed where Mack and I slept. Every night we would quietly get under the bed, take the stopper out of the keg and get us a swig of cider, then replace the stopper and go back to bed. After a few months we had drank it all and dreaded what was going to happen when he found it out. One night we heard him tell Mom, “I’m going to check our cider to see if its turned to vinegar yet.” We laid very still and quiet. He came in, reached under the bed, took the keg out and shook it, then put it back under the bed and left. We heard him tell Mom, “That stopper was loose in the keg and all the cider ran out of it and dripped through the floor. We felt like we had just dodged a bullet.

Living on the Penasco was good. We made enough money now to live comfortably and have good clothes and shoes. I trapped in the wintertime when the fur was thick, so I had plenty of spending money.

When Mack and I were little boys, we lived right near the road to Weed. And every Saturday night after the bar closed we could hear cars going by on their way home. There was a bridge over a small arroyo nearby with a broken board, so the bridge had a hole in it. We decided it would be fun to scare those drivers leaving the bar. So we made masks for our faces, so we wouldn’t be recognized, and about 2:00 in the morning, we would get under the bridge and when we heard a car coming we would stick our heads through the hole. Then just before the car got there we would pull our heads down and run of the arroyo. The drivers reacted differently. Some of them swerved and applied their brakes, got out and looked and cussed. Some of them would speed up. One of them came back a few days later and looked all around and looked under the bridge.

Every summer the Fort Bliss soldiers would come from El Paso up through the mountains by our place. Most of them rode horseback, they had covered wagons and some horse teams pulled cannons. They would camp out at night. I had heard about a war in China, so I assumed China was on the other side of Sierra Blanca. But I learned later they had an army camp in Cloudcroft and spent part of the summer in the cool mountains.

One summer we drouthed/droughed (spelling?) out and Dad rented some pasture over at Bent and we moved our goats to the Hiles Ranch and lived next to the Indian reservation. In the summer the Indians danced almost every night around the fire near Mescalero. We would walk up to the ceremonial grounds and watch. After they got to know us, they invited us to join in. I had lots of fun that summer, learning to do the Indian dances.

When I ran for County Commissioner in the late 1960s, I still had some friends on the reservation that helped me get elected.

In the summertime, we would walk six miles over the mountain to Weed on Saturday afternoon to go to the dance in the Blue Moon Bar. We were young teenagers but they would let us in and sell us drinks and let us dance. They ignored the law because there was no law enforcement that far away from Alamogordo. The men had lots of fistfights, but they never used knives or guns. There was a sign on the door that read: Dance and Fight Saturday Night. They always went outside to fight.

After the bar closed we went to Pete and Eunice McCarty’s house and stayed the rest of the night and walked back home the next day. Pete was one of our friends that had worked for Dad years ago. I remember Dad telling him one night, “Pete, I’ve ran out of money and I can’t pay you anymore. So I have to let you go.” But next morning Pete didn’t leave, he just got up and went to work. After about a week Dad told him again that he had better leave and get him another job. Pete said, “Alvie, I been thinking about that and if I go I probably can’t find another job. So if you will let me stay, I’ll work for $15 per month instead of the $30 you been paying me. And if you don’t ever get the money, you don’t ever have to pay me anything.” So Pete stayed.

He had a girlfriend at Weed School, Eunice Acers, and every morning he would give me a note to give to her and she would give me one to give to him. One day he asked Dad for a favor. So dad drove him to Weed and he knocked on the schoolhouse door. The teacher came to the door and Pete said, “May I see Eunice?” When she came to the door they left together and Dad took them to Alamogordo to get married. They lived in a little shed near our house. Pete finally got a good job and they raised a fine family. Pete died many years later.

We lived on this irrigated farm we had rented from Matt and Mattie Mills. They had no kids so everyone called them Uncle Matt and Aunt Mattie. She was picking apples one day and when she stepped off the ladder, she broke her ankle. Dad took them to Alamogordo, to the hospital, but she died three days later. Uncle Matt moved to La Luz so we moved into their house. This was the first time I had lived in a house with electricity and indoor plumbing.

One day, one of the neighbors came to our house and said, “Alvie, I’m behind in my work. If you will let Clif and Mack work for me a few weeks, I’ll pay em good.” So after we got him caught up he paid us $20 each. When we gave the money to Dad he said, “You boys are getting big enough to have a say in how your money is spent. What would you like to buy with your money?” We said we would like to buy an electric refrigerator so we could have ice tea and ice cream in the summer time. And he said, “Well, I don’t know. Them things might burn too much electricity, but go ahead and get it. But if it cost too much to run it we will have to unplug it.”

Another thing I enjoyed about being a teenage boy was fighting forest fires. We had a forest ranger that lived below Mayhill, named Mr. Hutchington, who we just called Hutch, and when a fire started he would start gathering up boys to go build fire trails ahead of the fire. Sometimes we would be on a fire for several days and nights but we always had a good fire camp and lots of good food. After the fire was over he would mail us a check. He would also tell us, “If you boys see a lightning fire, go put a trail around it and stay with it ‘til it burns out. Then write me a letter and I’ll come and look at it.” We loved staying all night watching the fire and backfiring it. Then he would check our work and send us a check.

Dad bought a 1939-model ton and a half truck from army surplus for a little over $400 and we started hauling the vegetables we raised to El Paso. We would work all day harvesting a load and all night driving to El Paso. He always took me along to help him drive. I was a very young teen but I could drive as good as he could. Neither of us had a driver’s license and they never did check them anyway. When I got to be 15 years old, he never went with me anymore. He said, “you can sell these vegetables as good as I can.”

Dad was a successful sharecropper because he was a hard worker and had a big family of kids that worked in the field. After my older brother Mack and I had finished the 8th grade, Dad said, “Well boys, it’s time for you to quit going to school. You have got all the education you will ever need and I need you to work full time.” We were disappointed, but we expected it. None of the other boys of that area got to stay in school after 8th grade and our older brother Sonny had left home to work in the oil field down at Seminole, Texas. Dad was saving money by then to fulfill his lifelong dream of owning his own place.

After the driver’s license law was passed, very few people bothered to them because no one ever asked for identification and the police never ask to see them. So my dad never got one for years. But finally it became a necessity to have them.

So he went down to Alamogordo to get it and the policeman ask him he could drive and he said he could. So the policeman got in the truck with him and told him to go up Tenth Street to Cuba Avenue and then turn around. On the way back he told him to turn right. So he turned and jumped the truck across the irrigation ditch, on across the vacant block, and jumped the other ditch and back on the next street. The policeman was mad at being bounced around and he said, “I meant turn right at the next street.” Dad was mad too by then, and Dad said, “Well why don’t you say what you mean? Up in the mountains we drive across the pasture all the time.” Then Dad said, “Well are you going to give me my license or not?” And the policeman said, “Hell yes! I don’t want to have to ride with you again.”

We went down to the Safeway store to buy some groceries and Dad parked parallel on the parking lot so he could back out when we got ready to leave. So when we got back to the truck, a car had parked right in front of the truck, very close to the front bumper, and there were two men in the car doing book work. This made Dad nervous because they were so close. But we got the groceries loaded and all the kids in the back with Dad and Mom and the baby in the front. He started the truck, looked in the rearview mirror and sure enough, he got it in first gear instead of reverse and hit the car in front of him. He got out and the two men got out of the car. He apologized profusely. He gave them his name and address and told them to get it fixed and he would pay for it.

Everyone got back in their vehicles and Mom was giving him hell and he was getting more nervous and he did the same thing again. He got out and was shaking his head side-to-side and apologizing again. Everyone got back in their vehicles for the third tie and he was not only nervous, by this time he was mad. He started his truck, put it in gear, raced his motor, looked back, got off the clutch and went forward again and hit the car for the third time. Only this time he hit it so hard he turned it way over on its side, so far that the two men couldn’t get out. By now the car was hung up under the bumper of the truck and couldn’t go on over to come down. He was fighting his gearshift and trying to get it in reverse. He finally found reverse, came off the clutch with is motor racing and slammed the car against the ground, jumped out and in a loud voice told the men, “Get that damn car out of here or next time I’ll run clear over it.” They left immediately and we never did get a bill to fix their car.

Old men that learned to drive a wagon before they learned to drive a car was never at ease driving a vehicle.

One time, Dad needed to hire some goat shearers, so we went to Roswell to see a friend who thought he could get some shearers that wanted a job. Our friend and his wife worked in town and they told us to go to their house and they would be there as soon as they got off work. We went to their house and had lots of fun exploring. We had never been in a house with plumbing and electricity. Dad got the idea it would be nice to have supper ready for them when they got home. So he got his chuck box off the truck and brought it in. Next he looked over the gas stove and said, “I never used this kind of stove but it don’t look too complicated so I’ll just turn on the oven and let it warm up, then light it.” That was before pilot lights, so after the gas was on for a while he squatted down in front of the oven and lit a match. Of course, the stove blew up and I remember him rolling across the floor like a ball. When he gained composure he could see flames so he ran to the bed and grabbed the covers to smother out the flames. So our friends came home to a blown up stove and a burned bed and no supper. I remember Dad saying, “ Them damn gas stoves are dangerous. I wouldn’t have one of them in my house.”

It was during WWII and everyone was very patriotic and as soon as a boy turned 17, he would join the Navy. Mack and John Lee Goss, T.W. Peek and George Scott were making plans to join up and George told me he wanted to join the Marines. I said, “George, they are shooting Marines over there like flies. You better join the Navy.” And he said, “I always wanted to be a Marine and I’ll be ok.”

Dad had given Mack and me the yield off a two-acre piece of land and we had saved enough money to buy a 1931 model Ford car, which was our pride and joy. We had also learned the cut hair by practicing on each other and the younger boys in our family. Then all the neighbors started coming to us for haircuts and now, 75 years later, I still own a barbershop.

Finally I became 17 years old and I hated to leave but I wanted so badly to get in the Navy. I thought I could get over there and help Mack get the war over with and we could both come back home. I joined the Navy and was in bootcamp in San Diego where I got a letter from Mother that George Scott had got shot and was in the Marine hospital at San Diego. So as soon as I could get leave, I went to see him. I walked up to his bunk and he couldn’t believe his eyes when he looked up at me. So I said, “George, I told you, you would get shot if you joined the Marines.” And he said, “That’s OK. I’m on my way home and you’re on your way over there.”

George was right. When I finished boot camp, I went to sea on the Battleship U.S.S. New Jersey. I was so proud. Every sailor wanted to be on a battleship. We wore life jackets 24 hours a day because of submarines and kamikaze planes. We were building up forces to do a land invasion of the island of Japan, so we wound up at Guam. While we were there we got the terrible news that the U.S.S. Indianapolis, that had just left Guam, had been sunk by a Japanese sub. It sank at night and most of the crew was lost. What we didn’t know was it had delivered the atomic bombs that would be flown to Japan. Now I wonder what history would be like if they had sank it before it made its delivery. Because we sure was dreading the invasion of the island of Japan.

Soon the war was over and I was stationed on Eniwetok, a small coral island in the South Pacific. When we arrived there, the captain that met us asked, “Is there any barbers in this bunch?” Hearing no response, I said, “I’ve sheared a lot of sheep.” And he said, “You’ll do just fine.” So I worked in the barbershop full time.

I enjoyed the island, with the reef on one side and the harbor on the other. The island was very small, not over 40 acres all together. I got to go out to the ships that pulled into the harbor and cut hair. I got to serve on the Sikoiwa a while. It was a Japanese battleship that we had captured. It survived the first atomic bomb test that we had in the Pacific. We were all dreading that test because we didn’t know what to expect, but I was lucky, I left the day before the explosion and was back to Hawaii on my way back to the states and my discharge. My folks met me in Alamogordo and we went back to the Penasco.

I had loved the Navy. It was a wonderful experience because I had never been anywhere before and now I had been from the log train to the troop train to the ship across the ocean and back again. I went back to the farm and helped Dad until the crops were hauled off that fall and was not bored by the tranquility of being back home.

After the War

Dad had saved enough money by then to buy his own place. He decided to leave the mountains because he was to the age that cold weather bothered him. So he went down east of Hobbs and bought a place near Seminole. It was the only piece of land he had ever owned. We built them a new house on it and mother was very happy with her new house.

I went to work in the oil fields with Sonney. We were drilling oil wells and I worked as a rough neck. It was hard work but very interesting. I got paid $1.20 per hour and we worked eight hours a day, seven days a week. We drilled 24 hours a day so when one of the shifts came short handed, I got to work an extra shift. So some weeks I got eight or ten shifts so I made lots of money and saved lots of it.

My brother, Mack, wanted to go back to barbering and for us to have a barbershop together. You didn’t have to go to barber school then and get a license, but you had to pass a written and a practical test. So we sent off and got a book to study and went to Santa Fe and took the test and got our license. We both went to work in shops in Las Cruces. We had worked there for about six months when we got the bad news from Mother. Dad had taken a piece of equipment into a blacksmith shop and, while he was there, there was a terrific explosion that killed the blacksmith and broke both of Dad’s legs. So we quit our jobs and went home to take over the work on his farm. Mack went to work in a barbershop in nearby Hobbs. He and Sonny had families by then and they had to have incomes. So that left me to run the farm. Dad knew his injuries were so severe that he would never be able to farm again. So he sold his farm. He wanted to move back to the mountains, so I rented a farm on the Penasco and went back to sharecropping and they lived with me. I would work the farm in the summer and haul the cabbage to El Paso, San Angelo, and Dallas in the fall, then go to Hobbs in the winter and rough neck on a drilling rig and work in a barbershop and make enough to keep the family going. After a couple of years, Dad had healed enough to do light work and he got a job running a summer camp over west of Sacramento at the mouth of Hay Canyon.

I was still single and had dated several girls but had never got serious about any of them. Then Barbara, the little girl I used to take care of when I was irrigating for Vance and Edith for 10 cents per hour, had grown up to be the most beautiful thing I had ever saw. She was so charming and very intelligent. After we started dating I fell hopelessly in love with her. She had lots of suitors, so I had lots of competition. I had good offer to go to Arebia and work on a drilling rig and make big money but I wanted her even more than I wanted the big job that I could have.

So I took her to the White Sands one beautiful moonlit night and as we strolled across the dunes, hand-in-hand, I told her how much I loved her and asked her to marry me and she accepted my proposal. I was so I happy I walked on clouds and she still makes me happy after 62 years of marriage.

When I got her back home that evening, she went into her parents’ bedroom, sat down on the bed where they were sleeping, woke them up and made small talk while I was getting my courage. Finally I said, “Barbara and I want to get married!”

They were so startled, they sat up in bed so quickly all the slats fell out, the bed fell in and fell in on top of them. After digging his way out of the covers, Vance started protesting the idea, that was not the plan he had for his little girl. But he finally gave in and we were the first couple to get married in the new Baptist church in Cloudcroft.

The first year we ran Grandpa Roy and Dora’s farm while they traveled. I decided to go back to barbering. I got a job across 10th Street from the Plaza Café in Alamogordo and Barbara started back to school. She wanted to be a teacher and I wanted a barbershop with Mack. Mack and I rented a little horse shed on 10th Street a few blocks from downtown and remodeled it into a barbershop. It was just in front of where Bank 34 is now. We built a good business and opened another shop on the corner of Indian Wells and Cuba Avenue, before Cuba Avenue was paved and we had a thriving business there, also.

Our daughter, Candice, was born in October of 1954 and we enjoyed her immensely. We had a house built on 2404 Stanford St. The total cost was $10,500. The payments were $69 per month, which included insurance and taxes. Our son, Wayne, was born while we lived there..

Barbara and I were both raised in the country and couldn’t get used to living in town, so in 1960 we bought an old homestead west of Alamo where we still live and raise cows and goats. Our youngest daughter, Cyd, was born that same year and now lives in Upper New York State with her husband Bob and her Marine son, Sam.

When Cyd was born she had many health problems and needed several operations. But our insurance would not cover her because they were preexisting conditions. We had to spend all the money we had saved and all we could borrow and for years we were paying three hospitals and nine doctors a monthly payment. We were totally broke financially but finally paid our way out.

Barbara started teaching at the school for the blind, then went into administration and retired when she was assistant superintendant. I decided to run for county commissioner and served two terms as commissioner and four terms as county assessor. While I was working in the courthouse, I became interested in real estate appraisal and studied at several colleges and universities and appraised for VA. FHA banks and savings and loans. I then became interested in banking so me and some of my friends chartered Western Bank in Alamogordo. Since 1977 I have been a member of the board of directors of the bank. I sold my barbershop after 60 years of business.

We first formed a transportation committee in the Chamber of Commerce in the early 1970’s and attended all the highway commission meetings around the state for years. We were able to get Highways 54 and 70 widened to four lanes, the relief route built and an overpass at the Holloman Gate. I was Chamber President in 1976 when we built the Space History Museum and I’m still on the foundation board after 37 years.

I have now been a member of he Alamogordo Noon Lion’s Club for 55 years and have enjoyed it and all the friends I have made.

I was chosen as Citizen of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce. I was very proud of that honor and, a few years later, Barbara received the same honor.

Barbara was State Centennial Chairman for the city and did a fantastic job. She put on 72 events in 52 weeks – busy lady – and was chosen best centennial in New Mexico by the New Mexico Tourism Committee.

We had our barbershop for 60 years. The people that own it now do a little better with $14 haircuts that I did with 75 cent haircuts and 50 cent shaves.

Margaret and the Cowboy, A Ghost Story

2015-10-31T13:51:00.003-07:00

Late in the year of 1960, my husband and I purchased and moved into one of the oldest farmhouses near Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was nearly a hundred years old and at the western edge of town on a now unused road that had traveled past our farm on through to the White Sands, over the San Andres Mountains, on to Las Cruces and eventually to California. Pat Garret, Billy the Kid, Colonel Fountain, and an array of Apaches, Spaniards, Mexicans, heroes and villains had traversed the road behind our simple wooden, white, pitched-roof farmhouse. It was a quiet place, enclosed in elm trees, fat cotton woods, willows, several barns and a rickety arrangement of pens for sheep, chickens and turkeys. A small house, used for itinerant farm hands, stood catty-corner to our house. It was then occupied by our hand, Gregorio, his wife and their small child. Forty acres of furrowed fields lay south of the houses and were edged on the west by a stingy apple orchard, too old to produce much but a drupelet, but the front yard abounded with fig bushes and apricot, pomegranate and mulberry trees.

My husband was a political sort, away at meetings many evenings, and one February evening this was the case. Our youngest daughter had been born on Christmas day two months previously and she was fussy this evening. I was trying to rock her back to sleep in front of the fireplace which was wildly crackling with a hot mesquite wood fire. The older children were in their bedroom but kept getting up and pestering with requests for water or bathroom or "I can't sleep." A storm had begun brewing, beginning with the windows brightening with lightening, followed by close bursts of rambunctious thunder. Rain began pouring down in sheets blown in by a forceful wind. I relented to the children to bring in their blanket and lie next to us on the rug in front of the fire.

As I rocked the baby and hummed a calming lullaby, I noticed the hatch door into the attic was rising up and hovering a few inches above the little frame that held it in place. It would slowly close and then a few minutes later it would hover open again. I kept rocking the baby and watched the hatch open and close. The storm had begun to abate by this time and I began to fear that someone was in the attic and was watching us. I held tight to the baby and continued rocking until the door blew open. I jumped up, and my husband bounded in through the door . I spilled out my story about the hatch while my husband pulled off his winter coat and stood by the fire to warm himself. "It's probably just the draft pushing the hatch up," he said dismissively, but I persisted and he finally said he would get the ladder and see what was up there. "Maybe a critter," he said. "I don't know how anything could get in there, but we'll have a look"

My husband brought a ladder in from the barn, triangled it the middle of our living room, and climbed to the ceiling with his flashlight. To our surprise, the hatch was constructed from heavy lumber and my husband struggled to lift it and set in onto the rafters. It seemed too heavy to be lifted up by a mere draft of air.

"There's nothing up here," he yelled back down. "A thick layer of dust. It hasn't been disturbed, there's no tracks." He swung his flashlight from edge to edge of the attic. Secreted in the corner was a small wooden box, camouflaged with dust, untouched. "It sure doesn't look like there's been any movement up here. Maybe you were sleeping and dreamed the hatch was lifting up."

The next morning we viewed the results of the storm. Flood water, deluging down the Sacramento Mountains and overflowing the arroyos had swept across our front lawn and caved in an old hand dug well in our lawn that we were unaware of. We were shocked to find the well; it had been covered with heavy timber and sod and the weight of the flood water must have been too much for the decayed and rotted planks causing them to collapse. The hole was about sixty feet deep and we feared that the children could fall into this pit and even though water didn't rise into the well anymore, it would be a deadly fall and needed to be filled. My husband and Gregorio pushed dirt and rocks with the tractor to fill the well and replanted grass on top of the site.

After that night, there were changes at the old farm house. Some mornings we would find the breakfast table set with an odd assortment of dishes, a plate, a spoon, a cup and maybe a spatula; strange settings of dish wares appeared on our table intermittently. Tea towels would be folded or unfolded. Kitchen chairs would be moved, lights turned on or off and we'd hear soft noises at strange times - clicks, scrapes, taps, - nothing uproarious. Sometimes guests would ask about who just went into a room and when we investigated, we would find the room empty.

Several months after the storm we went into the attic to remodel to turn the attic into bedrooms - since the house had only two bedrooms and we had three children. The dust wafted as we stepped from rafter to rafter. Sitting on the joists in the corner was a small cedar chest, coated with decades of dust. I lifted the top of the chest and inside was a collection of embroidered linens with perfectly aligned and administered back stitches, split stitches, french knots - all done in blue two strand thread, a four patch crazy quilt, two dishes bordered with pink roses, a spatula, several wooden spoons, two teacups and saucers, and an assemblage of mismatched spoons, forks, knives. A simple white sleeping gown lay in the chest; its bodice was embellished with white cloud filling stitches which ended below the breasts and bedizened the bottom of the gown into grecian folds. In the bottom of the trunk was a floral printed flour sack tied at the top with a string and enclosing a pair of tiny pair of lamb's wool booties and a pair of knitting needles with a tiny white cap still in progress interlaced on the wooden sticks. "It's someone's Hope Chest," I told my husband, uncomfortable with this new knowledge.

We decided to research the history of the old farm house. Through census records we learned that the original farm was homesteaded by a couple who had a daughter named Margaret who was 18. We found a newspaper article saying that one summer Margaret had gone missing. The newspaper reported that the family had hired a drifter, a young cowboy who worked for the family for about a year and one day the daughter and the hired hand disappeared. Thinking they had eloped, the family waited for their return, but they never came back. Stories filtered back of seeing the hired hand in neighboring Hillsboro, El Paso, or Las Vegas, but no sightings of Margaret were ever reported.

We considered the sequence of events on our farm: the storm, the flood, the uncovered well and the appearance of the ghost in our house. We have decided it is Margaret. We theorize that Margaret became pregnant and told the cowboy - who did not take to the news kindly. We believe he killed her and dumped her in the dried up well and when the well cover collapsed, she escaped and moved back into the farmhouse.
We have lived in this house with Margaret for 60 years. Her Hope Chest sits in the bedroom filled with her unused treasures. She still upsets our routine at times and I'm sure we upset hers, but we are all by now family.

by Barbara McDonald

Albert Bacon Fall In Photographs

2012-10-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

Albert B. Fall

Emma Garland Morgan Fall

Albert B. Fall

Albert Fall representing Oliver Lee & Jim Gilliland

Albert B. Fall

1929 Albert B. Fall helped into Court


Fall's El Paso Home-1725 Arizona Street

Princess Sophia Steamship

Fall being Sworn In

Harry Sinclair and Albert Fall

Mining in the Jarilla Mountains - Photographs

2012-09-04T20:01:00.001-07:00

Goat Herding in Otero County

2012-08-08T20:51:00.001-07:00

by Clif McDonald

Sam Gilliland knocked on our door just at daylight. My brothers and I had been waiting in euphoric anticipation for this moment for several days. I was twelve years old and didn't know Sam, but I had seen him roping at rodeos. He was six-foot plus, red-headed, strong, and tall and straight in the saddle.

One reason the Gillilands were heroes to me and my brothers was the gun battle at Wildy Well. Sam's brother, Jim Gilliland and Oliver Lee had been attacked by Pat Garrett and his posse while they were asleep. We believed the sheriff had taken an unfair advantage. Of course this happened before we were born, but we had heard the story, and our loyalties lay with Gilliland and Lee, who fought back and defeated Garrett and his posse, killing one of Pat's men.

Dad had told us a few days before that Sam was coming to possibly buy a herd of goats from us. Not only were we happy about meeting Sam, but we were also hoping to get some money from the sale of the goats to buy some new school clothes.

There was a fire in the kitchen stove and the coffee pot was percolating. Dad got up, opened the door and said, "Come on in, Sam." Sam said, "I brought my wife." and Dad said, "Bring her in. Breakfast is about ready." They came in, introductions were made all around, and everyone sat down at the big kitchen table, waiting for Mother to finish cooking breakfast. Sam and his wife had been married just over two weeks - and she was a beautiful lady!

Soon, breakfast was over and we went out to the corral. Sam walked around through the herd, looking the goats over. He would occasionally catch one and check its teeth for age. Dad wanted two dollars per head and Sam wanted them for a dollar seventy-five. Finally, Sam said, "We are going to have to drive them cross country on foot 'cause so much of this country is fenced up now."

We knew what he meant. the goats could go through fences but saddle horses could not. Sam took off his hat, scratched his head and said, "Tell you what I'll do. I'll give you two dollars a head for all the goats we get to my ranch. If we lose any of them along the way, I can't pay you for them." Dad said, "Fair enough. I'll send this boy here with you. He's a good herder; he'll get 'em all there. His name is Clif." I was elated to be the one chosen out of eight boys!

We filled our canteens, got our slickers and a pocket full of jerky and headed out to Sam's ranch which was south of Carrizozo. Sam's wife met us in the truck with food and bedrolls where we made camp that night. Next morning we had finished breakfast when it started coming daylight. Sam and me and his dog had all become good friends by then. His dog was a well trained, good herder. When we got the herd strung out and grazing, we would sit down to rest and drink out of our canteens. Then Sam would pour some water in his hat and hold it for his dog to drink out of.

We left Tulie Creek the next morning, headed north through the saddle just west of Cat Mountain. We were to meet Sam's wife that night in Coyote Canyon near the Indian reservation. About noon it started raining and we put on our slickers. It was almost dark when we reached our next campsite. We found a good tank of water but the corral had deteriorated to the point that it wouldn't hold our goats, so we had to take turns watching them so they wouldn't run off and get lost.

Sam's wife didn't show up with our food and bedrolls so we figured the roads had been washed out because a lot of the road was in the arroyo bed. You don't know how hungry a twelve-year-old boy can get. I had run out of jerky about noon the day before. Sam asked me if I thought I could eat some goat meat if we butchered one, and I said, "If we could find some dry wood to cook it with, I can."
About that time the moon started coming up and got very bright. Sam said, "You know with this cool night air and moonlight, we can maybe see good enough to move this herd. We sure could make lots of miles before it get hot tomorrow and it's only about twenty-five miles to Three Rivers. We can get something to eat there." So we moved them out. We could see well enough on the ridges, but when we had to cross a canyon, some of the goats would stop under the trees and I couldn't see them. So, I would take the dog and bark them out in the open. This worked well, but I also woke several rattle snakes which was kinda scary in the dark; and, I was afraid maybe I wasn't getting all the goats out of the brush.

Next morning when it came good daylight, I looked over the herd but I couldn't tell if I had lost any goats. We were on the lower slopes of Sierra Blanca Mountain. Looking to the west across the Tularosa Basin, we could not see Three Rivers, a ranch house, nor any sign of life. We were so hungry and tired, and the goats were so tired that they couldn't make much mileage. I suggested we rest, but Sam said, "If we stop, we're going to stiffen up and it will be worse. Besides, our canteens are dry."

About that time we spotted a windmill and we could see the blades turning in the morning sun. We figured there might be a ranch house there, too, and we could get food and water. However, it appeared to be several miles away. This kind of gave us a second wind, and Sam asked, "Can you make it, Kid?" I said sure! If these goats don't sull on us, and, if it don't get too hot, we can be there in about four or five hours."
About an hour later I could see a long dust plume going north down in the basin beyond the windmill and we knew it was a car on Highway 54 between Tularosa and Three Rivers; Highway 54 was not paved then. Soon after that, we saw a train. This gave me assurance we could eventually come back into civilization. I had never been in this part of the country, but I knew there were people and food down there somewhere.

As the day got hotter, the herd got tireder and slower; I didn't have any trouble with any of them trying to break out of the herd. I was so tired, I couldn't have done anything about it. Sam and I were both punching up the drags this time. After an hour of silence, Sam finally said, "The windmill is just over this next mountain. Can you make it, Kid?" I said, "Sure I can!" But in my own mind, I was not at all sure I could climb that next mountain. When we did finally make it to the top there was good news - there was a big trough of water, but no ranch house. When we got to the water, the goats were climbing on top of each other trying to get a drink and we joined in the competition.

As soon as all the goats got water, they bedded down to rest. It was about three in the afternoon, and I tried to figure out how many meals I had missed in a row, but the days and nights ran together. I lay down in the shade of a mesquite bush and I immediately went to sleep. I sprang to my feet an hour later, aware of my responsibility to keep the herd together, but they were all still bedded down. Sam said, "They ain't going nowhere." We had become good friends by then, and I felt proud to be pardnering with a man like Sam.

Sam said, "Well, we got several options. We can cook a goat and spend the night here, or one of us can walk on into Three Rivers and bring food back, or we can just wait awhile. My wife may find us before long if she ain't stuck somewhere. What do you think we should do?" My hunger was overcome by the joy that Sam was including me in the decision making. I felt like I had gained his confidence.

We didn't have to make the decision because we heard a truck engine coming up the arroyo bed. He cupped his hands behind his ears intently for a moment and said, "Yeah, that's my truck." We were waving our hats as Sam's wife came up over the rise. She pulled up and said, "The roads were washed out yesterday. I been lookin' for you all day." After we had eaten everything on the truck, Sam said, "Let's spend the night here. Let's get the herd up and graze 'em awhile, so they won't be restless tonight."

The next night we spent near Three Rivers. We herded the goats back into a box arroyo and I unrolled my bed in the mouth of the divide so I would wake up if they started to leave. Sure enough, I woke with them walking out over me. I looked to the east and it was beginning to be light, so I knew I could have enough light to gather them in about thirty minutes. The following night we bedded them down in a big, dry dirt tank and took turns watching. We could skylight them as they went over the tank dump. The next evening we reached our destination at Sam's ranch, which was south of Carrizozo, right next to the lava flow. I sure slept good knowing the goats were all corralled.

When we counted them out in the morning, and we had only lost five head, I was very relieved because I knew it could have been much worse. After the count, Sam said, "Would you do me a big favor?" I said, "Sure, anything!" And he said, "I've got to go to Roswell and hire another herder to help this one I've got. I'd like you to help my herder till I get back and I'll get you home in a couple of weeks before school starts."   So I said, "OK. I'll write and tell my folks if you'll mail the letter tomorrow in Carrizozo." (There were no phones or electricity in the ranch country at that time). So I wrote:
              Dear Mom and Dad,
              We finished the drive. Be home in two weeks. I'm working for Sam awhile. We
              only lost five head.
              Clif

I got a whole new experience herding on the lava rocks. There was lots of good brush for browsing. But again, we couldn't ride horseback because it was too rocky. So when I finally got home, I had completely worn out my shoes.
Sam came back and brought me a new pocket knife for a present. It was a Barlow with good metal, the first expensive knife I had ever owned.

When we got home and Sam paid my dad for the goats, he shook my hand and said, "Enjoyed working with you, Kid, and I'll see you again." He still called me Kid when I was fifty years old. He would come to my barber shop and say, "Hi, Kid, how about let's cook a goat?" Sam is long since gone, but I think about him often and I miss him. I'm eighty-five years old now, and I'll probably be seeing him again before too long. He will probably ride over from the side of the arena and say, "Hi, Kid, how about let's cook a goat."

A Brief History of the Orogrande Mines

2012-07-14T16:25:00.001-07:00

by Clif McDonald

Some of the mines at Orogrande were originally worked by Native Americans who mined mostly turquoise. Oro Grande is Spanish for Big Gold. Gold was first discovered in Orogrande is 1865. There were many pure nuggets at first, but ore had to be hauled by wagon to the El Paso smelter. In 1898 the railroad came to Orogrande and a seven mile spur line was built up through the Jarilla Mountains where the mine fields lay. However, the real gold rush didn't start until June of 1904 when a six and a half ounce nugget was found in a dry wash on the Little Joe Claim. In December 1904, Southwest Smelting & Refining started construction of a smelter in Orogrande; its foundation can still be seen on the east side of Highway 54, just north of Orogrande.

Southwest Smelting built a 55 mile pipeline from Sacramento Lake to bring water down from the mountains. This line furnished the first good, sweet water to the middle of the desert. It was used by train steam boilers, by the town's people and it also made mining possible. Prior to this, miners paid $3 a barrel for water.

In 1905, Orogrande and two other towns in the mountains, Brice and Jarilla, became boom towns. People lived in tents, shacks, in their mines, and some in permanent houses they built. Orogrande had nine saloons, a real estate office with sixteen employees, a barber shop, a hotel, a tent hospital, and many other prosperous businesses in this town of over 6,000 people. Rich ore poured out of the mines by the train load. Eastern investors were brought in by train to see the goldfields; these financiers furnished capital to sink expensive shafts and buy equipment.

The Iron Queen Mine furnished much of the ore to build cannons for World War I. Mines produced gold, silver, tungsten, copper, iron, turquoise, garnet and lead.

In the 1930's, the rich ore began to run out. Most of the large mines started closing. The railroad tracks in the mountains were removed. Only a few miners hung on. The town of Jarilla completely vanished. The only thing left of Brice is a wooden cross and a few rock headstones where the graveyard for the town was located.

When trains converted from steam to diesel, they no longer needed to stop for water in Orogrande, but the community still uses the water coming the mountain pipeline to this day.

A few claims are presently being worked. The U.S. Government requires working the claim or it will revert back. Core drilling continues, but the sounds of jack hammers, dynamite blasting, train whistles, dance hall girls and gun fighters are silenced. Hard rock miners, the smell of sourdough bread cooking, and great wealth have passed on into history.