Abraham Shaffer

Abraham Shaffer was my husbands great great grandfather. This is a story about him that his sister gave to me.
We are going back to the years 1861-1865 or the Civil War era. The confederate soldiers that I shall tell about are Abraham Shaffer and his brother Jacob. Abraham was born February 28, 1842, the son of Isaac and Melinda Smith Shafer, at Brooks Cap near Dovesville, Virginia.
When the war broke out between the states Abraham volunteered his services, knowing he would soon be drafted. He, along with his older brother, Jacob, were members of Company F, 33rd Virginia Infantry, and fought under General Imboden. Abe was confident the war would soon be over. How wrong he was. The first battle he was in was ½ mile from Moorefield, West Virginia between the two forks of the river just west of town. He fought in other battles in Hardy County before they moved on to Virginia.
Pretty soon it was a full, fledged war, and they found it to be a hard, cruel one. They were plagued with hunger, cold, and other things common to wars of that day. At first they were well clothed and well fed. But the South intended to finance the war by selling cotton to England. The North closed the harbor at Charleston, S.C. and shut them off.
The question of slavery was the great issue of the war. The North and South divided over this issue. The South had two good generals. General Robert E. Lee and General Stonewall Jackson. The monument to the Unknown Soldier stands at General Lee’s old home at Arlington, Virginia. General U.S. Grant was commander of the Northern Army. Lee was considered the best general of the war. The South won many battles but the three day battle at Gettysburg was the last battle the South won. President Lincoln wanted the slaves freed, but wanted them to stay with their former masters to pick cotton. General Lee did not want his state of Virginia marched through with armies.
Abraham Shaffer was twice wounded. Once slightly, once severely. At Manassas he was shot through from one hip to the other. The bullet grazed the skin of the left hip. This happed at mid afternoon. At sundown they gathered up the dead and wounded.
An old doctor was there, and a soldier asked him if he was taking the bullet out of Abe’s hip. He said no. He was tired and it was getting dark. The soldier swore if the doctor would not do it that he would, so the doctor consented. They gathered pine knots for a light. Abe said the first gash was bad but he had to make a second one. That was almost unbearable.
He was out of service for a good while. Jake went home and their mother asked. “Where is Abe?” Jacob told her he was wounded, but he would recover.
Later, both brothers were in the same battle. The horses got wild when they smelled blood and gun powder. The battle ended but Jacobs’s horse ran away, in front of the enemy lines and the Yankees shot him dead. Abe was shocked but he and a cousin, Mann smith and Tom Grady nailed up a rough pine coffin and buried him somewhere in Virginia. Abe went home and told them Jacob was dead and buried. Abe brought Jacobs horse home. A gray mare named Net. She lived several years.
At one time Abe had his horse shot from under him and once his boot heel shot off while running.
Abraham Shaffer saw President Lincoln once near the end of the Civil War.
General Lee surrendered to General Grant and signed the papers at Appomattox Court House.
After the war Abe married Angeline Fitzwater. Their first son, Julian Napoleon Lafayette died in a few weeks after birth. They moved to Hardy County in what is now Frosty Hollow. They had three sons and three daughters, Dora Belle Egyptianna, Mary Susan Fuentice, Rosetta Drusilla Melinda, William Chancellor Monroe (Dec. 12, 1871 to Sept. 27, 1960), Isaac Samuel Harvey and Jesse Ferguson Conway. Angeline lived eighteen years after her marriage to Abe.
He afterwards married Myrtle Barr of the famous Barr Band family and they had one daughter Ethel May.
He (Abe) died October 11, 1920 at the age of 78, while plowing his faithful horse ‘Bird’.
He was a good soldier, a good Christian man, a good father, and a good worker. Abraham Shaffer was my grandfather and Mary Susan Fuentice my mother.
Mary Susan was Ethel’s (Granny’s, Lee’s grandmother, his dad’s mom) half sister by Abrahams’ first wife.

Lee's Family

This is not my family, not really anyway. Just sort of. It is my husbands family from the Petersburg, West Viginia area.

Gary Lee Borror was born on Nov. 4, 1949 the second child of Elvin Lee Borror and Goldie Virginia Ratcliff. His older sister is Linda May Borror and younger brother is Donald Wayne Borror, neither of them married or had children. Gary Lee married Barbara Jean Barnett and had one child, a son Dustin Lee Borror born on July 3, 1980.
Elvin Lee Borror was born on June 23, 1923, in Petersburg, Grant County, WV, the 4th child of John Elvin Borror (born in Petersburg, WV Sept. 18, 1893, son of John McClure Borror, born Nov. 1, 1860 in Pendleton, County, WV died April 12, 1942) and Ethel May Shaffer (the daughter of the above story of Abraham Shaffer and Myrtle A. Barr). Elvin Lee divorced Goldie in the late 1960 and married Dorothy who he lived with until her death in about 1983. Elvin Lee had several brothers,
The oldest was Calvin who married Irene and had 2 children, Bonnie and Roy. Audrey (called Sis) married Glenn Van Meter and had Dale (called Bunny) and Betty. Earl married Bert and had Keith and Wanda. Glenn Monroe Borror born July 24, 1926 in Petersburg, Grant County, WV.; who married Hattie Ellen Payne on May 1, 1947. Hattie was born Feb. 6, 1926 in Frederick CO, VA. They had two daughters Joyce Marie Borror who was born Feb 1, 1951 and died May 7, 1960, and Jody Lynn Borror born May 22, 1961 and married Terri M Shull, (born on Jan 26, 1964) on July 18, 1983. (Glenn is the only one I had birthdates on.) David Vaughn married Carmen and had 2 boys names unknown. Gene married Mary and had one boy, Allen. Ronald married Carolyn and had one daughter, Tina. ( I think Elvin and all his brothers and sister were born in Petersburg, WV but most moved to Winchester, VA when grown.)
Goldie Virginia (born May 26, 1924 in Petersburg, WV) was the 2nd child of John William Grant Ratcliff (born March 30, 1900 Petersburg, WV died April 4, 1982 Petersburg, WV, the son of John Edward Ratcliff, born July, 1872 and died 1960) and Margie C. Van Meter (daughter of Andrew H Van Meter and Eartha Judy (Judy is last name here, see more on July family in next paragraph). James the oldest (called Jake) married Bell (a sister to Earl Borror’s wife Bert) with no children. Dwight married Mamie Bell and had one son William (Bill) who had a son, Jason. Berta Catherine (called Chub) married a Van Meter and had Rodger, Cecil and a girl. Dorothy (Dot) married Lon Moyers and had 2 boys and a girl. Verdi married Tom Moyers (brother of Lon) and had a girl Judy. Harlan Grant married Kathleen Alt with no children. Ruth was married several times, names unknown and had a girl. Merlyn (called Sam) married, name unknown, children unknown. William (Bill) married Jane, and had Barbara and another girl. Gerald Edward married, name and children unknown.
Eartha Judy, Lee’s great grandmother on his moms side was the daughter of Noah Judy (born about 1843, in WV and died Aug. 15, 1933 in WV) and Clara Ours. Noah Judy was a son of Henry Judy (born Mar. 3, 1799, in VA married on Dec. 12, 1839, in VA and died on Mar. 8, 1854 in VA). Henry Judy was the son of Nicholas Judy (born 1774 in Pennsylvania, married in 1784 and died in 1810 in VA) Nicholas married Mary Fultz (born about 1750). Nicholas Judy was the son of Martin Tschudi, and this is when the name spelling was changed (born about 1708 in Sissach, Canton Basel, Switzerland and died 1785 in WV) and Martin was married to Rosina Schaffner (born in 1710 in Switzerland and died April 07, 1780 in VA). He was a mapmaker in Switzerland before coming to the US. Noah Judy’s mother was Elizabeth Ann Kimble (born 1820 in WV, and died June 05, 1876 in VA). She was the daughter of John Adam Kimble (born 1795 in VA, married Feb 17, 1820, and died Dec. 22, 1863 in VA). John Adam Kimble was married to Hannah R Cunningham (born 1792 in VA). John Adam Kimble was the son of Adam Kimble (born 1769 in VA) and Susanna (last name unknown).

Tschudi Family History

My many, many thanks to those that compiled and put this information on the internet, who ever you might be.

One site

http://www.bjpeters.com/bj/PS03/PS03_108.htm

has some letters and a will of Martins and this information
Baltimore, Maryland December 10th

Edward Quinter also told me of an 1802 letter written by a Schindler cousin of Rev. Blumer. The letter to Blumer mentions Anna Goldi, a maid for the Tschudi family in Switzerland, who was tried as a witch, and the last accused of that crime and executed in Europe. Her execution took place in 1782. Schindler mentions that Martin returned to visit the family in Switzerland around Christmas of 1801 and would be heading back to America after Easter of 1802. This confirms the information in the Schwanden family tree in the Landesarchiv about Martin's visit.

From an internet site I learned that :


Sissach, Switzerland was the Lace and Weaving Center). This is in Canton Basel. Martin mar. in 1730 in Switzerland to Rosina (known in W. Va. as Rosanna, which is German) Schaffner (Schafner) who is believed to be the older sister or closely related to the 2nd wife of Johannes Tschudi (son of another Martin Tschudi 1st. a cousin of the W. Va. Martin Tschudi-Judy), who was an emigrant in 1738 at the Port of Philadelphia, Pa. and probably came with his Cousin, Martin Tschudi, 1st., who mar. his first cousin, Elizabeth Tschudi (dau. of Weinbert v. Tschudi, the famous "Frenkendorf Schoolmaster").
And that : Came to American on Ship Enterprise in 173, and arrived through Port of Philadelphia on Dec 6, 1738. On or before 1760 moved to Ft. Pitt (now Pittsburgh) to do some trading with the Indians.
Martin first arrived in No. Mill Creek Valley between Pendleton and Grant Countys, Va (now W.Va) in 1761-1763. He bought 367 acres from Andrew Jackson.
Martin served in the American Revolution (was 68 years old at the time) by furnishing supplies to our troupes in both the French-Indian War as well as the War of 1776.


Henry Judy Sr. was a son of Martin Judy Sr. and Rosina (Rosanna Schaffner) Judy, who bought land in 1763 on Mill Creek, a little below the Pendleton Co., line. Henry Judy Sr. bought 46 acres from Joseph Bennett in 1788 and in 1791 he bought 160 a. from Mary (Cunningham) Ward, wid. of Sylvester Ward and paid $1667 for same.
Henry Judy Will, Pendleton Co., W. Va.

Dated 9-2-1822 and probated 6-8-1824. Ref. Will Book 3,page 213 or p. 278. Witnesses: Abraham Wise, Nicholas Lewis and Jacob Wise. Nicholas Lewis and Jacob Wise. Nicholas Lewis and Jacob Wise appeared and made proof. Sons: Geo. Judy, John Judy and son-in-law Peter Draise named Executors. Peter Draise qualified with Aaron Welton surety. Beneficiaries: wife, Magdalene Judy (wife at his death - 1st Barbara) to have one-third, of Movable estate: sons: Henry Judy Jr, Martin Judy II, George Judy, John Judy and Jacob Judy; Elizabeth (Judy) Draise, Barbara (1st wife) and her heirs and dau. Susanna (Judy) Goldizen. Provision for division among all children. (First wife) Barbara's oldest son Enoch Judy $20 when he arrived at age (21 yrs.)" Geo. Judy and John Judy and son-in-law Peter Draise qualified as Executors.

As I studied this I believe the statements the author made in parenthesis, "Barbara (1st wife) and (First wife) Barbara's oldest son Enoch" are in error. This Barbara was probably Henry Judy Sr's daughter. This would mean Henry left part of his estate to his daughter Barbara and her heirs (one of whom was her oldest son Enoch).


I was able to find this information on the internet about the von Tschudi family. I don’t know who to give credit to for getting and recording this information. This takes Martin Tschudi and his family back to Hans von Tschudi born 1546 in Switzerland.
Von Tschudi Family



1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Hans von Tschudi was born in Canton Basel, Switzerland and married
Elsy Barth there about 1546. Elsy was born in Canton Basel about
1528.

Knon children of Hans and Elsy (Barth) von Tschudi.

2. (1). Hans II b.Jun 25 1557
m.Elsbeth Guger Oct 3 1614


2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Hans von Thudi II, a son of Hans and Elsy (Barth) von Tschudi, was
born in Frenkendorf, Canton Basel, Switzerland June 25, 1557. He
married Elsbeth Guger October 3, 1614. Elsbeth was born in Cibenach,
SWitzerland.

Known children of Hans and Elsbeth (Guger) von Tschudi.

3. (1). Martin b. 1591 d. 1614
m.Magred Brufin


3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI 2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Martin von Tschudi, a son of Hans and Elsbeth (Guger) von Tschudi,
was born in Frendkendorf, Switzerland in 1591 and died in 1614. He
married Magred Brufin. Magred was born in Lausen, Switzerland.

Known children of Martin and Magred (Brufin) von Tschudi.

4. (1). Jakob b.Aug 9 1635
m.Elsbeth Schwab May 30 1657


4.JABOB von TSCHUDI 3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI 2.HANS von TSCHUDI II
1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Jakob von Tschudi, a son of Hans and Elsbeth (Guger) von Tschudi,
was born in Frenkendorf, Canton Basel, Switzerland August 9, 1835. He
married Elsbeth Schwab in Frenkendorf May 30, 1957.

Known children of Jakob and Elsbeth (Schwab) von Tschudi.

5. (1). Weinbert

6. (2). Nicholas

7. (3). Johannes b.c. 1680
m.Anna Muller


7.JOHANNES VON TSCHUDI 4.JABOB von TSCHUDI 3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI
2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Johannes von Tschudi, a son of Jakob and Elsbeth (Schwab) von
Tschudi, was born about 1680. He married Anna Muller.

Known children of Johannes and Anna (Muller) von Tschudi.

8. (1). Johannes

9. (2). Martin b.c. 1708 d.c. 1785
m.Rosina Schaffner


9.MARTIN TSCHUDI 7.JOHANNES VON TSCHUDI 4.JABOB von TSCHUDI
3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI 2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Martin Tschudi, a son of Johannes and Anna (Muller) Tschudi, was
born in Switzerland in 1708 and came to American in 1738. He married
Rosina Schafner.

Known children of Martin and Rosina (Schafner) Tachudi.

10. (1). Barbara b.c. 1732
m.Jacob Borrer

11. (2). Martin b.c. 1741
m.?

12. (3). Henry b. 1744
m.Barbara ------

10.BARBARA JUDY 9.MARTIN TSCHUDI 7.JOHANNES VON TSCHUDI 4.JABOB
von TSCHUDI 3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI 2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS
von TSCHUDI

Barbara Judy, a daughter of Martin and Rosina (Schaffner) Judy,
was born about 1732. She married Jacob Borrer.

Known children of Jacob and Barbara (Judy) Borrer.

13. (1). Elizabeth b.c. 1776
m.Jacob Riffle Aug 2 1795

11.MARTIN JUDY 9.MARTIN JUDY 7.JOHANNES VON TSCHUDI 4.JABOB
von TSCHUDI 3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI 2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS
von TSCHUDI

Martin Judy, a son of Martin and Rosina (Schaffner) Judy, was born
about 1741. His wife is unknown.

Known children of Martin Judy.

14. (1). Martin

15. (2). Jacob

Known children of Jacob and Barbara (Judy) Borrer.

16. (1). Elizabeth b.c. 1776
m.Jacob Riffle Aug 2 1795


12.HENRY JUDY 9.MARTIN JUDY 7.JOHANNES von TSCHUDI 4.JABOB
von TSCHUDI 3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI 2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS
von TSCHUDI

Henry Judy, a son of Martin and Rosina (Schaffner) Judy, was born
in PA about 1744. He married Barbara ------.

Children of Henry and Barbara Judy.

17. (1). Henry II
m.Elizabeth Teter 1795
m.Mary Calhoun
m.Nancy Robinson Summers

18. (2). Martin
m.Catherine Hinkle

12.HENRY (3). George

20. (4). John

21. (5). Elizabeth
m.Peter draise

22. (6). Barbara

23. (7). Susan
m.----- Goldsizer

24. (8). Jacob


17.HENRY JUDY 12.HENRY JUDY 9.MARTIN JUDY 7.JOHANNES von
TSCHUDI 4.JABOB von TSCHUDI 3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI 2.HANS von
TSCHUDI II 1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Henry Judy, son of Henry and Barbara Judy, was born about 1770.
He married Elizabeth Teter in 1795. His second wife was Mary Calhoun.
After Mary died, Henry married Nancy (Robinson) Summer. Nancy, the
widow of James Summer, was a daughter of Peter and Elizabeth (St.
Clair) Robinson, and was born in Bath County VA and died about 1849 in
Circleville, Pendleton County. Her will is dated May 30, 1848 and was
probated March 8, 1849.

Known children of Henry Judy.

25. (1). Nathan

26. (2). Solomon

27. (3). Sarah
m.Philip Bible

28. (4). Susan
m.Henry Weimer

29. (5). Amos b.Oct 21 1811 d.May 30 1884
m.Ursula Summer May 24 1832

30. (6). John
m.Mary Lamberty

31. (7). Elizabeth
m.------ Given

32. (8). Mary A.
m.Arnold Cunningham

33. (9). Abigail
m.William Raines

34. (10). Malvina
m.geroge lambert

29.AMOS JUDY 17.HENRY JUDY 12.HENRY JUDY 9.MARTIN JUDY
7.JOHANNES von TSCHUDI 4.JABOB von TSCHUDI 3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI
2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Amos Judy, a son of Henry and Mary (Calhoun) Judy, was born
October 21, 1811 in VA and died May 30, 1884. He is buried in the
Rexrode-Judy Cemetery, Dry Run, Judybridge, Pendleton County WV.
He married Ursula Summer May 24, 1832. Ursula, a daughter of James
and Nancy (Robinson) Summer, was born January 13, 1813 in Black Thorn
Creek, Pendleton County VA (WV) and died January 3, 1895. She is
buried beside her husband.

Children of Amos and Ursula (Summer) Judy.

35. (1). Roxanna b. 1833

36. (2). Virginia b. 1834

37. (3). St. Clair b. 1836

38. (4). America b. 1838

39. (5). Martin b. 1840

40. (6). Adam b. 1844

41. (7). Marcellus b. 1847

42. (8). Henry A. b.Dec 13 1849 d.Aug 5 1925
m.Sarah E. Mauzy.

43. (9). Mary Jane b.Jun 9 1854 d.Jun 1 1927
m.James Clark Mauzy


42.HENRY A JUDY 29.AMOS JUDY 17.HENRY JUDY 12.HENRY JUDY
9.MARTIN JUDY 7.JOHANNES von TSCHUDI 4.JABOB von TSCHUDI
3.MARTIN von TSCHUDI 2.HANS von TSCHUDI II 1.HANS von TSCHUDI

Henry A. Judy, a son of Amos and Ursula (Summer) Judy, was born
December 13, 1849 and died August 5, 1925. He is buried in the
Judy-Rexrode Cemetery.
He married Sarah E. Mauzy. Sarah was born December 16, 1847 and
died June 30, 1911.

Children of Henry A. and Sarah E. (Mauzy) Judy.

44. (1). Charles b.Feb 18 1874 d.Aug 11 1883

ME!!!

The next 22 posts are about me and all the places I have lived. I'm not sure it is important to any one but my sister and I, but I have felt compelled to write it down. Maybe someone will read it. Maybe someday I will have a future relative that will care and add it to their life history.

I have posted these backward from most posts as I wanted a reader to be able to start at the beginning - when I was a baby and go through to now. I stopped with moving to the first house I lived in Rio Rancho, NM. I haven't done much about the house I am in now but most of it is on my other blog

http://tumbleweedcrossing.blogspot.com


There may be more to come later on, but I decided now was the time to post all of this.

I have done so many post according to where I lived and what was going on.
I have lived in New Mexico, Texas, Vermont, Nevada, Florida, Arizona, Idaho, Maryland, California, Wisconsin, and Hawaii. I feel like I have lived in West Virginia and Oregon having visited there so much. That is 11 state, plus there have been 13 towns in those 11 states, and 24 address, if I have counted right. There have been a lot of other states that I have traveled through or visited in. Having lived and been in so many places has made me really appreciate my country of the United States of America. And to wish that I could see more of it.

The only place I have been outside of the US is a couple of times to Mexico - the border towns that were near where we happened to be living that were close. Tijuana near San Diego, Nogalas near Tucson, and a tiny Mexican down off of the New Mexico border that I can't even remember the name of.

Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque, NM

“So, what have you been doing today, Mom?” asked my son, Dustin, when he called the other night.
“Not much,” I answered. “Just the same old, everyday stuff.”
“Stuff? What stuff?”
“Well if you must know I’ve done a bit of housework, dishes, laundry, cleaned the horse pens, watered the horses and the yard, watched some TV, and checked my email. Anything else you want to know? Like maybe my life history.”
“Nah. Not tonight. It would take to long. You need to write it down.”


Ok, so that is what I am doing. Writing down my life history. Not that anyone would really be interested in it. Including my son. But here goes anyway. To start with my name is Barbara Jean (Barnett) Borror. I have never done anything extremely important to the world, haven’t saved anyone’s life, haven’t done anything that made headlines nor do I expect to before I die, but I would like to my story down for posterity or for any very bored person that might decide to read this. I guess I am just one of those very unimportant people that the world is mostly made up of. Maybe that is the way you are, too. We are but would the world have been any worse off if we had never been born? If I can entertain just one person for a few minutes this might be worth it.

Albuquerque, New Mexico: the First Time
On August 3, 1951 a Thursday, if I am correct, I was born to Catherine (Green) Barnett and Robert Leroy Barnett in a hospital on Sandia Army Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico. At that time my dad was in the Air Force, stationed on Kirkland Air Force Base which was next to Sandia Army Base. But Kirkland didn’t have a hospital that had a maternity ward and Sandia did so I was born on an Army Base.
My parents lived in a small apartment in what is known as the North Valley of the Albuquerque, NM area, and in the South Valley. I have an address on an old postcard the Daddy sent to Mother postmarked Mar 26, 1954 from Joplin, MO. He must have been there on some sort of training. It was sent to 3303 Express (I am not sure of the spelling of the street name) Dr. SW, Albuquerque, NM. I believe but I am not sure that for a while we lived in my grandmother’s home on Don Louis Rd NW in the same area when she decided to move to Amarillo, Texas. My granddad, Andy Boyd Green, my mom’s dad had died when Mother was just a few months pregent with me. I guess, from what I remember Mother saying Gram, as I called my grandmother, Alma Beatrice (Coe) Green wasn’t too happy in Albuquerque and moved to Amarillo where she had found a job.
My next couple of years where spent there. I don’t remember much about it. I do know that it must have been a fairly happy time for my family. What I think I remember has been encouraged by the photos that my parents had and the stories they told me about those times. They took quite a few photos of me, each other, family and friends and the house we lived in. And on trips they took. They continued to do this all their lives. I know it was mostly Mother’s idea. Daddy liked pictures but not the way Mother did.
Mother came from a family of picture takers. From all the photos that she had of her parents and some of her grandparents it seems to me that as soon as the very first cameras became available to the general public the Greens and the Coes must have invested in them. I have always felt that my mom’s family wanted to preserve their family life as much as possible and their best ways of doing it was with family stories and photography. It seems to be born and bred into their families and was passed down to my mom and her sisters and then on to me and my sisters. The Coes and the Greens didn’t write down their family histories as much as we would have liked but the urge to do so has come down to me and my sister, Jan and hopefully to my niece, Cyndi.
That is one of the reasons I have decided to write my life history. It may not be the most important part of world history that there is but I would like to know that it is written down.
Story telling and photography weren’t the only things that were important to me and my family. Not even the most important part of our lives. For me and my family our children always came first, followed by our pets. I think that a love of all things living was, also, bred into us. Especially a love of cats, dogs, and horses. This was followed by a love of flowers, plants and the whole outdoors. Many of those old photos are filled with animals, and flowers as well as the people who raised them.

In those first photos of me there was frequently a collie dog named Sport. Sport had belonged to Gram and Granddad Green, who had always had a way with training dogs, as well as his horses and mules. When Gram moved to Texas she left Sport with us. Mother would tell me of how she wouldn’t have been afraid to leave me in the front yard unattended as long as Sport was with me. Not to say she ever did it, she just knew Sport would have taken care of me if she had left me alone. She said that after I started walking many a time she watched me head for the edge of the yard and Sport would always be between me and the edge. He never allowed me to leave the yard. He would let me walk up to him, lean on him, push, and pull on him but wouldn’t let me get by him.
Sport was also a wonderful watchdog. The kind that would bark and not allow a stranger in until told it was alright, but then he would let them in and leave them alone. Until one day a workman of some kind came to the door and my mom went to let him in. But Sport refused to stop barking and stood between Mother and the door as he did when I tried to leave the yard. Mother decided to listen to her dog and didn’t let the man in. She told him he would have to come back when her husband was there. She said she didn’t know what prompted her to do that but she said she had a hunch that if Sport wouldn’t let the man in, she shouldn’t either. Who knows what might have happened if she had.
This and other stories taught me to pay attention to how my pets reacted to strangers. I still do it. If any of my dogs didn’t like someone, neither do I. I really believe that animals can ‘read’ people better than another person can. In most situations we are taught that all people are good. Watch the news on TV. Read the papers. It’s not true. And I rely on my dogs to help me figure out who to trust and who not to trust.
I don’t really remember Sport but the memories of my first dog are good ones. I have never had another Rough Coated Collie like Sport but there have been lots of other dogs as well as a large number of cats, several horses and a verity of small animals like fish, lizards, insects, and birds. These pets will fill a large part of my life history so if you don’t care for animals I suggest you don’t read this. But if you do read it maybe I can change your mind and teach you about the joys of having and loving animals.
Mother told me that my first words were the usual ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’. But she thought my third word had to have been ‘horsey’. Parades were a big deal to my parents, and since they enjoyed them they would take me to them. Mother said I would get so excited when the horses would come down the street, and quickly leaned to call out ‘horsey, horsey’. Ever since then I have associated the sound of marching band music to the sound of horse’s hooves on pavement.

Mother used to tell me how when I was about a year old she took me and a basket of wet clothes out into the yard. She set me down in the sand under the clothes line to play and started hanging the wet clothes on the clothes line. At some point she looked down to see that I was playing with something that moved. Being concerned she checked and found that apparently she had set me in a nest of just hatched baby hornytoads. She said she would have thought that at my age I would have been putting them in my mouth, but instead I was holding one very gently and watching it. She said the hornytoad was small enough to easily fit in my baby hand so she was sure they had just recently hatched. She was familiar with hornytoads and wasn’t afraid of them. Hornytoads aren’t really toads but are a spined lizard that lives in the desert. They don’t have any teeth and eat mostly ants. They can flatten their selves and play dead with the best possum or they can run like heck and hide under the least little bit of leaves or sticks as they are usually the color of the sand or dirt where they are living. I don’t know if playing with them as a baby had an influence on my liking for them but I have really liked the little lizard all my life. When I was about 40 years old there was a young Navajo Indian man working where I worked. Someone had asked him about spirit animals, and he said everyone had a spirit animal. Several of the people there asked how they could know what their spirit animal was. He told a few people what he thought their spirit animal might be. I hadn’t really joined into the conversation as I though he was just hamming it up for the ‘white women’ as he frequently did anyway. I thought he was having fun and I was enjoying watching him do it. Then he turned to me and said that my spirit animal was the hornytoad and the white bear. I laughed and said I didn’t know about the white bear but I did know about the hornytoad and told him the story of when I was a baby sitting under the clothes line. He just smiled as if he had already known. Later I was to find out he was right about the white bear, too.
The horned lizard really can shoot blood out of its eyes. I have seen it do this. Its main food is ants or similar insects. And he doesn’t have any teeth. The belly of a horny toad is probably the softest thing I have ever touched. They are getting rare and I think are almost endangered. It is such a shame as this is such a neat little creature. They do not make good pets as they are difficult to care for, most dying within a few months of capture. Also it is illegal to have them in some states.

http://www.hornedlizards.org/hornedlizards/hornedlizards_frame.html

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/horned-toad.html

I guess I must have been about a year old when someone gave me a penny as people were prone to do with little kids back then so they could buy a piece of candy or gum. I didn’t know what a penny was so I put it in my mouth and swallowed it, according to Mother. She was horrified. They rushed me to the doctor, who assured them there was no problem. That the penny would work its way through me in a day or so. Mother took the trouble to check my diapers and make sure the penny did come out. The penny went into my baby book. Some years later mine and Sarah’s baby books would be lost in a move and never found.
At about this same time Mother had taken me with her on a shopping trip somewhere in Albuquerque. We were crossing a street and I was lagging behind. There was a car coming so Mother grabbed my arm and pulled me along. She didn’t realize that she had dislocated my shoulder until I started crying. She took me to the chiropractor that she and Gram went to on a regular basic and had for a number of years. He was able to put my arm back and there was never a problem with it. Mother and Gram were always warning me to never pull on a child’s arm as you could easily do damage.
When we lived in Gram’s house we had a neighbor next door that was to be sort of famous later on, although most people have never heard of him. He was an artist named Eugene Henry Bischoff. He was known for his very realist paintings of landscapes and Indians. He was born in Germany in 1880 but studied art in New York and California, and was living in New Mexico by 1937. He and his wife Kay had known my grandfather before he died. Gene did a life-size painting of Granddad doing his taxidermy work in his shop after Granddad died. There is a faint outline of my parents in the back of the painting. Gram kept the painting in her home until she died, when I got it for a while, and now one of my cousins has it. Gene did a small watercolor painting of cactus in bloom that he gave to my parents as a wedding present. I, also, have two prints of Indians about the same size, 18 by 12. I would give anything to have more of his painting but the few that are on the market are way out of my means. I don’t remember it but the Bischoff actually had a television at that time. Gene and Kay were almost like grandparents to me, and later my sisters and I called Kay Grandma Kay. They would have me over to watch TV with them from time to time and Mother said I liked the ballet but that may have been because it was something they were fond of and encouraged me to like it. We kept in touch with the Bischoffs after we left Albuquerque, but Gene died in 1954. The Bischoffs also ran a small publishing company in Albuquerque called EuKaBi Publishing ( It was a combination of their first names and last name.) There are a few published prints of Gene’s work and a series of high quality coloring books for children or adults that had black and white drawings similar to Gene’s paintings. Kay had written information about the Indian or landscape on the following page with suggestions on how to color it. You might say they were similar to the paint by number sets but for coloring but without the numbers. Somewhere I have several of the books which are now out of print. We moved back to Albuquerque when I was in high school and Grandma Kay was able to come to my graduation.

Pampa, Texas & Grandparents

Pampa, Texas, the First Time
It was in the last part of my third year that we moved from Albuquerque to Pampa, Texas. Pampa is a small town in the Texas Panhandle about sixty miles from Amarillo. My grandmother and her boyfriend were living there, and my dad was being transferred from Kirtland Air Force Base to Alconbury Air Force Base in England. Mother and I couldn’t go. Mother had miscarried a couple of times after I was born and was pregnant with my sister. She and Daddy were afraid she would miscarry again. Or that is the story I remember. There was also the part about we would have to go by ship instead of plane, and it is possible Mother didn’t want to be on a ship from the east coast all the way to England. Maybe she was afraid to get that far from Texas and New Mexico where she had always lived. As I got older I had the thought that maybe Daddy just didn’t want us to go. I don’t know which was the true reason why we didn’t go to England but stayed in Pampa near to where Gram was living.
I have found an address for then on postcard, and on a get well card to me written to Mother by Daddy from England – 203 Sunset Dr, Pampa Texas. There is a blurred APO address on the envelope for the card but it has a New Jersey address instead of where he was in England. The envelope is post marked Mar 1956
I also have a postcard sent by Gram to Raymond Williams at P.O. Box 1961, Pampa, Texas and postmarked Aug 1954 from El Cajon, Ca talking about how the baby is doing fine. I assume Gram went out to Ca to see Auntie Elnora when she had one of her babies. Probably Bruce. I think Jerry was a year younger than me which would mean he was born in 1952 so my cousin Bruce would have been born about 1954.
I said my grandmother and her boyfriend in the preceding paragraph and that sounds so odd as Grams boyfriend was to become my grandfather whom we called Papa. Not long after we moved there Gram, Alma Coe Green, married Grover Raymond Williams. I don’t remember the wedding but there are photos of them outside the church afterward. It was a small wedding as it was a second wedding for both of them and was held in the Church of Christ church in Pampa.
I remember Papa was only about 6 feet. On the Green side of the family the men were all 6’ or over. Gram’s first husband Boyd Green was 6’2” and was the shortest in his family. My dad was also about 6’, but was a bit taller than his dad and his brothers. Papa like Grandpa Barnett was kind of heavy set. Not fat, or at least not at first, but stocky and strong. Maybe about 200 pounds. Where as Daddy was about 175 pounds in his prime. In some ways Papa was the teddy bear type of man. The kind you just was sure was there for you to snuggle up to and hug, and would keep you safe. He was born Grover Raymond Williams and always called Raymond. He was born September 3, 1905 and died June 1967.
They lived just outside of town on an acre of land that had what was called a shotgun house on it. Another words if you went in the front door you can see straight down the hall to the backdoor. There was a living room, and bedroom on one side of the hall, and another bedroom and a bathroom and a large kitchen/dining room on the other side of the hall. With a lot of remodeling it was to be their home for about the next fifteen years, and the place we spent most of our vacations. First Papa built a large livingroom with a huge picture window on the so called front of the house. Then he turned the original livingroom into his and Gram’s bedroom. On the front of the new livingroom he added a front porch with a roof and a two seater swing. Eventually one end would be covered with a huge vine. I don’t remember what kind. Now on the other end of the house he built another roofed porch, but this one was screened in so that it became the place where everyone gathered. There was a table, several chairs and eventually a double bed in one end. Since the kitchen and the master bedroom were right next to the porch there was a window from each room to the porch where we passed things back and forth. Especially food from the kitchen to the table. Finally in later years Papa built a patio on the other wall from the kitchen but since there was no door leading directly from the house to the patio it was a lot more difficult to use. It, too, was roofed and screened in. One great memory which Mother got on movie film was when we and Mother’s sister Wanda and her family were there at the same time. Aunt Wanda and Uncle Dale had three children, my cousins Denise, Dana, and Diana. At that time Dana was about six months old or so, anyway not walking yet. We were totally enchanted with our little boy cousin. In the movie film piece we were all eating watermelon on the patio and Dale was feeding it to Dana who had never had any before and loved it. He was so cute trying to get more and more from his dad.
Since Gram and Papa lived in a area of the country where there could be frequent tornados, Papa decided to dig a storm cellar in the middle of the garden area just about 25 feet from the back door. When he dug it was when we were still living in Pampa while Daddy was in England. I remember watching him go up and down and up and down the ladder as he hand dug all the dirt and carried it all to the top. I would guess that the cellar room was about 15 feet by 15 feet and almost round. While he was digging it he frequently found what he called mud puppies. I think they were a kind of salamander. Papa kept calling them puppies and as a small child I kept expecting a real puppy, only they were these ugly little lizards like things that I was afraid of. He didn’t insist that I play with them but I think he had thought that I should like to. At one point in the digging of the cellar Papa fell from the ladder and broke his arm. The digging got put on hold for a while but eventually it was finished with a wooden roof over the room hole and then he piled all the dirt he had dug out onto the roof. They planted flowers on it but it seemed only weeds would grow there even though Gram always had lots of flowers in her yard. The cellar was filled with a couple of cots, and a port-a-potty, as well as all kinds of emergency food rations, water, first aide kit, even a gas camp stove, and books and magazines. It was never used for any kind of an emergency like a tornado but was used for storage of all kinds of things, especially all the jars of canned stuff from the garden. Papa always seemed to think that us kids would enjoy sleeping down there when we came to visit. But I don’t think we ever did spend a night in it. It was a bit to damp and creepy feeling for us to sleep in.
We did sleep on the screened in back porch. In his later years Papa became quite ill with empasima and asthma. I believe he had a week heart, too. He and Gram spent many a day and night on the porch in the summer. It was fairly weather proof from the occasional rain, and usually cooler than the house. I believe a TV was placed out there. I know us kids loved to play out there and Papa enjoyed having us out there with him after he got sick. It is some of my fondest memories of the man who adopted us as his grandchildren. He was the best of grandpa’s. I have a two seater glider swing that is very similar to the one that sat in Gram and Papa’s backyard. I spent many an hour on it listening to Papa tell stories, and wish I could remember them. And more hours reading books in that little green swing. I also use the same cane to help me walk that was Papa’s when he was sick. For long years after his death I really didn’t think much about him but lately using his cane I have been thinking more about him. I can hope that he is with me now. I know that a lot of what I have written was long forgotten until I started writing this story of my life history. Maybe he is helping me to remember. I wish I knew more of his history before he married my grandma.
For three girls who adored their Gram and Papa is was a wonderful place if a bit boring at times. And as a three year old I quickly learned to love this man who was to be my adopted grandfather. Remember my real granddad had died a few months before I was born. Yes, I did have another set of grandparents but at this time I didn’t know them. Daddy’s family lived in Cortez, Colorado and I had only been there a time or two. And when Daddy went to England it made more since for us to be near Mother’s mom.
Papa had lost a thumb in some kind of a machinery accident many years before and one of my favorite first memories of him is the game he played with me of pretending to hide his thumb in his hand and then having it disappear. Now it might be considered a bit of an odd game for a man to have with a little girl but at that time I thought it was so funny. I did ask lots of times if it hurt and he always assured me that it didn’t.
It is a bit odd what some of the names are that children end up calling their grandparents. It was while we were living in Pampa that the question of what I would call my grandparents came up. Mother’s mother wanted me to call her Grandmother. Mother said that was too much of a mouthful for a small kid to say. Mother wanted me to call my grandmother Granny as she had called both of her grandmas. Gram didn’t want to be called Granny or Grandma. Said she wasn’t old enough to be one. For some reason I wanted to call her Gram. I don’t remember why. I guess all those G names got to me, so I just shortened them to Gram. My cousins never called her Gram they always said Grandmother.
As for Papa. Well he wasn’t my real grandpa which is what I called Daddy’s dad, and his mother was called Grandma. Gram didn’t want me to call him Granddad as she seemed to think that named was reserved strictly for her first husband who was my real blood grandparent. Again it seemed to be my idea to call him Papa. Not sure why. Years later my dad didn’t seem to really want to be called grandpa and my son and my sister’s kids quickly picked up calling my dad Papa. My son, Dustin, did call my mother Grandma but some how my sisters three children picked up calling my mom, MeMe.
Papa loved children. He had a daughter by his first wife but I have no idea what her name was or what may have happened to her. I do remember that she was born without much of a right hand. When I remember her she was a young woman with a newborn baby. She never let her lack of a hand interfere with her life. I remember watching her put a clean diaper on her baby and wondered how she could do it so well with only her left hand and a stump on her right.
Gram was always proud of the fact that Papa was a good part Choctaw Indian, although I have no proof of it. Papa didn’t seem so impressed with his heritage. He didn’t know how to speak Choctaw or anything about the culture. All of which is a shame as my sisters and I would have been more than willing to lean about it. As it was he did his best to teach me and later my sisters a lot of what he did know. He wanted to teach me how to box as he had done some when he was younger but my mother didn’t like that idea at all, so it didn’t go very far.
Papa didn’t read very well when he met Gram. She taught him how and the two of them would read a lot of books together. Mostly they were nonfiction books, animals being one of their favorite subjects, as well as travel.
It was about this time that they got a black dog that was probably mostly dachshund. Papa named her Weenie as dashhounds are commonly called weenie dogs after the hotdog sausages. Weenie was never spaded, it was usually wasn’t done back then, and she seemed to always have a litter of puppies but they never seemed to have any trouble finding a home for them, although I was never allowed to have one. I’ve no idea why.
In our family having and knowing how to shoot a gun was learned at a young age. Papa started my education with guns at this time. The house was about a hundred yards from the garage which was a large barn-like building that could have held at least four cars. It was used mostly for storage. Gram and Papa didn’t ever clean the place properly, in fact we were never allowed to play in there and it was rather spooky, being dark and full of spiders, and rats. Frequently Papa and I would sit at the back door of the house and wait for the big sewer-type rats to come out. When one would come out Papa would shoot it with a small rifle he had. Probably a .22 caliber. Again it is something that wouldn’t be regarded as something for a grandpa to teach his granddaughter but I guess Mother and Gram allowed it. They needed to get rid of the rats and hunting had been one of my real Granddad’s favorite things to do. Papa was more into fishing than hunting.
It had been on Granddad Greens last hunting trip that Mother had decided she was pregnant with me, as she kept having morning sickness while they were gone. Hunting was considered important to the family as a deer meant that the family would have meat for the winter. My dad was raised the same way and he went hunting every fall that he could all his life. Later, by chance, I married a man, Lee Borror, who felt the same way. It was on an elk hunting trip that I got pregnant with our son, Dustin. But by the time Dustin was old enough to lean to hunt Lee had pretty much quite. Dustin did lean all about guns and how to handle them properly but doesn’t hunt.
Papa worked for the oil company Philips Dodge. His job was to sit in a small building near several huge oil tanks and keep an eye on the level of the oil in the tanks. I am reminded of those tanks by the big water tanks that we have here on the desert near my home that supply water to Rio Rancho. Of course my memories are enhanced by the photos I have and the stories I remember from Papa, Gram, Mother and Daddy. I believe Papa had to climb up the small ladders on the outsides of the tanks and take a reading of the gages on them every so often. There was what seemed like a large lawn at the small office type building near the oil tanks. On Easter Papa had to work, so Gram drove Mother and I and a big Easter basket with lots of eggs I had helped to dye the day before, to where Papa worked. If I am remembering correctly Papa had had very little experience in celebrated Easter either in the church or with a child with eggs, baskets and all the goodies. He quickly got into the excitement and enjoyed hiding the eggs and helping me find them. There are some great old black and white photos of us doing this.
The idea of Easter eggs and hunting them was to become a big deal in my family. Mother would tell us how her dad, Granddad Green loved hunting eggs, too. Each Easter when she was growing up they dyed eggs, (I guess people have been doing it for some time, and before there were commercial dyes they used homemade dyes) and on Easter, after going to church, they would go on a picnic where the eggs would be hidden and hunted. Granddad liked to hunt better than hide the eggs and he enjoyed dying them. My mom and dad let this family tradition continue as my sisters and I grew up. As I became a teenager and thought that I was a bit old for this my sisters would get perturbed with me as Mother wouldn’t let them hunt for the eggs the first time until I got up. Sarah is about five years younger than I am and Jan is seven years younger than me. Not wanting to upset my younger sisters overly I would eventfully get up and help them hunt eggs.
Frequently we would get small stuffed animals in our Easter basket when we lived on Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. When I was about nine I got upset because my sisters had several teddy bears and I didn’t. Why I should have been so upset over this I don’t remember. So I had hinted that I wanted one for Easter as I had let my mom know that there wasn’t an Easter Bunny. I don’t remember what I did get but it wasn’t a teddy bear. I never asked for one again and never got one. I did make sure that my son had several although he could care less now and I have them.
Two years at Easter we lived on McDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. We had a small upstairs apartment and knew we couldn’t hide and hunt eggs outside as all the neighborhood kids would want to find our eggs and it would be a mess. So we hid them in the house as we had done in previous years when the weather was bad. It was these two years that my sister, Jan, really got into the egg hunt. I would have been about 12 so she was about 5. I remember spending many hours before and after Easter hiding eggs for her and Sarah to find. I was bored anyway and it kept them happy for a little while in that dinky little apartment. It was during that time that Jan learned to hide plastic eggs in mine, and other people’s beds. She says that she wouldn’t have done it if Mother hadn’t encouraged her to do it. So actually it is Mother’s fault. Shows you what a weird family I came from.
I left home when I was 18 for the Navy and married Lee when I was 19. We had only been married about a year the first time we went to see my parents and sisters. Of course I never thought to tell Lee about the Easter Egg jokes. So when we went to bed that first night there were, naturally enough, plastic eggs in our bed. As you can guess he didn’t know what to think about this strange family tradition. Jan said she was scared that he would be mad but she, Sarah, and Mother decided to hide the eggs anyway. Lee was sent off to Hawaii and after a few months I joined him for another few months until his ship left there for ports west like Hong Kong, Singapore and Viet Nam. So I had to return to my parent’s home. I got there fairly late at night and had to walk from the bus station home, about a mile, as Daddy was working and Mother had never learned to drive. As I crawled into bed I was very tired and missing my husband very much. But there was something strange in my bed. Round, hard lumps. I pulled one out. It was a plastic Easter egg. And it was late August. Plastic Easter eggs had been a wonderful addition to the egg hunts and we always had several bags of them around. Now I found them stashed in my bed and all around the camp trailer I was to use as a bedroom while Lee was gone. I was disgusted, I was upset, I was mad at my sisters and at my mom for allowing them to do this, and at the same time it was all I could do to keep from laughing and laughing which I finally allowed my self to do after several long minutes of screaming and yelling at my obnoxious family. So started the plastic egg game. To this day I can expect to find plastic eggs hid around my house after Jan comes to see me for a visit. I live in New Mexico, and she lives in Oregon. Last year when I went to Oregon to help her after she had foot surgery she got my niece, Cyndi, to hide eggs in her, Cyndi’s, bed that I was to use while I was there. Of course I hid eggs all over her house, about 25 or 30 of them before I left. I knew she would be living in the downstairs for several weeks after I left due to her surgery before she would even be able to go upstairs to her bedroom. As I didn’t count the eggs I am not sure she has ever found all of them.
Back to being a four year old.
While we lived in Pampa Papa’s father lived with him and Gram. I just remember him being called Dad Williams. He seemed tall and skinny compared to Papa who was only about six feet tall, and stocky build and a bit on the flabby side. A real teddy bear type of man who I loved dearly but I was afraid of his dad. Dad Williams was always trying to get me to like him. He was always giving me pennies, or nickels or dimes or sometimes a pretty rock or flower from Gram’s garden. I always wanted the little gifts but didn’t want to take them from him. He always smelled bad to me. I believe he didn’t bath very often, and smelled heavy of cigarettes. My dad smoked a pipe, and so did Papa but didn’t smell like Mr. Williams did. He died in 1961. I don’t know what kind of medical problems he might have had then but there were some. I don’t know what he did as a young man but I remember that he had been a security guard of some kind in his later years. Well after I left home my dad gave me a Smith & Wesson .38 pistol that Mother had inherited from Gram that had belonged to Dad Williams. Daddy said that he thought that the old man had bought the gun at a pawn shop when he became a security guard as he had to supply his own gun and couldn’t afford to buy a better one. The gun has white handle grips that may or may not be real ivory. I am sure the gun is now fairly old.
I did find a small newspaper article that Gram probably sent to Mother on the death of Dad Williams. It listed him as John Riley Williams, 84, who died in 1961 and had been residing with his son G. R. Williams (Papa). “He was born Feb 9, 1877 in Indiana. And had come to Pampa six years before from Wyatt, Mo where he had been serving as a peace officer.” I was told he had been a security guard, but figure he was probably a policeman before that. “Survivors include three sons, G.R. of Pampa, Texas, Louis A. Of Los Angeles, CA, and W.W. Willard of Boston, MA. One daughter Mrs. Jewell Smoot of Pulaski, Ill; Two brothers Ben, and Penny, both of Fisk, MO; one sister, Mrs. Maude Spears of Wynn, Ark, and nine grandchildren.” I found an 8X10 black and white photo of Dad Williams and a younger woman who may have been his daughter Jewel as she reminded me of Papa.
Somewhere in the Pampa area was a woman who lived on several acres of land and had a number of Shetland Ponies. Some of the ponies were trained to wear a saddle and walk round and round a small corral or pen with a young child on its back for a small fee. I don’t remember the first time Gram or Papa stopped there and let me ride one of those ponies. I feel like I do really remember sitting on a pony and how thrilled I was. How it felt so right to me to be on that little horse. I loved the feel of running my fingers through it’s mane, the shift of muscles as it walked, the clip-clop sound of it’s hooves on the well defined trail around the corral. I never wanted to get off and it seems several times I cried when I had to. Wish I knew more about the place, what it was called, and if they took good care of the ponies and weren’t cruel to them. I am sure it is long gone and forgotten now. It did seem that Mother didn’t like to go to the place but maybe it was the cost or that I didn’t want to leave. But I could get Gram or Papa to take me once in a while.
As I said Papa loved children and was really happy that mother was going to have a baby. He had quickly adopted mother as his daughter and me as his granddaughter which made Gram very happy. I do vaguely remember a story about Papa’s first wife killing herself by driving into a cement overpass pillar when she discovered she was pregnant again. Maybe I am wrong about this story. I hope I am but if not it must have been very upsetting for him. I always got the impression that he might have not been on the best of terms with his family, nor was his dad, but I have no idea why.
With Daddy in the Air Force the military required that Mother go to the Amarillo Air Force Base near Amarillo, Texas each month for her checkups. Since Mother didn’t drive, once a month Gram would drive us from Pampa to Amarillo which was pretty much an all day trip. I remember being very bored on those trips. Of course as a four year old I really didn’t understand why we went. Being told I was going to have a baby sister or brother didn’t make much since to me. Mother made a green tote bag and gave it to me to carry a collection of color books, crayons, a doll and a few other toys in for the trips. I still have that tote bag. We nearly always had lunch at the cafeteria that Gram had worked at when she moved to Amarillo and where she and Papa met. One day we stopped at a gas station about half way between Amarillo and Pampa. There was a small café or snack bar with the gas station and out back they had a small corral with a couple of longhorn steers in it. Mother and Gram were interested in the longhorns, and I was too, but I was more interested in the prairie dog town that was beside the corral. The owner had taken the time to put up a wood fence around the town to keep the prairie dogs sort of contained as an attraction to get motorist to stop. I believe the place may have even been called Prairie Dog Town. The rodents were a great fascination to me. A lot of the café garbage was tossed out to the little critters. They would sit around the town and eat the left over salad, bread, or whatever was thrown out, and when startled would dart down the holes in the dirt that led to the underground tunnels where they lived. After that I always tried to get Gram to stop at the gas station to let me see the prairie dogs. I still like the little things even though I now know what a pest they can be. We have a few where we live in a semi rural area outside of Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Recently there was quite an outcry from the public when a church wanted to kill out a small prairie dog town that was on a piece of land they wanted to build a playground on. After leaning that the public didn’t like the idea of killing off the rodents even though the playground was needed they let them stay and build the playground somewhere else.
Eventually my sister, Sarah Emily, was born on July 1, 1956. I don’t remember being overly thrilled with her. She took a lot of my mom’s time that used to be mine. I guess it is something that every child goes through except the youngest child in a family or an only child in a family as my son was to be. I do remember that there was a man at church that was going to buy my sister from me for a nickel and I was all for the deal but he had to back out when he saw that I really wanted to sell her.
Mother was worn out by her new baby and four year old brat. What mother wouldn’t be? And having her husband off across the ocean in England didn’t help. So every afternoon she would lay down with the two of us and she and Sarah would take a nap. I don’t think I napped all that often. The small apartment we lived in had flowered wall paper on the walls. Mother taught me to count the flowers hoping it would keep me quiet so she and Sarah could sleep. When that wasn’t too successful she would turn the radio on low hoping I would listen to the music and be quiet. I did listen to the music and still really like country and western music. But as luck would have it there was a new group of singers that called their selves The Statler Brothers who had a new hit song out. And it was called Flowers on the Wall. Having a song that was about the flowers that I counted on my wall was wonderful. I quickly leaned most of the song, and was even more pleased that it was about Captain Kangaroo who I got to watch when at Gram’s house as we didn’t have a TV. Of course the real meaning of the song was way over my head at that time. Mother must have been horrified when she would turn on the radio, lay down with her daughters and the oldest one would put her feet on the wall, and stomp on it in time to the music while singing Counting Flowers on the Wall.
Yes, I was a brat but this is one of the few things I really remember that well that I did that really irritated my mother. And, yes, I still love that song.
At that time I, also, leaned to love the songs sung by the Sons of the Pioneers, especially Cool Water, Tumbling Tumble Weeds, and my all time favorite Riders in the Sky. The Sons of the Pioneers were one of my mom’s favorite groups. Other favorites were The Tennessee Stud, The Strawberry Roan, The Cowboy in a Continental Suit, Zebra Dun and The Tennessee Flat Top Box. Johnny Cash has always been one of my most favorite singers. Others have been Marty Robbins, Neil Diamond, The Ventures (who were an instrumental group from the ‘60’s), Chris LaDue, Jim Reeves, Kris Kristofferson, Tex Ritter.
Starting from when I was little Mother taught me lots of songs that she knew. She would sing them to me when she was cooking, ironing, sewing, or trying to get me take a nap. Apparently she went to lots of dances when she was a teenager and was married the first time. She married when she was 16 to a man that was a good bit older than her. Turned out he was a drunk and couldn’t hold a job down. When they moved to the Portland, Oregon area and she couldn’t stand him, or the rain. any longer she got a divorce and moved to Albuquerque where her parents had moved to. At most of the dances there was live music and I believe she said that her husband, Slim Lensy, ( I am not sure of his real first name but it may have been Clay. I know he is buried in Silver City, NM ) as he was known by, played guitar. All the old cowboy songs were among her favorites. Like Streets of Laredo, I’m an Old Cowhand, The Red River Valley, Billy the Kid, Buffalo Gals, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, Down in the Valley, Git Along Little Dogies, Home on the Range, Little Joe the Wrangler, Old Chisholm Trail, Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande, Pattonia the Pride of the Plain, Rye Whiskey, Skip to My Lou, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, When the Works All done This Fall, Yellow Rose of Texas. She had a notebook that she had written down all of these songs and others in. Of course the tunes weren’t in the book but the words were, and she taught me the tunes. Somewhere I have a notebook that I copied the songs into. I found this website where there are the words to a lot of the songs.
http://www.lonehand.com/cowboy_songs.htm#Yellow%20Rose%20of%20Texas
Several singers have done albums with a lot of the songs in them; Marty Robins, Tex Ritter, The Sons of the Pioneers, Riders in the Sky (the group), and lately Chris LaDue, and Michael Martin Murphy.
At some point after Sarah was born and before Daddy came back from England Mother decided we would go to California by train and visit with her sisters. I guess back then a lot of people traveled by train while now it is usually just for the fun of it. I remember being bored on the train even though I had my green cloth bag with its selection of toys. We stopped at one place in either New Mexico or Arizona, at a little wide spot in the road or in this case along the railroad tracks. I wonder if it might not have been somewhere on the Navajo reservation or along side of one of the Pueblos. There was an Indian, or as is properly said now, a Native American who was selling a set of children’s books. Mother decided to buy a set for me. I couldn’t read them but I could look at the pictures which were very good drawings. Mother would read the stories to me. There were 8 books and each one was about an Indian child from a different tribe. They were actually very informative for there time. Later I read them to my sisters, and later yet to my son. I still have them. For some reason we were very careful with these books and they are still in good shape.
It was on the train that I discovered what was to be one of my favorite foods or deserts from then on. Mother decided we would eat one meal on the train in the dining car. We ate and I wanted chocolate ice cream. Mother tried to explain to me that I could have vanilla but they didn’t have chocolate. I was almost to the throwing a temper tantrum stage I guess when our waiter said he could fix it special just for me with some chocolate syrup on it. I wonder if that elderly black man had any idea that he was giving me such a wonderful treat. I had never had chocolate syrup on vanilla ice cream before and it quickly became the most wonderful thing in the world to me. I wish I could tell that man thank you. I just remember that he was tall, but not overly heavy nor was he skinny and with gray hair and very nice to a fussy little girl.
After reaching San Diego, California by train we were met by Mother’s sister Elnora. She and her husband Alfred Botts lived in El Cajon, CA just north of San Diego. On that trip I got to meet my cousins Jerry, who was a year younger than me, and Bruce who was two years younger than Jerry. I got to see the ocean for the first time, and we went to the San Diego Zoo, and the Point Loma Lighthouse. At the lighthouse I found out I was terrified of heights. The winding staircase up the center of the lighthouse was a nightmare to me. Literally. I had nightmares about it afterward and still do on occasion.
. I didn’t know it then but Mother was also afraid of heights. I have never lost this fear, and neither did Mother. Wanda took us to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame where they put the stars in the sidewalk for famous actors, actresses, and singers. It is very vague but I do seem to remember wondering why those people were so famous and why they would want to have a star with their name on a sidewalk. This would have been about 1955 so there are lots and lots more stars in that sidewalk now than there was then.
Both of my uncles Alfred Botts, and Dale Dickson died a few years ago. My Aunt Elnora is now 80 and in fairly good health. She and Aunt Wanda visited me last fall. While they were here I took them to see the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta that is held here each October. They seemed to enjoy it very much. Elnora, her son Jerry and his family still live in El Cajon, CA. Bruce and his family live just south of Portland, OR. Linda and her family live in Flagstaff, AZ, while Shirley and her family live in eastern California. Wanda’s son, Dana, died about 1990. Her daughter Denise, her husband Ted, and daughter, Christine moved to Ohio this spring where Ted has a new job, while Diana and her husband live on a houseboat in San Diego, but have another home on the Big Island of Hawaii.

http://www.nps.gov/archive/cabr/lighthouse.html

After a visit with Aunt Elnora, Aunt Wanda came down from Las Angeles, California. I don’t remember if she was still in school there at that time or was a working girl by then. She took us to visit with her and she lived in an upstairs apartment. That didn’t help my sudden fear of heights.

Burlington, Vermont

Burlington, Vermont
Sarah was almost a year old when Daddy was finally transferred back to the states from England. First he had a month of leave which we spent in the same small apartment in Pampa, Texas and a quick trip to Cortez, Colorado to see Daddy’s parents and family. He was the oldest of ten children, several of them where still at home at this time. Robert, my dad, and William, Emma, Gilbert, Lorella, Jeanette, Joyce, Butch, and George. There was a girl that died when she was about three, whose name I don’t remember, between Lorella and Jeanette, I think. She died from some sort of fever. Apparently they didn’t realize she was as sick as she was. I know that Grandma was always very sad about it. The youngest, my Uncle George, was only four years older than me. There is the story that Grandma, Daddy’s mom; Dorothy (Wells) Barnett was in the hospital having George at the same time as her oldest daughter, Emma, was having her first child.




Ethan Allen Air Force Base, Burlington, Vermont

Daddy had orders sending him to Ethan Allen Air Force Base outside of Burlington, Vermont. So that is where we went. It must have been a long drive up there and was the first of many cross country car trips that our family would make. I don’t remember it.
Daddy worked in the motor pool at Ethan Allen. He took care of the cars, truck, buses, and other vehicles that are the big fleet that all military bases need. He did minor work on them and drove vehicles when needed. I think he was a driver for some of the officers of the bases at various times.


Since neither Mother nor Daddy had ever been in this part of the United States they did make several day trips around Vermont. While on one trip I can remember that we got way of the main roads onto a dirt road where Daddy did some target shooting with one of his handguns. For the first time he let me actually shoot the gun. I was thrilled. I had always known that there was a handgun under Daddy’s pillow in his and mother’s bed. I also knew I was never, under any circumstances to touch it. It was for adults only. I also knew that it was a secret and I was never to tell anyone else that the gun was there, and I was to never let my little sister touch it. If she did I was to tell my mom or dad right away. I was not to try to take it from her. I knew all of this and I always obeyed. I may have been a brat and did other things I wasn’t supposed to but when it came to the gun I realized it wasn’t to be ever touched or taken. Maybe watching Papa kill those rats had taught me something after all. I knew guns could kill.
I think if more children were raised to understand that a gun can actually kill there would be fewer accidental shooting. My sisters and I never even thought of playing with a gun. My parents and their parents had and used guns and there was never a problem. Lee was brought up the same way and I don’t think there was ever a problem in his family either. Lee was out hunting with a 22 rifle by the time he was five to help provide food, usually squirrels, for the table. We raised our son, Dustin, the same way. He knew where the guns were and how to use them by the time he was in grade school. Dustin doesn’t hunt and Lee doesn’t hunt as much now as he used to.
During the summer that I turned six I swear my sister tried to kill herself. Not on purpose but it seemed like it. It would have been the summer of her second year. For what ever reason Mother and Sarah were at the top of the stairs in the house and I was at the bottom of the stairs. No one knew why but Sarah fell from the top and rolled over and over down the stairs. It was a long, narrow staircase with about twenty stairs. When she fell, she rolled into a ball and rolled down landing at my feet. It startled me but what really scared me was the fact that Mother screamed. It was the first and last time I ever heard her scream like that. A real scream like women do on TV or the movies. She screamed loud enough that the woman who lived in the other half of the duplex came running to see what had happened. As soon as she had screamed Mother came running down the stairs as I was running to Sarah. Of course Sarah was crying loudly but it turned out she was more scared than hurt. The only thing we could find wrong with her was a small burse on her forehead.
The neighbor who had run over to help was named Paulette, and she was from France. She and her husband had a boy my age named Johnny. I guess you could say that Johnny was my first boyfriend. Johnny even kissed me while we were on the merry-go-round at the nearby playground one day. When my birthday came around in August Johnny wanted to give me a birthday present. He and one or two other kids were invited over and Mother had made a birthday cake. I don’t remember what the other kids gave me, but Johnny gave me a little nightgown. I think he had picked it out with his parents help. Turned out his dad had given his mom a nightgown for her birthday. Everyone seemed to think it was cute that was what he wanted to give me, too, instead of some sort of toy.
My parents bought me a bycle for my sixth birthday. I got to go with them when they bought it. Daddy wanted to get me a red one but I through a fit and even though I wanted one desperately I insisted I wouldn’t ride it unless I got a blue one. I got the blue one with training wheels. I rode it up and down the sidewalks around the neighborhood but as soon as the snows came it went into a storage room and I didn’t see it again for about a year. At about that time I was also given a pair of used roller skates. The old kind, which clamped around your shoe with a special key depending on your foot size. I still have those old skates but never did learn to skate.
The second accident Sarah had that summer was on a weird little toy horse. It was sort of like a rocking horse but on four little wheels. She would sit on the seat and push herself along with her feet. She must have hit a rock, a crack in the sidewalk, or just tipped it over but she hit her mouth on the sidewalk and pushed her two upper front teeth back up into her gums. She screamed like only a hurt two year old can scream. I’m not sure what Mother and I were doing but we weren’t that far from her and were with her in seconds. The blood was pouring down from her mouth, over her chin, and down her clothes. Mother grabbed her up and ran in the house. Seems liked she grabbed something, maybe a towel and held it to Sarah’s mouth while at the same time calling Daddy. In minutes he was there taking all of us to the hospital or clinic or whatever it was where we went. I believe Sarah was kept overnight and they removed her two upper front teeth. I am sure with in a week or so she was back to normal except that until her permanent front teeth came in she didn’t have teeth in the front. Until then we frequently sang the song about ‘all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth’, but I think it might have been a lot of embarrassment for her.
Even though Vermont didn’t come close to the heat we had been used to in New Mexico and Texas it was hot there. I remember that we went to some people’s house that we went to church with that lived in a more rural area. They seemed to think that it was really odd that we drank ice tea almost year round. They drank it cool in the summer but didn’t even put ice in it. I think everyone drinks ice tea now. With ice in it.
Back then was the days that DDT was used for mosquito control. The misquotes must have been thick on the base. Every so often the DDT truck would come through spraying DDT everywhere. It is horrifying to think of them doing that now. The truck had some sort of siren or horn that they used with a megaphone that someone would holler “DDT Truck” as they came through an area. I and all the other kids were taught that we were supposed to go inside when the truck came through so that we wouldn’t get the spray on us. But sometimes we were to far from our home or a friend’s home and couldn’t make. We really didn’t think too much of it. The truck driver would just laugh and wave at us as he went by. I know I got sprayed several times that summer. I wonder how much it has contributed to the health problems I have now.
That summer I, also, got a puppy. Who knows for sure what kind of dog he was but memory says he was mostly some kind of terrier, maybe fox terrier. Seems like Daddy said he was sitting in the office at the motor pool and someone walked through and dropped a puppy in his lap saying it was the one he had said he would take. Of course Daddy swore he never agreed to a dog. I don’t think Daddy ever liked Skippy as I named him. My dad did not ever care for dogs that much. He preferred cats, while Mother preferred dogs. We didn’t have a yard and I don’t guess Skippy was ever tied up. He roamed all over the base, as I recall he became sort of like a base mascot. He visited all over, including the commanding officers house frequently. Seems like the only time Skippy came home after he was a couple of months old was to eat and sometimes to sleep.
Sometime while we were in Vermont we got a television. Most military families made enough money to have one of the new fangled gadgets my now, which was about 1957 but Daddy was always one of the last to get any thing modern. We had always had a radio and that was good enough. There must have been something on TV that Daddy wanted to watch as he wouldn’t have got one for just us kids or Mother. Maybe it was wrestling as he always liked to watch it or maybe it was for the baseball games. Regardless I thought it was so I could watch Captain Kangaroo, cartoons, and best of all Roy Rodgers.
We didn’t really have yards with the duplex houses that everyone lived in and there were a couple of playground areas for the kids so that was were we hung out. Seemed any child that was over two years old was always at the playground. I really liked riding on the small merry-go-round that was there, just as I had at the park in Pampa, Texas. But one day one of the other kids asked me to ride the teeter-totter with him. He was going up and down faster than I usually did but it was fun. Then I think his mom called him, and without saying anything to me he just jumped off. I was up when he jumped and came down fast and fell off hard onto my back. It knocked the breath out of me, but of course I didn’t know what that was and thought I was dying because I couldn’t breathe and it hurt so badly. I can still remember how my chest hurt trying to breath and unable to. After struggling there on the ground for a few minutes I was finally able to sit up then to stagger to my feet and finally get to the house. Mother told me I had the breath knocked out of me, plus I had bumped my head and for several days had a headache.
I watch the bull riders on TV now and how they frequently come off the bulls hard enough to get the breath knocked out of them and wonder how they can be so nonchalant about it.
While in Vermont I started school. No kindergarten for me, it was right into first grade. I was able to walk out the front door and got on the bus right at the edge of the street. Our school bus’ weren’t the traditional yellow busses but where blue busses supplied by the base. Oddly when the regular driver couldn’t make it, it was my dad that drove the bus, which made me feel very special that my dad drove the bus.
I didn’t like school right from the beginning. I was shy, painfully shy. I refused to speak in class, and had a hard time leaning. My mom helped me quite a bit or I would have never learned anything. She had already taught me the alphabet and to write my name which was a big help but I couldn’t get over being so shy I couldn’t talk in front of the class or to the other children. I think all of these kids had been together the year before in kindergarten and was used to the classroom conditions but for me it was horrifying event. I quickly leaned to fight going to school. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay home in my safe little world of mom, Sarah, and me. But Mother wanted me to go to school. She knew I had to, and needed to learn, and she was pregnant again.
One weekend that fall we took a trip to Santa Claus Land. It was either called that or The North Pole, I don’t remember which. It was a tourist place that had a big toy shop beside of a small village setup for children to play in. There were a series of small houses and a larger one where Santa Claus would talk to the children letting them sit on his lap. It was open year round but of course it got more business as the Christmas season got near. It had a rural setting and a petting zoo. There was even several reindeer that pulled a sled or wagon, depending on the season that you could pay to ride in. My penny pinching parents refused to let me ride in the wagon on that day. For a long time I was very upset with them for not letting me ride in the wagon pulled by the real reindeer. Mother took pictures of it for me but it wasn’t the same thing. I remember I really didn’t care about anything else on the trip, but Sarah, now two years old had a great time playing in the small houses.
It was to be a long winter in Vermont for Mother and for me. The snow came and came and came. And never left. We had never lived anywhere that the snow didn’t melt off between snowstorms like it does in most of New Mexico and Texas. Even when there had been a bad snowstorm one winter in Pampa, Texas to the point that we were snowed in and the neighbor had brought milk and food to us for about two weeks, the snow had melted off shortly after. This snow stayed and didn’t melt. It was cold and the cold never seemed to let up. Every morning I had to get up early to dress, eat breakfast, put on a heavy jacket, and snowpants over my dress, then a pair of snow boots, and a hat and mittens. I had to get on the bus and go to school and then take off the hat, mittens, jacket, and snowpants. At noon the snow clothes came on again so that I could catch the bus and go home for lunch. There was no cafeteria at the school and we couldn’t take sack lunches to school. Mother would help me take off the snow clothes, eat and put them on again to catch the bus and go back to school where the process was repeated again for the afternoon. After I was grown I remember Mother saying that the teacher said all she did was dress and undress a roomful of kids. I don’t remember how many where in the class. Is it any wonder I hated school?
And to top it off Mother was very pregnant. We had a two story house with the bedrooms, and bathroom upstairs. So dumb for a pregnant woman with two children. You had to know a man designed it. The doctors told my parents that due to this Mother was to stay upstairs for the first several weeks after the baby was born. How were they to manage? Daddy hired a woman with two small children about my age to stay with us during the day and help Mother with the baby and do the cleaning and cooking. Sounded great, but was a disaster. The woman didn’t clean and her kids ran wild. They took all of mine and Sarah’s toys and refused to let us play with them and broke most of the breakable ones. The woman didn’t help Mother much with my new little sister, Janice Laurel, and was very lax in getting food to Mother. Apparently it wasn’t fixed very well either.
One day I had an argument with the other kids over the toys and was spanked for it by the woman Daddy had hired. I took Sarah to the top of the stairs and sat with her crying. Mother must have heard or her mother’s instinct had kicked in. Anyway she heard us and took us into her room with her and the baby. I’m not sure what happened but the next day the hired woman didn’t come back.
Against the doctors orders Mother went up and down the stairs a couple of times a day. In the morning Daddy would try to take her everything she would need for the morning, get me ready for school, see me off, take Sarah to Mother and go to work. At noon Mother would come down with Sarah and Janice, met me at the door, feed all of us lunch, see me off to school and go back upstairs. After school I took care of myself and Sarah, and fetched and carried for Mother. Daddy would come home and fix supper and most of the time I think we ate upstairs which was strange to me as we were a family that always ate at the table. I think I got to stay home several different days and help. For some reason I thought that part of the reason the woman left was my fault but I really knew it wasn’t, that the woman and her kids just weren’t our kind of people. I was more than willing to run up and down the stairs to help anyway I could. I think it was at that time that I started playing “mommy” to my younger sisters. My Mother always said I “mothered my sisters” all my life. But then I think she did a lot of that with her two younger sisters, too. Like me she was the oldest of three girls, spaced out about the same. Catherine, Elnora, and Wanda.
Janice was six weeks old when we left Vermont. It was the dead of winter with snow piled up about six feet along the side of the house where Daddy had shoveled the path to the street.
Mother must have been very thankful that Daddy had enough rank now for the government to send in a moving company to pack and move all of our furniture and things. In later years it was to be quite a game to see who could guess which moving company was going to move us or a friend. People who work for moving companies like Mayflower, the only one I can think of off hand, they pack anything and everything in each room as they go through or they did back then. If there is trash in a trash can they will pack it; that trash will still be in that can when you unpack it. Everything goes into big boxes. Some of them are big, big boxes. It is amazing what all they could put in a box. Everything except the larger furniture. Each item in your home is wrapped in paper and put into the boxes. Hopefully they wrap it well enough it won’t break if it is breakable, like dishes and nick knacks. Most moving companies will unpack it for you but we usually just had them unload the boxes into the house and then we did the unpacking as we had a chance. As Mother and Daddy said we would have to put everything a way anyway as they just put it where ever they unpacked it. And it gave us girls something to do. It was kind of fun to unpack and remember all of our things. And the boxes were always fun to play with. We would make all kinds of forts, ships, towns, cabins, with them and maybe a sheet or blanket. They were great playhouses.
Our things might have been going on a moving van but there was us and the dog to consider, as well as the car. Wish I could remember what kind of car it was. And it was winter, a bad winter, and my baby sister; Janice was only six weeks old. Daddy decided that he would drive down to Pampa, Texas with the dog, while Mother, and the three of us girls would fly down, being met by Gram and Papa at the airport in Amarillo. I don’t think Daddy, who had flown several times, being in the military, realized just how terrified Mother was to fly to Texas. Especially with three small children to care for. And since Mother was terrified so was I and I am sure Sarah was, too.
I don’t remember what airport we left from but it was a short flight to an airport in New York city. We were to chance flights then but I don’t think either of my parents had realized that we had to chance airports, too. And it was to be with in a short time of landing. As soon as we got off of one plane we had to run to catch a bus that ran between the airports. Mother was carrying Janice, her purse and another bag. I had Sarah by one hand and my green tote bag full of toys in the other hand. Mother had told both us to hang onto her skirt real tight and to not let go. We tried, but we kept lagging behind. I was so afraid that we would get lost from Mother. There were so many strange sights, and people, and it was so crowded. We managed to get on the bus and to the other airport but it looked as if we would be late to catch the next plane. Mother said that a man in an airport uniform came up and asked if she needed any help. She said yes and explained where we were going. He took her bigger bag and picked up Sarah. Now Sarah had a horrible habbit of screaming at the top of her lungs every time a stranger even looked at her let alone picked her up. I held my breath and expected her to scream and I am sure Mother did, too. I guess she was just too scared because she didn’t scream. The man didn’t ever realize just how lucky he was not to have her screaming in his ear. Several people had been horrified by the screams my sister could make when she didn’t want a stranger to touch her. Anyway he led the way, with Mother following and me holding to her skirt. With seconds to spare the helpful man got us on board our next flight. I know we were always grateful to him but I am sure he just considered it part of his job. There has been the though in Mother’s and later my mine that with the uniform he had on he might have actually been a pilot, instead of just an airport worker. Anyway he was the ‘pilot’ or angel we needed that day.
I wasn’t to take another airplane flight until I was eighteen and flew from Phoenix, Arizona to O’Hare airport in Chicago, Illinois and then on to Baltimore and a bus to Bainbridge, Maryland for Navel Bootcamp when I joined the Navy. It was also the first time I got back to the eastern United States.

Pampa, Texas - Again

Pampa, Texas Again

At this point Daddy was stationed in Amarillo, Texas again for four months of schooling to work on jet aircraft and to become a jet mechanic. He got us an apartment in Pampa, Texas again so we could be close to my grandparents while he stayed in the barracks on base during the week and came to see us on weekends. He thought it would help him to concentrate better on his schooling, which I am sure it did, but I remember Mother helping him learn a lot of what he had to learn on the weekends. Especially the math part. That must have been frustrating for both of them as neither had had much of an education. Daddy had dropped out of school when he was about thirteen and I think the sixth grade. The teacher would whip him with a leather strap for stammering. He quite and ran off to live in the woods with his eccentric Uncle Jim, one of his mom’s brothers, where he learned how to be a hunter. He said he and his uncle spent a long, cold, winter living in the mountains near Cortez, Colorado where they ran a trap line, and hunted deer. He had an Uncle Jim on his dad’s side too, better known as Injin Jim because he looked so much like an Indian. Grandpa looked like the Irish man he was, short, stocky, and red haired. His brother looked like the Cherokee part of their bloodline.
Mother had had a bit more education than Daddy having made it to the eighth grade when she was almost sixteen. She had missed a lot of school over the years from being sick with asthma. It is said that she wasn’t expected to live to be grown because of the asthma she had. It was probably the move from Colorado City, Texas where she was born to Silver City, New Mexico that saved her life as the weather there was thought to be good for people with TB or tubulosis. She was ten when they moved there to see if her dad would do better in that climate. His doctor in Texas had predicted he only had about six months to live when they moved. If it was the move or his will power he lived for another sixteen years. Granddad had been ‘gassed’ while he fought as a sniper on the front lines in France during World War Two.
When we left Vermont Daddy was supposed to bring our dog, Skippy, with him when he drove down to Texas with the car. But he didn’t. I’m not sure of the reason why but he gave the dog to some people we knew. I know he wasn’t much of a pet, but I was very upset that he left my dog. I had had several dogs when we lived in Albuquerque but all of them died from distemper or some other reason with in a few months of getting them. At least Skippy hadn’t done that.
Mother did get me a parakeet when I was two or three and still in Albuquerque. When we went to Vermont we had left him with Gram and Papa. Now we were able to get him back but he was never the gentle, sweet, parakeet that so many are.
This time while in Pampa I was supposed to go to school, too, and finish first grade. As in Vermont I hated the school in Texas just as much if not more. The school was within an easy walk from our apartment but I found it very difficult to do. It was through a nice, fairly large park, but every day I would get lost either going to school or coming home. With in a couple of weeks I was throwing fits, having temper tantrums, and screaming and yelling at my mom at the thought of having to walk to school each morning. In desperation several times Mother called a taxi and had them take me. That was the worst thing she could have done as I then expected her to send me that way every day that she insisted that I go. Many times she just gave up and let me stay home. These where on the days that she was unable for one reason or another to walk with me. With two smaller children it was a difficult time for her, and I am sure I didn’t make it any easier. If she had known then what the problem was it would have been so simple. Of course at the age of six I didn’t know how to say that I simply couldn’t ‘see’ how to walk though the park and kept getting lost. Sometimes she would have to get my sisters ready and come find me when I didn’t make it home when she through I should have. I was to have this same problem in second grade. It wouldn’t be until third grade when my teacher, Mrs. Stevens, would finally be able to convince my parents that I couldn’t see and needed glasses. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so shy and socially inept if I some one had said I should wear glasses sooner. I can’t blame my parents. They didn’t know either.
I have had eye problems all my life. I still do. My sisters and I are convinced that if their was any kind of birth defect that could be passed on, from any part of our family bloodlines, that one or all three of us would get it. And as far as we know our cousins seemed to get bypassed when it came to handing out these problems.

Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, NV

Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, Nevada

I assume that Daddy passed the schooling he had in Amarillo, Texas as he was transferred to Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. We moved there the summer I was seven. The first house we lived in was off of the base but within a couple of months we moved to a house on base on McCarran Blvd. With in weeks we had moved to a larger house just down the street at 17 McCarran Blvd. It was to be our home for the next four years.
We lived on the last or depending on how you looked at it, the first row of houses on that edge of the base. There was a barbed wire fence about a hundred yards or so behind the house and then a quarter of a mile or so of desert with the air field where the Air Force planes landed. So what we could see from our back yard wasn’t much but it was a whole lot of not much. It was Nevada desert. It was flat with some sage brush but not even much of that. Then we could see the blacktop air strips where the planes landed and usually some of the planes. Or my parents could see the desert and planes. I couldn’t. Even though I told my parents I couldn’t see the planes they couldn’t believe me. And we had been cautioned never to go out there. Then I was told I had to walk down to the corner of the street and cut across part of that desert to a barracks that was to be my temporary school building for the second grade. Apparently the grade school was too small to have all the classes in it so we were to use that barracks that year. My parents thought that would be better as it was closer than the school itself.

The first couple of mornings Mother got Sarah and Janice ready, Janice in a stroller and walked with me to school and then picked me up. When she figured I knew the way, Mother would take me to the corner of yard point down the street and say go to school in that two story building right down there. And I would say I couldn’t see the building. Mother would say that I had to be able to see it. She was convinced I was just being stubborn as I didn’t want to go to school. In my class was a little black girl that lived farther down the street from the school than I did. Mother saw her walk by each morning and watch us arguing. She told me to follow the girl to the school. Instead the little girl came over, took my hand, and said she would take me to school. It seems she told Mother that she would make sure I got there safely. Mother thanked her and watched us walk off hand in hand. With in a few days Theresa and I were best of friends. I was thrilled to have a friend who could see the school and walked with me. I think I must have been able to see fairly well up close but anything at a distance was very blurred and fussy if I could see it at all.


What never made since to me when I was that age and even then made me very mad at my parents and at Theresa’s parents is that they wouldn’t let us play together after school. I was told I couldn’t go to Theresa’s house and she was told she couldn’t come to my house to play. We couldn’t understand why. But I could go to my white friend’s house that I didn’t like as well. It made no since. I remember that Mother would tell me that it just wasn’t done that way. When I would keep asking why she
never could come up with a reason that made any since. She would say it was because Theresa was ‘different’ to us; she was a ‘colored’ child; white children and black children shouldn’t visit at each others homes. I couldn’t understand that especially since we went to school together, and the teacher treated us the same. It seems I had a younger teacher who was a really good teacher.
In fact all my teachers there at the grade school on Nellis seemed much better and nicer than a lot of the teachers I was to have later on. I am sure that teachers on military bases must have been better paid than other places and I believe that teachers in Las Vegas and Nevada were paid better than in other states at that time. Maybe they are now, too. I couldn’t say. I don’t remember her name but she was a good enough teacher to realize I needed to have some tutoring if I was to keep up with the other students in school. It seems I could read to her some when we were on a one to one basis but in a group I was too shy to read out loud. Even Theresa couldn’t help me then. By the end of the year the teacher recommended to my parents that they have someone tutor me in reading and writing. I was way behind the other kids on my reading and writing ability. Of course they couldn’t afford to pay some one to tutor me and they were sure I was just being stubborn again. Instead they bought a third grade reader for me and all summer, each day; I would have to read a few pages to my mother. Somewhere I still have that boring little book. I say little. It wasn’t that little, being what I would guess to be about a hundred pages or so, with lots of short stories. But the stories were on the boring side to me. It was a way to keep Sarah entertained, too, as she would sit and listen while I read. By the end of the summer I had read the whole book at least twice. And my writing was better. As well as having the reading lesson, Mother would have me sit and write the words from the book. At the same time she was starting to teach Sarah how to write a few things. She was about 3 by now.
When school started for the third grade I had to go to the actual grade school instead of the barracks. Again Theresa and I would walk together but this time we had to walk almost the opposite way and a little farther. This time we had to walk to the end of our street, turn right and walk a couple of blocks to the school. For some reason walking this didn’t bother me as bad as having to walk out on the desert did. I knew to go to the end of one street and then to the end of the next street. I felt I couldn’t get lost as there was always the street to guide me. But in the class room it was different. I don’t think Theresa was in my class that year. And I had an older teacher, she seemed real old and mean to me, but probably wasn’t. But on thinking back she must have been a good teacher. She was the first to realize that I really couldn’t see. I wanted to sit in the back of the room due to being so shy. Only I guess I wasn’t doing my lessons because I couldn’t see what was the teacher had written on the blackboard. So Mrs. Stevens moved me to the front row. I hated that, but she worked with me until she was sure I couldn’t see. Then she talked to the school nurse who did a quick, easy eye test. Then both of them had my parents come in and talked to them. Mother said it explained a lot to her, but Daddy was skeptical. Anyway they took me to an optometrist and with in a week I had a pair of glasses. Why it took so long I don’t know as Mother always wore glasses and I think Gram had to have them, too.
But for me wearing glasses was freedom. I could finally see. I could see the barracks school that had eluded me for so long. I didn’t feel that I would get lost if I got more than ten feet from my parents, or a friend. I could see the blackboard at school and read what was written on it. And best of all I discovered books. With glasses I could read better and found that I liked reading and that lots of stories weren’t as boring as the ones in the grade school readers I had to read for class. Best of all I could see the television better. Roy Rodgers became my hero, along with The Lone Ranger, Rin Tin Tin, Fury, and Lassie and any show that had horses on it. My hidden love of horses was starting to get stronger and stronger.
By the end of the third grade, as my rapidly growing ability to read grew, I was going to the school library and discovered books on horses. They were children’s books but still they were books on horses. There were a few non-fiction books and I devoured them, but it was the fiction books that were stories about a young person and a special horse that really held my interest. These were the little books that were less than twenty or so pages. Some times I was disappointed that I could read them so quickly and the story would be over. It would be sometime in the forth grade that I would start reading the longer stories. Some of those books would be 100 to 200 pages long. There were several different series of books about teenage boys or girls and their horses. Of course most of the horses were that special stallion that only that one young person could handle and ride. Which was really a dumb thing to write as most stallions are so totally unsuited for even a teenager. Stallions should only be handled by a professional horse person. I remember one series of books about a boy, and a palomino horse. Another about a mare named Desert Storm, and of course, everybody’s favorite The Black Stallion series of books by Walter Farley. I even joined the The Black Stallion Club and still have the letter and button with a stick pen on it to wear that I got as a member. When the movies came out I was afraid that they wouldn’t do justice to the books that had so inspired so many people to want a horse. But I don’t think they could have been done any better.
With all the books and TV shows about horses I wanted a horse or at least I wanted to take lessons to learn to ride a horse. I remembered the pony rides I used to enjoy when we lived in Pampa when Sarah was a baby. But either there wasn’t a place to get riding lessons on the base or my parents considered it to expensive. So I was offered ballet lessons. I didn’t really want to do them but I had been fond of watching ballet on TV so off I went to ballet. First off I didn’t like the teacher, and I didn’t like any of the other kids that were taking lessons. I felt that they all looked down on me because I knew less than they did. And I couldn’t seem to learn the moves. The teacher said I was too stiff, and didn’t want to try. She flat out said to Mother and me that she didn’t think I could lean to do ballet. Then my parents did some checking and found out that the only thing the teacher taught was one little Irish jig that wasn’t really ballet and never anything else. Ballet lessons were out of my life. And because of my experience with dance lessons my sisters were never allowed to have them.
It was in the third grade that I discovered Girl Scouts. Turned out Mother had been a Girl Scout when she was a girl in Silver City, NM. She agreed to be my Girl Scout leader so that we could have a troop of Brownies. There are never enough adult leaders for the number of girls that want to be Girl Scouts. I think that being in Girl Scouts was the best think that could have happened to me. I was to continue through school. As a Brownie and having a Mother who should have been a teacher I learned so much. It taught us responsibility, friendship, teamwork, and of course fun and laughter. We learned math with the ten cents dues we had to have each week, we learned cleanliness and neatness with the uniforms we wore each week. We learned to ignore the rude comments made by our school classmates who were not in either Girl or Boy Scouts when we proudly wore our uniforms to school. There was not so much of that on the military bases as there is in civilian schools probably due to the fact that uniforms are a part of life. Military brats, as kids are sometimes called see and expect their parents to wear uniforms. Girl Scouts taught respect for our country and all people regardless of color as did the military. I fell in love with carrying the American and state flags in ceremonies. In forth and fifth grade I was in Junior Girl Scouts, and could wear the green uniform of what I considered the real Girl Scouts instead of the brown one the Brownies wore. I earned every badge I could. Mother had moved up to be a Girl Scout leader with me, too. And my younger sisters were always included in everything that went on as my parents didn’t believe in babysitters.
There are times when I think about living in Las Vegas it seems as if someone was always sick. Janice had to have her belly button hernia repaired when we hadn’t been there very long, and Mother had a hysterectomy in the first year we were there. Gram came and stayed with us to take care of everyone when she had it. Then there were all of the rounds of measles, and chickenpox, and flu. I would catch the flu or measles at school and bring it home. About the time I was over it Sarah and Janice would come down with it. And there was the Christmas holidays. Several years while we were there Aunt Wanda would come to see us for Christmas. I can remember going to the airport to pick her up on Christmas Eve. And every time we had the flu or a cold. Once we were all sick including Daddy which was very, very rare. I remember we got tinkertoys for Christmas and Aunt Wanda made this really neat ferris wheel out of them. Poor Wanda, no wonder she decided to get married and not come any more. She married Uncle Dale Dickson while we lived in Las Vegas, and they eloped from California, came to Vegas, got married, and didn’t let us know until they were back in California. They came to visit the next year after their daughter Denise was born.
Since we were living in Las Vegas close to our relatives in California we went to San Diego, CA several times. Aunt Elnora and Uncle Alfred had my girl cousins, Lynda and Shirley by now. Trips to the ocean were lots of fun. Especially after that long drive across the desert to get their. On one trip, possibly the last trip during this time period, my cousin Jerry and I were allowed to take bikes and ride around El Cajon, CA all by our selves. Something I couldn’t do while living on an Air Force base. There was a used record store we went to where I bought a .75 recording of Ring Of Fire by Johnny Cash. Somewhere I still have it.
Not long after we moved to Vegas my old parakeet, Tommy, died. We had friends who lived on the same street with the last name of Zamora. They let their pair of parakeets raise some babies. Mac, as Mrs. Zamora was known as, gave us one of the little birds. He was a lighter shade of blue than Tommy had been and we named him Morry since the Zamora’s had given him to us. Morry was the gentle, sweet bird that Tommy hadn’t been. Morry would come out of his cage, fly around, sit on people’s heads and shoulders, and he learned to talk. I remember he could say Pretty Boy, Morry is a Pretty Boy, Hello, and Shutup. Seems as if there were other things but I can’t remember them. Morry would live for about four years and then die of a tumor on his chest after we moved to Tampa, Florida. I have had lots of birds since but Morry was the best bird I ever had.
We were living in Las Vegas, or at least sort of, considering we were actually on the Nellis Air Base near Vegas. So for entertainment, on occasion, Daddy would take us for a drive down The Vegas Strip. I don’t know if The Strip still actually is now, but back then it was THE place to go in Vegas as that is where all the casinos and big hotels where. Of course none of them where as big as they are now. But they sure seemed like it to us back then. I can still see in my mind the drive down that street with all those bight, neon lights. The big cowboy waving, the Stardust with its big gold starburst and all the others. There was every color under the sun or at that time in the night sky. Sometimes, especially when we had relatives visiting we would stop and walk up and down the street. Us kids could look into the casinos from the big doorways but we weren’t allowed to go in. I don’t think we really understood exactly what all the hoopla was about, although Daddy would let us play the penny slot machines when we went to the grocery store sometimes. Yes, there were penny and nickel slots even in every store in town, or so it seemed. I’m not sure it was legal for kids to play them but I don’t think anyone ever made us quite and of course Daddy was with us when we did it.
There were lots of other interesting places to see in the Las Vegas area. Daddy always took our friends and relatives to see the sights when they came to visit. We would go to see Boulder Damn or Hoover Damn which ever it was being called at the time. It, like all other high structures, would make me dizzy and leery of looking over the edge and down to the water. We took the tour down into the damn a couple of times. That elevator drop was a duzzy.

http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/

We would go to see Death Valley and Scotty’s Castle, which was more interesting to us kids. Scotty’s Castle was this fantastic Castle out in the middle of the desert that had been build by a prospector when he found gold. But he never told where the gold mine was. Every once in a while he would take his burros and head out into the desert. A few weeks later he would come back with another load of the gold. Scotty died with out ever telling where the gold was. No one has ever found it that anyone knows about. Maybe that is because he was actually being financed by a multimillionaire from back east. This was even of more interest to us since our Granddad Green had been a prospector when he and his family lived in Silver City, NM. The castle was very unique. You could take a tour through it and dream about how it would be to live in a castle in the middle of one of the hottest deserts in the world. http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/scotty.html http://www.pbase.com/surfnmoto2/image/55371701
We spent four years in Las Vegas, four very hot years, although it seems I was able to except that heat and handle it a lot better then than I do the not-quite-so hot summers of New Mexico now. In the summer it was about twenty feet out to the mail box from the front door. My sisters and I would play a game of seeing if we could go out to get the mail while we were barefoot and not chicken out and have to come back into the cooler house before we had reached the box and taken the mail out. One of the stunts Daddy liked to do when we had guests that weren’t from Las Vegas was to tell them it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk and then prove it. Yes, in the hottest part of the day it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, and of course then Mother or I had to clean the egg and a bit of grease off of the sidewalk.
As I said we lived right on the edge of the desert and ever once in a while we would walk out into the back yard and find a desert tortoise had come visiting. Some of the tortoises were smaller and some of them were the huge, old monsters that must have been out on the desert for a long number of years already. Thinking back to the size of some of those tortoises they may have been easily fifty years old or so. I remember that some were large enough I could sit on them and ride. Some of them had numbers or names carved into their shells and some had paint on them. When I asked to do it to a turtle one day Mother said no and explained to me why it wasn’t good for the tortoise. She would always give me a handful of lettuce, bread or some other vegetable to feed to them. Usually I would offer them a bowl of water but very seldom would they drink it.
Nellis Air Force Base is considered the home of the Thunderbirds. If you don’t know the Thunderbirds are the elate flying group of jet planes that the Air Force uses for publicity. The Thunderbirds have only the very best pilots and consequently only the best of mechanics to work on the jets. My dad was one of those jet mechanics while we were at Nellis. The Thunderbirds were the world’s first supersonic aerial demonstration team. (boy that’s a mouthful to say) and would frequently be gone to another place to put on one of their fantastic shows. When they would come back to Nellis they would frequently put on an impromptu show for the base. Since we lived on the last row of houses before the stretch of desert with the landing strips beyond we would have one of the best views of the show. We watched them do their formation flying, bomb bursts, and other demonstrations. http://thunderbirds.airforce.com/
Living on a jet base we were quite used to sonic booms. In fact we were so used to them we could usually sleep through them. Sometimes it was hard to convince visitors that when they heard the sonic boom the jet was already gone to far to see it. People would hear the blast and look up thinking to see the jet but it would be gone and they only thing to see was the conn trail where it had gone through the sky.
Later on when I joined the Navy I was still just as fond of the Thunderbirds but was fond of the similar jet team that the Navy had, the Blue Angles.
My sisters and I have always felt that the best symbol of true “Freedom” for us was the sight and sound of a jet plane.
Here in Rio Rancho we don’t see or hear the military jets very often, even thought we live near Kirtland Air Force Base. But we do see the great, big military helicopters. Frequently they fly across the desert to the west of us on training missions.
On the 4th of July this year I was thrilled to be outside when four stealth fighter jets swooped out of the west and flew directly over me as they went on east. They were going slow enough and low enough I could actually see them.
It was sometime not to long before we left Nellis that my parents got me up at what I thought was a horrible time of about five am to watch John Glenn’s Mercury spacecraft launch from the Space Center in Florida and to come down a few hours later after the first manned space fight in the United States. At that time I was half asleep and most things on TV were considered fictional so it didn’t make much since to me. It didn’t take long for me to realize it was an important part of history as I was to hear more and more about space exploration. My dad always thought that going into space was important for the world but he never cared for the sci-fi shows that were to follow like Star Trek. I don’t think he ever realized that the imagation of Star Trek and the shows to follow influenced so much of science and space flight, as well as computers.
After the first two years at Nellis my friend Theresa and her family moved somewhere else. I really wish I had been able to be better friends with her and to have kept up with her when she moved. I wonder how her life went, where she might be now, who she might have married, did she have children, a career? Another friend I had was Karen Carpenter. She and her family lived nearby. Karen and I went to school together and were allowed to play together after school at either her house or ours. When Karen’s family had to move they were over weight according to the amount of family goods, furniture, and household items the military would move for them. So they had to give up some of their stuff. Back then garage sales were unheard of, so they gave things to friends. Karen had a desk that was close to being an antique even then, and her parents made her give it up. I don’t remember where the desk came from originally but she didn’t want to give it away. Her parents insisted and she finally was persuaded to give it to me. I promised her I would always take good care of it and I have. I still have it, and it is in the same condition as it was when I got it. I wish there was some way I could let her know that. Karen and I exchanged a few letters after she moved but not for long. The desk looks to have been hand made not factory made. It is about four feet tall, two feet across, and a foot wide. It has a drop down desk front with a few pigeon holes in it. I used it all the way through school, including college. It isn’t used much now but still sits in my bedroom with important papers and things in it. When I was about 23 or so, the pigeon hole area came loose a bit and an old postcard fell out. The postcard had a photo on one side of three women who looked to be sisters and there was a note on it. It was dated for 1901 and had a one cent stamp on it. I remember Mother saying that she would never make her daughter give up a nice piece of furniture like the desk.
At least once each winter we would drive up to Mt. Charleston near Las Vegas.

http://www.inetours.com/Las_Vegas/pages/Mt_Charleston.html

It was a high enough mountain that there was snow in the winter time. We thought it was such a treat to get to drive up there and see the snow, play in it, and throw snowballs at each other. Sometimes we would go on picnics there in the summer. Once we took another couple and their two children. I don’t remember their names or if the kids were boys or girls. Seems it was one of each but I could be wrong. Daddy took us way out on the desert and then up along the edge of some high desert country that may have been were he went deer hunting each fall. I remember he seemed to be enjoying scaring the guests we had brought along as we went up a switchback to the top of a ridge. There were a few stunted pines and junipers on top and we walked out to the edge of the ridge where we could see out over the desert and over to another ridge some distance off. Daddy handed me the fieldglasses and said to look at the other ridge. I could barely make out the shapes were some horses over there. Daddy said they were wild horses. I was thrilled at being able to see real wild horses even if I couldn’t see them very well.
One year while living at Nellis we went to see our grandparents in Colorado and then in Texas and on the way back we went across to Mogollon, NM near Silver City, NM and went camping at a place in the mountains called Willow Creek. We really enjoyed the camping experience learning a lot about being in the woods for more than a couple of hours. Mother taught us how to cook over an open campfire even if she did do most of the cooking herself. We were taught how to build a fire, caught our first little trout fish, cleaned them with Daddy’s help, cooked and ate them. We rescued a baby robin that had fallen from a nest that was low enough we could look into it and put the baby bird back. The baby bird pooped on Jan’s hand when she held it and it so disgusted her that she has remembered and talked about it ever since. It is amazing what young kids remember all their lives. Daddy took me for a long hike, just he and I, which I really enjoyed and we saw a deer while we were out. We learned about how to track animals, especially the pesky chipmunks that were everywhere in the camp. We had to make sure to always put all food back into the car after every meal if we didn’t want chipmunks raiding the food boxes. Of course we named them Chip and Dale as the Disney cartoon characters were favorites of ours. One of the worst things about the trip was that it rained every afternoon and we had to wait it out in the tent or in the car. So boring when we wanted to be out exploring. My parent’s love of the southwestern mountains was passed to us with this trip and others like it. I don’t think Jan or I would have married the men we did if they hadn’t had that same love of the outdoors that we had.
During the time we were in Las Vegas there were two events that seemed very important to me. 1960 was the start of a new set of year numbers. No more 5’s. Since I was born in 1951 it seemed important as I had never lived in a year that wasn’t in the 50’s. I remember thinking about it and realizing that as far as history was concerned it wouldn’t be that long before we wouldn’t be writing the 19 part and would have to write the 20 part. One day I asked my mom if I would be alive to see the year 2000. She assured me that I would be, so I asked if she would be and again she said that she would be. When I asked if Daddy would be, she said she hoped so and that he should be but there was no way to know far sure as it was a long time off. Did she know something even then? Daddy made it to December of 1999, and Mother made it to September 2003.
The other event that was so important was when Hawaii and Alaska became states in 1959. There had not been a new state since 1912 when Arizona and New Mexico became states. There hadn’t been a new state in my lifetime and my birth state of New Mexico had been the 48th state. So that means there have been no more territories that have asked to become states since 1959. Janice and I have developed a habit that when things aren’t going real well for us, we say that we are going to run away to Alaska. Of course we have never had the guts or money to actually do it. Someday we hope to actually visit our last state. I had the change to visit Hawaii in 1972 when my husband Lee was stationed at Pearl Harbor. Who would have guessed it when it became a state and I was living in Las Vegas, NV.