A Teenager in Albuquerque, NM

Albuquerque, New Mexico; the Second Time

I think we were all glad to finally arrive. Daddy had rented a house, yes this time he rented one to start with, in what is called the Northeast Heights of Albuquerque.
We had been there less than a month when Gram called to tell us that Papa had died. It was the first time I had ever had someone I cared for die. I didn’t really know what to think of the situation. We quickly packed up, loaded the Suburban again and drove to Pampa for the funeral. We had to take Bonnie, Tom, and the parakeet with us as we didn’t know anyone to care for them for us. A few hours after we got to Gram’s house my Aunt Elnora, Uncle Alfred, and four cousins arrived, too. They had been on vacation in Texas and headed for Pampa to visit with Gram and Papa. If I remember they had already attended one funeral for one of Uncle Alfred’s relatives while on their vacation. It wasn’t a good trip for them.
By the next day other relatives began arriving. Relatives that we had never even met. Some from Papa’s family but I remembered more from Gram’s family. It turned into a horrid mad house. To make things worse it was the middle of summer and hot and I think Gram only had one small air conditioner in her bedroom. Back then most people didn’t have air conditions on every home like we do not. It would be unthinkable and difficult to live without one as I found out recently when ours when out while Lee was in Chaparral, NM visiting Dustin. I had a nice neighbor who when up on the roof, decided the motor was shot, and replaced it after I bought one.
As it used to be so common to do and still is with some families and friends, all of Gram’s friends bombarded the house with tons of food so that we didn’t have to keep cooking for that gang of people that were there. There was the five of us, the six in Elnora’s family, and at least ten other people. I remember that Gram’s sister Aunt Ernest was there and she was such a pain in the butt as I think she must have been all her life to others and probably to herself, too. With all that food it couldn’t all be put in the refrigerator. A lot of it was left sitting out on the table and we tried to keep it covered with tinfoil and towels to keep the flies off. For what ever reason the flies were really bad and the screens on the door and windows weren’t keeping them out, especially with so many people going in and out. Aunt Ernest had this thing for waving a fly swatter over the food on the table on peoples plate trying to keep the flies out and even killing flies right on the table and edges of plates and bowls. As far as I know no one got sick from flies or half bad food but it was a wonder to me that we didn’t.
Not only did we have our dog, cat, and bird but Gram and Papa had recently acquired a new Chihuahua puppy after the recent death of their old, black one Tiny. The new one’s name was Sally and she got on well with Bonnie and Tom. Gram and Papa had been on a vacation to Truth or Consequences, NM about a month before and had got Sally there. When they got back home they didn’t think about the cat that sort of lived on the place and just set the puppy on the ground. The cat came out, took one look at the puppy and pounced on her like she was a mouse. Then the cat gave the pup a disgusted look, gave Gram another one and stalked off with her head held high. It was as if to say that she really did know it was a dog and not a mouse. Gram said that she had been sure that the cat was going to kill her puppy. Maybe she didn’t because she was a mama cat with a new litter of kittens. The kittens, Sally, and our own pets were a wonderful distraction for me and my sisters with all the stress of so many people and the death of our grandfather.
It seemed everyone was in a stressful tizzy to get to the funeral. Everyone had already left and I had stayed behind to ride with Aunt Elnora, Uncle Alfred and my cousins. We were about a mile from the house when we heard a kitten screaming. Alfred stopped as we suspected it was under the hood of the car on the engine, and it was. It was alright but what to do with it. I was terrified that he would just toss it to the side of the road as I didn’t think he liked cats and we were running so late. I guess he could see the horror on my face and maybe on my cousins, plus Auntie Elnora agreed we had to take it back. I held it till we got back, got out of the car, gave the kitten a shove toward the house, jumped back in the car and we were off again.
Funerals are never fun, especially the first one you have to go to, and after going to my grandfathers, and returning to Albuquerque it was only a couple of weeks later when Gram called and said that her sister, Olive, had died. If I ever met Aunt Olive I don’t remember it, but she was the mom of Mother’s cousin Blanche who lived on the farm near Estancia, NM where I had been allowed to sit on the paint horse for my picture a couple of years before when we were moving to Sandpoint. Probably Aunt Olive had been there then but I don’t remember her. She had been what was called senile for several years and lived with Blanche, Oller, and their four sons. The story was that Olive had a big baby doll that she thought was a real baby and she ‘took care of it’.
Later I was to learn that senility is a form of Alhimazers or dementia. Gram would get it to a degree as she got older, as did her sister, Ernest. I can’t say about her other sisters. Sadly, my mom had Alhimazers almost as bad as Aunt Olive had it. So far there isn’t any sign of it in her two sisters, Elnora and Wanda which is the only thing that keeps me from being terrified that I will do the same as it does seem to be an inherited problem in some cases. My mother-in-law has it, also, which causes Lee to worry that he will. My dad didn’t and I don’t think there is any of it on his side of the family, so maybe I will inherit the Barnett memory gene, and Lee will had the good ones from his dad’s family. Dementia is such a sad, terrible condition.
Within a few months my parents had bought a house in what is called the South Valley of Albuquerque at 1709 Del Sur Dr. SW. It was an acre of land. The land backed up to a large four lane street called Rio Bravo and on the other side of Rio Bravo lived Maude Greene who had been Gram’s friend many years before when she and Granddad Green lived in Albuquerque. Maude wasn’t a relative as her husband’s family spelled their last name with the ‘e’ on the end of Greene while our family didn’t have the ‘e’ on the end. Again my parents had bought an older house from an older couple moving to a smaller place. And again we lived near an elderly woman and I would help her clean house when needed.
A few streets farther to the north of us lived Mother’s cousin Rex Green and his wife Billy, daughter Terry and son, Kelly. Kelly was my age and we went to Rio Grande High School.
We were thrilled with what felt like a huge yard. There was a nice lawn in the front with a couple of old elm trees. In the back was an area for a garden and a couple of apple trees. There was about half of the property with nothing on it behind us except another couple of big trees. Plenty of room for a horse. And here was Uncle Rex telling my parents he would give us an old, palomino horse that Terry used to ride named Trigger. I was thrilled. Finally I would actually have a horse. But no, Daddy said. He didn’t think I was responsible enough to care for a horse and he sure wasn’t going to do it for me. As with the beagle, Boots, it seemed that the idea of having to put up another fence to keep in a horse and a small shelter was to much for him to consider. Mother fought for me and the horse but my dad wouldn’t give an inch. I never laid eyes on old Trigger. I pushed the idea of a horse to the back of my mind. Way back. I knew that in two years I would graduate from high school. Then I could leave home, get a job and get me a horse.
Girl Scouts and High School kept me busy. I was a Senior in Girl Scouts and my junior year of high school. The Girl Scout troop for my area of town met at a church on Central Ave. in downtown Albuquerque. Because of that, twice a month I was allowed to catch the city bus after school and ride down town and go to the troop meeting. To me that was a big treat. I got to go and do something all by myself, even if Daddy did come and pick me up afterward. As a Senior Girl Scout we were encouraged to do special things to earn badges. Our leaders were Mrs. Stevenson and a woman who was in the Navy. She talked to us about going into the Navy as a career after high school and it was interesting but at that time I didn’t figure I would look to the military for a career and since Daddy had been in the Air Force that would be my first choice. Little did I know that I would end up joining the Navy in September of 1969 where I would meet the sailor that would become my husband. I wished I had been able to tell my Scout leader but I don’t even remember her name now.
Some of the girls in my Scout troop were Brenda Stevenson, Diane Yarbourgh, Alice and Helen Harris, Nancy Cunningham, Carol Pitroe, and Judy Senco.
The group of girls I was with decided for that year they would concentrate on earning a conservation badge with some of the other Senior Girl Scouts in our area. We had different leaders for this special badge and they were a couple; his name was George Conrad, hers was Gerry and they had a daughter Melody who wasn’t old enough to be in our group but as with all scouting she came with us rather than being stuck with a babysitter. We, also, had a Forest Ranger that helped us named Ranger Camp who took us on special outing once a month to different places in the Cibola National Forest to teach us about forest conservation. Yes, he was a Forest Ranger, and yes his last name was actually Camp. He was a really nice guy and his wife frequently came with us even though she was very pregnant with their first child. There was an older woman from the Forest Service that coordinated our trips whose name was Ruth Bush Jones. At the end of several months of going on day trips to different places we had been in the Cibola National Forest which included Mt. Taylor, Sandia Mountains, and the Manzano Mountains as well as several other places and still had a big camping trip planned.
We took a trip during the Christmas holidays to Red River Sky Resort in the northern part of the state. We weren’t allowed to do any skiing for some dumb Scout rule, not that I have ever skied, but everyone rode the sky lift except me. There was that thing about heights again. The trip was more to learn what the rangers did there and especially about how they rescued hurt, injured or lost skiers. We learned that a lot of that was done on snowmobiles because it was the fastest way to get an injured person down off of a ski run. One ranger, John Hunt, spent several hours giving each girl a short ride on one of those wonderful ski horses as the snowmobiles were sometimes called. I had found my first love for any kind of a machine. And it, too, was called a horse. I wasn’t to even see a snowmobile for a long many years but eventually my husband and I would have several.
There was a visit to a place near Grants for troubled boys that taught them some of the same stuff we were being taught only they lived at this special home. The place for the boys seemed to have closed some time ago but I am sure it must have helped some of them. Being girls in a camp with so many boys was a treat for most of us as we were all the shy kind who didn’t do much, if any, dating. Those boys treated us like royalty and we were only to glad to watch some impromptu basketball games and yell, scream, and give support to all the players.
In the spring, it may have been May; we went to a part of the Girl Scout Camp in the Jemez Mountains that was what was called – unimproved. Another words we didn’t have anything like the regular Scout camps have in the way of cabins, cafeteria, restrooms, or running water. We were there for a full week. We had small two-girl tents for about 20 girls, and a slightly larger one for George and Gerry. There was a cook tent that we also used for meetings when it rained, which it did several times while we were there. We cooked all of our meals ourselves – lots of stews, and foods that could be cooked in one large pot over an open campfire or in a pit fire. We gathered and chopped the firewood for the cook fire and our evening campfire each night. We had to dig a latrine and wrapped a large tarp around it to use as a restroom. Baths consisted of a pan of water warmed over the cook fire. Now days it might even be considered a survival-type camp. We were doing things that most people thought of as a Boy Scout camp trip and didn’t realize that girls could do it to. I had been camping a lot with my family but this let me know that I could do more than I had thought I could when I was out in the forest which is what I was supposed to learn plus how to protect our environment. Around the campfire we would discuss what we had done that day and what we had planned for the next day which mostly consisted of clearing brush or stumps from an area or going on a hike with some ranger or botanist to learn more about the forest.
Of course as is common with all scouting events we had a story telling and sing along each night around a campfire. I used to know lots and lots of the songs that were favorites of all scouts but now most have escaped me. I do remember that we sang lots of the songs that had been recorded by the group Peter, Paul, and Mary. This was in 1968 and they were very popular at that time. As with all scout meeting, we ended each night with the military song Taps.
After finding an old photo album with little black and white photos from the camping trip I have found the names of most of the girls that went with us. I have lost contact with all of them. I googled their names and came up with nothing. It would be nice to know what they are all doing now. Or what even one of them is doing now.
Patsy Colins, Patsy Sanders, Sally Hunt, Chris Yurka, Barbara Williams, Terry Woodall, Kathy Reed, Penny Leauaru, Diane Yarbrough, Brenda Stevenson, and Marline Mullner who was a camp counselor.
We had a bus that took us and our gear into the forest and brought us back out. Going in we went by a small saw mill and then through two tunnels blasted out of the mountains. To bad we didn’t get some lessons about the mountains we were going into. I guess I wasn’t interested enough as to where we were going to find out more than that we were in the Santa Fe National Forest. Lee and I moved to Albuquerque, after being in the Navy, and we discovered the Jemez Mountains. By then the saw mill was gone but you can still see where it was. The tunnels are still there. The road originally was a railroad for taking loggers into the mountains and bringing them and the logs out. I have no idea exactly where the camp was that we had that year but I am sure I have been near it several times. To bad I can’t recognize it, even with the help of the photos I took. There is one place that I have wondered if it could have been but that place is impossible for a bus to get to, and almost impossible for a 4-wheel-drive to get to any more.
I was voted to be the scribe for all the trips we took and for the camping trip. After each trip I would write up minutes, and a report of the trip. I thought it was fun to do this but all the other scouts seemed to think it was dumb. I guess none of them were the least bit interested in writing.
In July, 1968 I was invited by mother’s cousin Blanche and her husband Oller Austin to come to visit for a week. We had been to their farm near Estancia, NM several times and I enjoyed going. They had horses on the farm. So I went for a week and found myself collecting chicken eggs, feeding the pig scraps from the house, as well as helping with the housework and cooking. I rode the hay mower for a few hours one afternoon with my cousin Clement, who was my age. There were jackrabbits everywhere and one or two evenings we did some rabbit hunting as we drove across the back roads to another farm where Clement’s girlfriend, Annette, lived, who would later become his wife. His girlfriend’s older sister had married Clement’s older brother Norman. I think at this time Norman was away in the Army. The best thing about that week was that I got to ride a sorrel mare named Sandy several times. Sandy had a filly that was about four months old at that time that was to be Clements horse. There was an older filly, about two years old, which was Norman’s horse. There sire was the old paint horse that I had ridden and had my photo on a few years before when we were moving to Idaho. Again I fell in love with horses. This time I actually got to ride the horse. We did more than just walk down the road and back. This time Clement taught me to saddle, and bridle the mare. He taught me to ride at a trot and gallop as well as a walk. He taught me about reining the horse and how to stay on by balancing. We even did a little jumping over a little ditch that was in the middle of the field we rode in. It was only a few inches deep but such fun to jump. I was more determined than ever to have my own horse someday.
I was never happy in school. I was too shy and didn’t care if I had on makeup or had my hair done in the latest fashions or wore what was hip to school. None of that mattered to me and still doesn’t. I want to wear cloths that are comfortable. I want to feel clean and comfortable. Makeup always makes me feel dirty. I can’t wait to get it off after I put some on for the few things I do wear makeup for; like funerals, or wedding, or a graduation. And afterward I feed as if there was no one there that cared if I had makeup on or not. Or how I might have been dressed.
I was never comfortable in a group of other students. I didn’t care what they thought of me and I felt that none of them cared if I was there or not. Girl Scouts were a little better than school but not always. I never dated while I was in school. And I could have cared less. All the guys seemed so little boyish. I always felt so much more grown up than any of them. I was much happier playing with my pets or reading or even doing housework.
My sisters did do a lot more when they got into high school. I think they and my mom learned what not to do from me. But we were all three very sheltered children. If it wasn’t with Girl Scouts, school or church we weren’t encouraged to do anything. Even when we were small we were never left with a babysitter while my parent went out. When we lived in Las Vegas I remember my Aunt Wanda and Gram offering to babysit us while my parents when out to one of the fancy shows in Las Vegas but Daddy wasn’t about to do that. Apparently he wasn’t interested even though I believe my mom would have liked to go. She, like her daughters, didn’t know how to ask for a few special things, and I don’t think Daddy really knew what we wanted. If I hadn’t been so shy, even with my parents, I might have begged harder for a horse. If my sisters hadn’t been so shy they would have asked for dance lessons. My parents did offer us music lessons. Sort of. I was given an accordion one time and told to play it. No lessons. And I hated it as I didn’t even ask for it or want it. The same with a small, cheep guitar a few years later. While I was in high school they bought a used piano and got us lessons from the lady that lived next door, Mrs. Gossa. She was nice enough even though I though she was a bit weird. She had a grown daughter, I think she was in her 30’s, that still lived at home, didn’t work, or date, or anything. That was even more weird. Sarah and Jan seemed to like the piano lessons but, again, I really could have cared less. In desperation I told my mom a tale about not having enough time to practice with all my school work and Scouts and something would have to go and I would prefer it to be the piano. Either she believed me or realized how much I disliked the piano lessons and let me quit.
One nice thing Mrs. Gossa did do was to give me my first pair of high heeled shoes. I don’t know why she gave them to me as I don’t remember her or her daughter ever dressing up or wearing heels. I remember them wearing real old fashioned type clothes that I figured might have been what I would have seen back in the 1930’s or 40’s. I loved that pair of black, suede shoes and wore them for a long time. Of all the heels I ever had I think those were the most comfortable pair I ever had. I am sure they were expensive shoes originally. Maybe someone had given them to the Gossa’s.
I went to Rio Grand high school in the South Valley area for my Junior and Senior year of high school. I didn’t like those years of school any more than I had any of the others but by now I know how to tolerate it and that the end was almost insight. I knew that high school would mean a better job so I could get a horse. But I had this really idiot of a counselor that wouldn’t give me any help in trying to get into college. I would have tried to go to New Mexico State Collage in Las Cruces if I had known anything about the agricultural program that they had. I didn’t learn about it until Dustin decided that was where he wanted to go to collage. Besides the classes that were required I took a class in New Mexico History and New Mexico Literature both taught by the teacher I liked best of all that I had. Mrs. Hinton. She seemed old then so I am sure she must have retired not long after I graduated. I found New Mexico history and American History to be very interesting. My favorite time periods being anything before 1900 and especially the 1860’s to 1900 concentrating on the cowboys and Indians, outlaws, and lawmen of the southwest states.
During the beginning of my Senior year my dad’s job at the military base was done away with and he was offered the chance to do the same job at a base near Phoenix, AZ. I threw a fit. I refused to move again in my last year of high school. I figured out that I had changed schools nine times in twelve years. Seven times from 5th grade to 12th grade. My parents agreed that was it was too much to expect me to move in my Senior year and besides there was still the house to sell before we could move. So my dad went to Phoenix and lived in a camp trailer he bought through that year until I graduated and the house was sold.
I graduated in June of 1969. We had a large graduating class for that year and had the ceremony at one of the big auditoriums in Albuquerque. Each graduate was allowed to have seven people to come to it. My mom, dad, two sisters, Gram, and Grandma Kay Bishoff, and I asked my cousin Clement Austin to come. As turns out in a lot of such situations the school had thought that they would have to limit the number of guests each graduating student could have but as some of the guests didn’t come there were seats left over. I didn’t see it happen but I was told about it by my mom after the ceremony, as she had been very embarrassed by the whole situation and I guess I would have been, too, if I had been in her place but I thought it was funny then and still do now. Gram and Grandma Kay decided that they didn’t like where they were sitting with Mother, Daddy, Sarah, Jan, and Clement. They saw some empty seats in front of them and decided to move to them. Instead of making their way to a center isle and going down the steps to that row and back across to seats they wanted, they decided it was too far and climbed over several rows of empty seats to get to them. Mother said that without telling her what they were doing they got up, hiked up their dresses, and climbed over the seats to where they wanted to be. I can still see them doing it in my mind and know how embarrassed Mother must have been to see her mom and friend doing this in front of other people.
My high school senior photo. We were require






During the time I went to Rio Grande High School my best friend was a girl named Penny who was a couple of years behind me. She lived across Rio Bravo from us and down the street from Maude Green. Her family had several areas and raised a verity of quail and pheasants for sale to hunting groups for hunting and to
specially butcher shops for food in special restrants mostly back east. Every once in a while I would go over and we would go through all the very warm houses where the tiny chicks were kept and remove any that had died that day. Sometimes there weren’t any and sometimes there would be several. When you have thousands of little chicks there is bound to be a few that don’t make it. Most of the chicks were smaller than regular chicken chicks. After I moved from Albuquerque after graduation that spring she got a large pony she named Matador. I have a photo of her and the horse
somewhere.
The first year that we lived in Albuquerque Bonnie came in heat and I talked Mother and Daddy into letting her have a litter of puppies. Daddy was of the old school that thought that a female dog made a better pet if she was allowed to have puppies, which I knew even then was really a dumb thing but I wanted to let her have pups. The only dog that came around that we liked was a little black, tan, and white dog with a curled tail, pointed ears, and shorthaired named Fifi. Since we never heard him do more than whine we think he was a Basenji, the so-called barkless dog. A few months later Bonnie had four puppies, two females, and two males. We were told that we could keep one of the male pups. A gray one was chosen, and named Tag. Tag had a most obnoxious personality sort of like some Chihuahua’s I have known. After I left home he became more Jan’s dog than anyone else’s.


We talked to a dumb vet that told us Tag wouldn’t be able to father any pups until he was at least a year old. Don’t know how a vet could have thought that. We quickly found out that Tag could father pups by the time he was six months old as he and Bonnie bred when Bonnie came in heat. This time there were four male pups that were nice pups. But this time we weren’t allowed to keep any of them and had to find homes for them. It was so sad to have to give those puppies away. For the next year or so when Bonnie came in heat we were careful to keep her and Tag apart so that there were no more pups. Finally Daddy gave in and allowed us to have Tag neutered. That solved part of the problem. He still wouldn’t let us have Bonnie spayed. He was just too old fashioned that way saying that she would get fat and no good if spayed. I have had lots of female dogs now and have always had them spayed before they ever came in heat. They made much better pets that way.
It was about this time that our black and white cat Cactus Tom had what I now know was probably a urine infection. Instead of taking him to a vet my dad when out and shot him to “put him out of his misery” as the old saying goes. It was one of the most disgusting things he ever did to one of our pets. I guess to him all pets were disposable when they got sick or injured. You were supposed to get rid of
one and maybe you could have another. It didn’t matter that we might have loved that pet dearly. He didn’t care.
We were allowed to get another cat. Or I should say Sarah was allowed to. Seemed like Jan and I didn’t get much say in the matter but it was alright with me as I knew Sarah would pick out a good kitten and we would all care for it and play with it and love it. The people that lived by Grandma Kay had a cat having kittens so we waited for them to reach the six weeks and Sarah chose the gray one out of the litter. I would have preferred on of the black ones. I was always fond of black cats. At the time of this writing we have three black cats. Sarah named her gray cat Smokey. Smokey was to be with us for about 15 years and he was a good cat. He looked very much like the breed of cat known as the Russian Blue.
While we lived in Albuquerque we were near my mom’s cousin Rex Green and his family. Uncle Rex was the one that was going to give me the old horse that my dad wouldn’t let me have. Uncle Rex had race horses. I am not sure what he did exactly. I know he owned some, was part owner of others, and I think he may have done some training. I remember that each spring when the foals were being born he would take off to see them born. I don’t know if they were foals from his mares or someone else’s, but he had to see the foals born. He said that he could tell the minute the baby was born and trying to stand how good a horse it would be.


I would sit in our kitchen and listen to all the tales he would tell about different horses he had owned, known and raced. He and Daddy would tell about hunting and being out in the wilderness. It seemed that each would try to tell a bigger tall tale than the other. A lot of their stories had a real basic story but they would elaborate on it until I don’t think they knew what was real and what wasn’t. It’s too bad I didn’t have a tape recorder back then. Many times it would be Rex and Mother who would do the story telling. They would talk about when they were kids growing up back in Texas. During the time that Gram was living with us she could add to those tales with the best of them.
Rex never sat in our livingroom but always at the kitchen table. He would drink cup after cup of hot, strong coffee with several dollops of milk and about a quarter of a cup of sugar in it. That stuff must have been really sweet, or maybe not. When Mother or I would wash the cup there would be a lot of sugar still left at the bottom of the cup.
My parents and Uncle Rex always made coffee the old fashioned way. A coffee pot that sat on the stove and perked when the heat from the burner made it boil. They did use the ‘guts’ or the insides of the coffee pot that would cause it to perk

into the glass ball on the top; the metal stem on the base and the metal filer basket. Most people now don’t even know what I’m talking about. I still have one of these older pots. Some of my relatives didn’t even use the ‘guts’ or parts that I am talking about. They just put the water and grounds in a pot and let it boil until it was strong enough to suit them. And it had to be strong. Those old cowboys, and Texans liked their coffee strong. That tale about the cowboys wanting their coffee strong enough to float a horseshoe isn’t that far off the mark. I believe that some of them did actually put a horseshoe in the coffee to make it ‘stronger’. And Rex was one of those Texas cowboys in his younger days. So was his dad and brothers, and his sisters married cowboys.
Mother and Gram would always tease Rex that he was the way he was because he nursed on the hound dog. Gram said that Rex’s mom died not long after he was born, and she and Granddad took care of him in their home for a while until Uncle Herb married again. Gram said he crawled out onto the porch one day when he was about six or eight months old and when she found him he was on the porch nursing with the puppies that their greyhound dog had recently had. The mama dog didn’t seem to mine and neither did Rex. This would have been before Gram had my mom as he was older than she was.



Uncle Herb married again and Rex went back to him and there were additional brothers Bill, and Johnny, and sisters Jaunice and Lillian. When my mom was five and her sisters were two and one, Gram and Granddad had to take in all five of mothers cousins while Uncle Herb was in jail for a couple of years. The story was that Herb killed his wife when they were fighting over a rifle while both were drunk. As the story goes Herb was trying to keep her from using the rifle on a Mexican woman that lived down the road from them as she thought that the woman and Herb were having an affair. Most likely they were.
Another story that Mother told me was that Rex’s brother Bill was at Iwa Jima when the flag was raised that the famous photo is of. He wasn’t one of the ones that raised the flag but was one of the injured that was lying nearby and saw them raise it. I have tried to research this but didn’t come up with any Green that was there, but the story still could be true as I really didn’t find anything about the wounded that were there. Plus there seems to be quite a bit of controversy about who actually raised the flag, let alone those that might have been nearby.
In the early 40’s Rex came to Albuquerque and met Billie, as he called his wife Wilma. Aunt Billie worked for Mountain Bell Phone Co. I think as a phone operator and retired from them many years later. They had a daughter Terry who was a couple of years older than me, and a son, Kelly Rex, who was born in November after I was born in August. Kelly and I went to school together for my junior and senior years. For what ever reason, Rex made Kelly wait another year to graduate. I never did understand why as he said he had enough credits. After we moved I didn’t keep up contact with Kelly but heard that he had married, had some kids, and divorced. After Lee and I moved back to Albuquerque in 1973 we saw Rex and Billie fairly often and at time Kelly was living in Farmington, NM.
I remember that we had Ginger our first Siamese cat then and every time Rex came to visit Ginger would wait until she though he wasn’t thinking anything about a cat and would sneak under the table where he was sitting drinking those cups of coffee and jump up on his lap startling him. He would always cuss her and push her off. Ginger did the same thing to my mother-in-law, Goldie Borror when she came to visit us when Dustin was about a year old. It seemed like she was so frightened she didn’t know what to do with the cat and Lee or I would have to remove her. Ginger always seemed to know when someone came to visit that didn’t like cats, and sneaky thing that she was she would insist on waiting until just the right moment and then jump into there lap. She never did anything else, just as if that was enough to let the cat haters know that there she was the “Queen” of the house and everything in it.
Rex and Kelly did get into the habit of doing some prospecting down in Grant County New Mexico for a while and would stop in to visit with Mother and Daddy in Silver City, NM. One time Kelly got put in jail for something which I always thought might have been for drug possession but I could be wrong. Daddy went down to Lordsburg, NM to see them there and to get the gun that they had with them at the time as Rex didn’t want it to get in the hands of the cops there. He told them the rifle had been borrowed from Daddy, so he was able to get it back. It was kind of a family rifle that had belonged to Gram and Granddad before Rex had it. I have it now. It is the Winchester 53, 25-20 caliber. It still shots good but ammunition for it is really hard to get.
Right after Dustin was born Rex came to see us. I mean right after; the day after we got him home. Of course Mother was there and she entertained him, and I guess he had come to see her as much as me and my son. But it seemed like he would never go home. I was really needing some time with Dustin and some help taking care of him as I wasn’t used to taking care of a baby. I don’t think Uncle Rex even realized he was being a pain in the butt that day and I never let him know it and I am glad I didn’t. That would have been about July 6th, 1980 as Dustin was born on the 3rd. It was about 1982 when Rex died and I went to his funeral. I believe that that was the last time I was Kelly and Aunt Billie. It was a Baptist type funeral and a very elaborate one. I know it was what Aunt Billie wanted but Mother, Sarah, and I were sure that Rex was laughing at us all from where ever he was as he wasn’t very religious at all. Aunt Billie did have them play several cowboy songs before the ceremony started and when they played ‘Little Joe, the Wrangler’ I started crying but thought I was doing it quietly enough that no one would notice. I was sitting right behind my cousin, Kelly, and he turned around and handed me a roll of the hard, flat, candies he had always carried when we were in school and was always offering to me then. He smiled and made me smile and I knew it was alright to cry as there were tears in his eyes, too. Afterward he gave me a big hug and we talked for several minutes.
I don’t ever remember seeing Kelly again even though I do remember talking to him on the phone a couple of times. We were never told when he died, but sometime later Rex’s sister Juanice told Mother, but by then I couldn't believe anything she told me and thought she might be talking about Rex. When I started writing this I did manage to find his obituary but couldn’t find one for Rex or Billie.




After Papa died Gram sold her house in Pampa, Texas and came to live with us for a while until she could decide where she wanted to live. Due to the fact that I had a double bed, she usually slept with me. The house we had only had two bedrooms even though they were large bedrooms. Mother and Daddy had one and the other is where my sisters and I were and now Gram. It got to be crowded. I didn’t like the situation but don’t think I ever considered the fact that most teenage girls had their own room or only had to share their bedroom with maybe one sister. Many a night I got up and slept on the couch in the livingroom because I couldn’t sleep next to my snoring grandmother even if I did think the world of her.
After a few months of this Gram must have felt she was crowding us or was feeling a bit crowded herself. She and Maude Greene had always been good friends and Maude invited Gram to move in with her for a while. Instead of doing that Gram moved into an old adobe two room house that was on the back of Maude’s property. I think it would have been a good place for Gram except there was no running water or bathroom in that old house even though there was electricity. Gram would go up to Maude’s house during the day to use the bathroom and use a big tin can at night. She was still spending a lot of her time at our house during the day. After a couple of more months she went out to California to visit with my aunts and their families. While she was in El Cajon she decided to move there. She found a small, two bedroom trailer of mobile home in a trailer court that was for sale and bought it. It was only a few blocks from where Aunt Elnora lived. It had a small yard where she could grow a few flowers and she could have her dog, Sally there. It seemed the perfect solution especially after Mother and Daddy decided to sell their house and move to Phoenix, Arizona.