Tucson, AZ

Tucson, Arizona

In 1965 Daddy had one year left to decide if he was going to retire from the military or re-enlist for another few years. With only one year he could have easily stayed in Tampa, but he and Mother disliked living in a tiny apartment in Florida so much Daddy put in to move to Tucson, Arizona and got it. So we packed, and were packed up by a moving company and almost reversed that trip across the United States that we had made from Las Vegas, NV two years before only to live in Tucson at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
Again we got a nice base house – three bedrooms with a fenced back yard. Having lost our beloved parakeet, Morry while we were in Tampa we were promised a dog when we got to Davis-Monthan Air Base. And we got one. A beagle we named Boots. We also got another parakeet and named this one Tony.
I am not sure what Daddy did at this base but I do know that it was a base that had a huge area where ‘retired’ plane were kept. It was acres and acres of desert with old planes sitting on it. Frequently Daddy would take our dog and let him chase jackrabbits among the old planes. A couple of times he took us as far as the fence that surrounded the planes but wouldn’t let us go in among them like he and Boots did. He said that one day he heard Boots yelping and when he got the dog to come to him he had stuck his nose in a big cactus and brought back a big cactus sticker still stuck in his nose. That cactus sicker was at least 3 inches long. Mother kept it for a long time. Not sure what ever happened to it.
While we lived in Tucson I went off base to school for the 8th grade. I seem to remember I liked that school probably as well as any school I ever went to.
I had one friend there named Diane Myers that I also went to church with. It was also the best church we ever went to probably as I had Diane and another good friend there, Janet Blaylock.
While living there we went to Nogales, Mexico several times as it was only about an hour or so from us. We would park and walk though a gate to get to blocks and blocks of good shopping. We took Gram and Papa, and Grandma and Grandpa as both sets of grandparents came to visit while we lived there.
We also took them to see the old Spanish mission, San Xavier del Bac, which is more than 300 years old, and located just to the south of Tuscan This beautiful, white Catholic church had been used in several movies and would be used in the TV show High Chaparral in 1967, as would several other places in the Tucson area.

http://www.sanxaviermission.org/

Tucson has always been a favorite location for movies and TV shows. We went to see Old Tuscan the movie set several times. Sadly we never saw any famous actors while there. It’s usually closed while there is filming going on.

http://www.oldtucson.com/

We went to see Colossal Cave where a pair of outlaws had hid out after a train robbery. Unlike the caves back east, Colossal Cave is a dry cave with out the water dripping everywhere even though there is a stream running through part of it. http://www.colossalcave.com/welcome.html
Again Girl Scouts were an important part of our life but as usual nothing special happened while we were in Tucson. But I assume that Scouting kept us from being so bored in our very boring life.
Seems like we always had company while there. I remember Mac and Birdie Prible (old friends of Daddy’s that he had worked far as a teenager on their pinto bean farm in Cortez, Co.) Daddy’s brother Gilbert, wife Anah and our four cousins.
It was in Tucson that we were able to met Mother’s Aunt Milly. She was Granddad Green’s sister and probably up in her 60’s at that time. She was a widow but I have no idea what her husbands name was or what he did. Aunt Milly lived alone in a true adobe house. It was small with a living room, kitchen and two small bedrooms. It had the traditional thick adobe walls that made for easy heating in the and cooling in the summer. Her brother Uncle Homan lived nearby in her neighborhood in another adobe house. Both of them knew a lot about the plants that grew in Tucson and Arizona and had lots of houseplants. Seems like Uncle Homan had done some kind of work that had to do with or about plants. Both of them had lots of different kinds of native cactus and desert plants. But Aunt Milly had done the impossible by raising a banana tree from the seed of a banana that she had bought at a store. He had taken the best care of the banana tree for many, many years and when we were there it stood in a place of honor in the front yard and was old enough to produce a few bananas.
Aunt Milly was the only person I ever knew that had had a pet jaguarondi. I believe that her husband had found it as a tiny baby and brought it home to her. Jaguarondi are a wild cat, bigger than a bobcat but smaller than a cougar that is listed as an endangered species in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Most people have never even heard of them and very few have ever seen one in the wild. They are even rare in zoos. More our found in Mexico, Central America and South America than in the US.
I have always wished I had known then when I was 14 to take the time to write down all the stories that Aunt Milly told us. I wish I had known her better. That year in Tucson was the only time I ever saw her, but when Lee and I got married she sent us a beautiful white tablecloth that I usually keep packed away as I don’t want it to get ruined, and I have a white china pitcher that was hers.
We were there a year when Daddy decided that twenty years in the military was enough. He had three or four in the Navy when he was in his teens and the rest in the Air Force. He could have stayed in and would have got a nice bonus but it would have meant he would have had to go to Viet Nam for a tour there. He decided he had seen enough war duty when he was in Korean while in the Navy. So he retired and we moved to Sandpoint, Idaho.
On the way to Idaho we again did the long distance car trip to visit relatives in first Texas at Mother’s cousin’s ranch. Juanice (spelled as Gram had it on a photo I found) was married to Jahue Jameson at that time. Hope I spelled his first name right. It is the only time I have ever heard it. They had a big, fancy ranch house but all their children, all girls I think, had already grown up and left home. Boots our beagle dog was thrilled to be there and to be able to go run and play with the ranch dogs. My sisters and I were told we couldn’t go outside without an adult with us as there had been so many snakes that spring, a lot of new hatched rattlesnakes, and copperheads. I was worried for my dog but he survived with out being bite. We were shown around the ranch learning about cows and a little about horses. We were taken fishing to a special fishing hole where the men mowed the grass around the water before we could fish so that there were no snakes hiding. While there what seemed like this huge Hereford bull poked his head out of the brush to see what was going on at his watering hole. Mother took photos of us standing with the bull behind us. Thankfully he seemed to be more curious than mad about us being there.
Mother’s Uncle Herb lived with Jaunice at that time and on one day he went with us to, Lillian’s, his adopted daughter’s home on a different ranch where her husband was a foreman. While there Uncle Herb saddled an old zebra dun cowhorse and let us ride him. Regardless how I kicked him or pulled on the reins he would go down one road and only so far before turning around and going back to the house. Uncle Herb had assured my parents he was the safest horse in the world for us. But it irked me that he wouldn’t go farther down the road. Sarah rode behind me a couple of times but Jan didn’t want to ride. One of the cowhands had found a tiny, baby bobcat and Lillian and her daughter were raising it. It got to stay in the house while all the other cats, and there were a lot, had to stay outside. Playing with that baby bobcat was a real treat. They had had an orphaned fawn just before we got there that had played with the bobcat, but the fawn had died.
We left the ranch and went to Pampa to visit Gram and Papa. And somewhere on the ranch Jan and Sarah had come in contact with poisoned ivy. Probably while we were fishing at the bull’s watering hole. So we spent several with our grandparents with my sisters covered with calamine lotion and not feeling well do to the poisoned ivy. We had planned to do some camping after leaving Grams but that got put on hold due to the poison ivy experience. By this time Papa was retired and having lots of problems with asthma, and emphysema. I believe it was on this trip that we had to visit him in the hospital as he as so bad he was in an oxygen tent to be able to breath. For several years they had had a very small, black Chihuahua dog. Papa had named him Tiny. He had heard some story about how these obnoxious dogs could help him breathe better if he slept with it on his chest. Regardless of the story he adored the little dog. With him in the hospital he didn’t get to see the dog so Gram would use this extra big purse, put the dog in it and tell him to be quiet, and sneak him into the hospital room with Papa. For what ever reason I think Papa had a private room or there were just that few people in that area of the hospital. I thought that some of the nurses knew about Tiny but I guess they figured the old man didn’t have that long to live and if a little dog could help him through his last days so much the better.
After leaving Texas we stopped in Albuquerque to see Uncle Rex and made a stop in Estancia, NM to see Mother’s cousin Blanche and her family. Blanche and Oller had four sons, three older than me and the youngest being a few months younger. The story was that Mother, Blanche, and Uncle Rex’s wife Billy were all preguent at the same time. I was born in August, Kelly in November, and Clement in December if I remember right. The Austin family lived on a farm outside of Estancia and of course had horses. I got to sit on one of their horses; a brown and white paint that I believe was a stallion and have my picture taken. His name may have been Rebel. I got to see him again when we moved to Albuquerque when I was 16.
From Albuquerque we went to Cortez, CO to visit all of Daddy’s family and to see his old friends Max and Birdie Prible. They had three sons, the youngest being about my age. There were no horses on their pinto bean farm as one of their boys was very allergic to horses. But they did have cats. Lots of cats. A mama cat had been hit by a car shortly after having a litter of kittens and Birdie had hand raised them. They also had a Siamese cat about a year old. We loved all those kittens that were about 6-8 weeks old and it was the first Siamese cat we had any dealings with. My parents didn’t like him as he had a loud voice as all Siamese cats do. I had seen a couple of Siamese cats while living in Las Vegas. At a friends house there were always two statues sitting on a table by the door. Or I thought they were statues. One day one of them moved and they were real cats. Mother had said they were Siamese cats and had horrid loud voices. When Lee and I married we had a long list of cats as pets and there have been several Siamese as well as several that were part Siamese. I still really like the breed.