“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.
Showing posts with label Albuquerque. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Albuquerque. Show all posts
Sunday, July 18, 2010
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.
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.
Albuquerque Again
Central Ave Address
We moved into a single wide mobile home in a trailer park on Central Ave. in the Southeast part of Albuquerque. It was all we could find where we could have our German Shepherd, Sandy and the two cats, Rowdy and Ginger. Our good friends Johnny and Glenda were now living on the Air Force Base nearby as Johnny had gone back into the Air Force and lucked out to get stationed in Albuquerque. I was glad to have a friend nearby with this move. Glenda was pregent with their first daughter, Shannon, when we moved there. The birth of that beautiful little girl really made me want to have a baby but I knew we didn’t need to with Lee in school and we were living in such a crummy place. We had lived a bad neighborhood in San Diego but I think this might have been worse. I did manage to get a crummy job at a plant store, Accent Flowers, within a long walking distance
We moved into a single wide mobile home in a trailer park on Central Ave. in the Southeast part of Albuquerque. It was all we could find where we could have our German Shepherd, Sandy and the two cats, Rowdy and Ginger. Our good friends Johnny and Glenda were now living on the Air Force Base nearby as Johnny had gone back into the Air Force and lucked out to get stationed in Albuquerque. I was glad to have a friend nearby with this move. Glenda was pregent with their first daughter, Shannon, when we moved there. The birth of that beautiful little girl really made me want to have a baby but I knew we didn’t need to with Lee in school and we were living in such a crummy place. We had lived a bad neighborhood in San Diego but I think this might have been worse. I did manage to get a crummy job at a plant store, Accent Flowers, within a long walking distance
A Home & A Baby
11101 San Jacinto, NE Address July 1978 to July 1982
After a couple of months at the California address we decided to find a better house in a better neighborhood. We bought our first house at 11101 San Jacinto, NE in July of 1978. It was a cute house with a Swiss chalet look to it, and wasn’t the normal look in Albuquerque which may be why it appealed to us. I took to selling Tupperware when we first bought the house to help make ends meet but it was still hard. In a sort of desperate move to keep from losing the house just months after we bought it we offered to let Dave Boggs rent one of the bedrooms from us. He agreed but wanted to bring his girlfriend, Rosalie with him. Dave and his family were from Claremore, Oklahoma and had gone back for a visit recently where he had met Rosalie and then convinced her to come to Albuquerque. A few months later they got married and moved into an apartment but they lived with us long enough for us to get over the rough spot of being first time homeowners.
The house was a nice large three bedroom, two bathroom house. A den had been added on next to the kitchen and a small concrete deck ran the length of the house and about ten feet wide. There was a huge built in fireplace/grill on one end and it was walled in about three feet up with screen wire the rest of the way up to the roof. When we were trying to buy the house the FHA people said the little greenhouse on the back wasn’t up to code and looked tacky and wanted the owners to remove it. I told them I wouldn’t buy the place if that happened. I used it lots for my houseplants in the summer and even some in the winter. Plus we used it to let the cats out without going outside all the way. There was even a doggy door for the dogs so they could get in to the greenhouse but not all the way into the house. It was on the south side of the house and collected lots of heat. In the summer it frequently got to hot but in the winter I would open the sliding glass doors to the den and let the heat in the greenhouse into the house. It was our first solar heat.
Both my sisters got married soon after we moved to this house. Janice and Jim Edmonds were married in July 14, 1978. Sarah and Mike Hogaboon were married soon after.
It was about this time that I got a job working for Tree Top Nurseries. They were at a location on the corner of Tramway and Montgomery several miles from the house but by now I finally had my driver’s license and was driving the Duster. At this job I drove a big, old white van from one office to another taking care of plants that they had. They contracted with the place I worked with for the plant watering service and I did the work. When I wasn’t doing that I worked at the small nursery learning more and more about plants. And I wished that I had gone into agriculture while I was in college. It seemed I had found my preferred line of work after trying several different things. Secretary in the Navy, museum helper, flower shops taking FTD orders and making fruit baskets and general helper, and selling Tupperware. I really liked working with plants. I liked growing them. I guess I was taking after my parents and grandparents more than I thought. Plus, Lee really liked growing plants. I preferred houseplants at this time and Lee liked gardening. We put a small garden in the back yard. The back wasn’t big enough for more along with room for the dogs and the huge, old cottonwood that was there. We had a bit of lawn in the back and a better one in the front with a picket fence around it. It took several tries but we finally got a redbud tree to service in the front yard. There was a big boxwood hedge between us and the neighbors on one side that we didn’t care for and just the drive ways on the other side.
Across the street were our best neighbors, Shirley and Jim. Their kids were in high school. Shirley was a kindergarten teacher and Jim did security work I think I remember. They loved dogs and cats the way Lee and I did and several of each. We never became great friends but they were nice.
It was not long after we moved into this house that my youngest sister, Jan, married her sweetheart from when she was in college, James Edmonds. Jim was in the Army as he felt he might make a career of the military the same as his dad had done. At this time they were stationed in Kentucky.
And my other sister, Sarah, had married Mike Hogaboon, whom she had known in college. Mike was a music teacher, too, and had a job teaching school in Grants, NM. Later Mike would go into the forest service as a fire fighter for several years until Sarah couldn’t handle him and his problems and they would get a divorce.
By this time Ginger was pretty content to mostly be a house cat but Cotton would sneak out now and then. He really liked to lay up on the roof to the house and watch the traffic and kids from there. We hadn’t realized it when we moved in but we were only a block from a grade school and each morning and each afternoon there were lots of little kids walking up and down the street on there way home. But Cotton didn’t like strangers trying to pet him when we had company. One day some guy knocked on the door and said his cat was on my roof. I went out and looked and it was Cotton. I told him it was my cat. He started getting mad and wanted to argue with me. I wasn’t in the mood. I said, “Look, there’s the ladder. You go up and get him and if he’ll let you, you can keep him. But my white cat doesn’t like strangers and if it’s Cotton he’ll scratch the hell out of you.” The man started to argue some more. “I’m not going to go up on the roof and get that cat,” I said. “And if it’s your cat, eventually he’ll come down and go home if he wants to.” After some more spuddering the man left. I guess he didn’t want to go up on the high-pitched roof and maybe try to pick up someone’s elses cat that might not want to be picked up. And I don’t think he wanted to argue over a cat with a pregnant woman in her yard. He left and I never saw him again. It wasn’t long before the cat came down and it was Cotton. I made a point of trying to keep him in for a while as I didn’t want that man or someone else trying to steal him.
I was pregnant at that time. After ten years of trying to have a baby and having six miscarriages, I was pregnant again. I had made it through the first few months when I usually had the miscarriage and had quite my job as I never felt good and couldn’t do it right any longer. Now I was showing and surprising the neighbors. Shirley and I talked one day and she said “When did that happen?” I laughed and said about eight months ago. I had lost so many babies I didn’t want to let anyone know until I couldn’t hide it any more. I didn’t even tell my parents until I was about five months along. After so many miscarriages before I was convinced that this baby wouldn’t make it either.
My GYN doctor, Dr. Dennis Ready had done lots of testing but there was never a good answer as to why I lost all the others and this one – well I don’t think I could have kicked him out.
I had one theory but there is no way to prove if it was really the answer or not. Even Dr. Ready thought I was nuts when I mentioned it to him. Due to the fact that I had to quit working we were, as usual, very short on money with only Lee working. But that fall Lee and I had gone deer hunting and Lee killed a nice size buck. With very little money for food we ate mostly deer and beans. That meant that I was eating very little food with all that un-natural junk salt, and preservatives that food that is made in a factory has. The deer had lived on good mountain grass. We had butchered the deer and frozen it with in about 48 hours after it was killed. I did fry a lot of the deer in oil but a lot of it was also boiled and added to all those pinto beans. The beans were cooked like Mother had taught me in a pressure cooker. I added some boiled deer meat, salt, pepper, and a handful of chili powder. Maybe the chili powder helped too. New Mexico chili is supposed to be good for any thing that might make a person ill accept maybe indigestion and heartburn.
Or maybe it had to do with the fact that I think that our son was conceived that fall while Lee were on an elk hunting trip to the Jemez Mountains. It was the only time Lee ever was able to get an elk permit. Elk permits are done by a drawing as there are a limited number of permits. We saw a couple of bull elk but they were always to far away to even try to shoot at. A few weeks later we went to Silver City for the deer hunt. Not only did Lee get the deer he got his turkey that year, too. At that time if you got a deer permit it included the turkey but we never seemed to see any turkey when hunting, although we did see lots when we weren’t hunting. Lee didn’t even have a shotgun with him which is usually what people use for turkey. He killed it with his deer rifle, almost gutting it with the shot. It was a young bird but, boy, was it tough. Since we were visiting with my parents Mother helped me pluck the feathers that turkey and as we thought it would be tough we boiled it first and then fried it. That is the way that Lee had been taught to fix squirrel when he was a boy by his mom.
As a boy Lee had been taught to hunt before he even started school. By the time he was five he had a .22 rifle that he would go squirrel hunting with and he said a lot of the time it was all the meat he and his family would have to eat that day.
After much thought and many discussions we settled on a name for a boy, Dustin, but were never sure of one for a girl. The baby was due to be born June 15, so Daddy brought Mother up about then. It was to be three more weeks before he would be born. It was hot, and I was big with the ‘basketball’ as Lee frequently teased me about. And then my feet, ankles and legs started swelling. About June 30th I went in for another checkup. Dr. Ready looked at my feet and ankles and said we would like me to check into the hospital on July 2nd if I hadn’t had him by then. Of course I didn’t so off I went on July 2nd to the hospital and to have my labor induced so I would have this baby that didn’t want to be born. Another reason Dr. Ready wanted to induce my labor is that he wanted to be the one to deliver my baby after all this time and he was going on vacation on July 4th. On the morning of July 3rd he came in and broke my water and we got into having a baby in earnest. He came back about noon and said he would see me that evening as he didn’t think the baby would come until them. At about 2 pm I was suddenly fully dilated and the nurse called his office in a hurry. His office was in the building next to the hospital so he was there in just minutes with his office nurse who asked if she could go in the delivery room with me as she, too, was anxious to see me have a baby after all this time. I wish I could remember her name but it is lost to me. As Mother and Lee didn’t seem to want to go into the delivery room I was only more than glad to have her come in and hold my hand. She had held it to many times to help me through a D & C procedure after the miscarriages.
Dustin Lee was born right at 3pm on July 3rd, 1980. He weighed 7 pounds and 8 onzes. Dr. Ready held him up for me to see and told me to touch him and count his toes, but I said no, I wanted to hold his hand. For some reason it seemed important to do that. I didn’t know then that those tiny, pink important to do that. I didn’t know then that those tiny, pink baby hands would one day be big hands that would be able to stroke, and gentle scared, and upset 1000 pound horses with ease.
Dr. Ready started to put the baby on my chest but then handed him to the nurse saying she would clean him up. I was so thrilled to finally get birth to my baby boy after all those long months I didn’t think too much of it and then I started to fell really faint and dizzy. Dr. Ready got back into position and told me to push to expel the afterbirth. I don’t know if I did or not. Then I remember someone said ‘she’s bleeding heavy,’ and then someone was putting another IV into my right arm and I already had one in my left arm.
I’m not sure how long I was there while they got the bleeding stopped but finally I was in the recovery room and a nurse brought Dustin to me and said to feed him. She didn’t tell me how but turned and left in a hurry. Maybe she was busy and didn’t realize it was my first time. After a few minutes we got the hang of it and Dustin started nursing. Only later did I find out that while Dr. Ready had been taking care of me a nurse had cleaned Dustin up and introduced him to Lee and Mother.
By then it was late and I guess Lee and Mother went home to make the phone calls to let Daddy and Lee’s family know about the baby. The next day was July 4th and it was the quietest one I ever had as far as the fireworks were concerned but now the noise was the crying of babies. On the 5th Dustin and I were allowed to go home. When Lee and Mother came to pick us up they found me standing by the bed staring at my son with a pile of tiny baby clothes beside him. I had no idea how to dress him let alone how to chance a diaper. I had never done anything with a human baby in my life. I never did the baby sitting that most teenage girls do. Mother laughed and said, “Just pretend he’s a kitten that you need to put clothes on.” So I did. With her help.
I was kind of nervous about going home and it wasn’t just that I didn’t know what to do with a baby. We still had two dogs, Sandy and Kelly, and two cats, Ginger and Cotton. How were they going to adjust to a baby? Several people had suggested that I should get rid of the dogs especially Sandy or make them stay outside all the time because they would be jealous of the baby and would hurt it. But I couldn’t get rid of them or even make them stay outside. I really didn’t think there would be a problem. Neither did Lee, Mother, or my neighbor, Shirley. And we were all right.
Lee went in first and made sure the dogs were outside. I carried Dustin in and laid him on the cough. In a few minutes Lee let the dogs in to see me as they were somewhat upset that I had been gone for a couple of days. But they knew things were different. They came in real easy instead of rushing in like normal to greet me. Their noses were in the air and they were smelling and looking. The sent of the baby must have been strong to them. Sandy eased up to look at me and then at the baby. I had grabbed the camera and as the big, 100 pound German Shepherd laid her head down by that tiny baby and gave a big sigh I snapped a photo. It was as if she was saying, “Well, it’s time you brought home this baby and let me see him.”
None of the dogs or cats ever tried to hurt Dustin even though they had never been around a baby. And Sandy was eight years old while Kelly was four. Ginger was six and Cotton was five. It wasn’t that they were young animals. One of the worse things the dogs did was to always be going into the bedroom and checking on him after I would put him to bed. Sandy was the perfect height to lay her nose on the bed and poke it though the bars of the crib enough to touch him with her wet, cold nose and wake him up. Kelly wasn’t tall enough but she tried.
The cats, Ginger and Cotton would simply jump lightly into the crib and sleep with him. Daddy through fits about that as he believed the old wives tale about a cat stealing a baby’s breath and killing it. Lee and I didn’t but would move the cats out when we found them sleeping with him as we didn’t figure Dustin needed to eat cat hair. It was odd that as much as both cats were prone to sleeping on mine and Lee’s legs I never caught either of them actually laying on the baby. They seemed to know that they shouldn’t. They just seemed to want to be near him the same as the dogs did.
I remember Mother stayed with us about two weeks after Dustin was born which was a really big help for me. During that time I learned how to take care of my baby son. I learned to diaper him, bath him, and dress him as well as nursing him. I was determined that my baby would not be a bottle baby. I had plenty of milk for him and he thrived and grew quickly. Of course Lee was a very devoted father and my dad was thrilled to have a grandson after having three daughters. Even most of his brothers had had all girl kids. Boys were a rarity in our family.
I don’t remember much about those first few months with Dustin except that he could be a wonderful baby one moment and screaming with colic the next. I was never able to determine what caused the colic except that it was because I was a first time mom and wasn’t sure what to do with him a lot of the time. I remember walking miles and miles with a crying baby held in every position I could think of that might relieve his tummy ache, which is what colic is. I remember using every remedy I any one suggested with little success. When Lee was home he would help, and frequently Shirley came over and walked the floor with him to help. A lot of the time the rocking chair did more good that walking with him did. I began to feel I was glued to that rocker. I bought a used stroller and that would help as long as I was pushing it back and forth. Sometimes I gave him a warm bath several times a day as it might help. If I did luck out and get him to sleep without a spell of colic and screaming I found that any noise was bound to wake him up. When he was born I thought that I would expose him to all kinds of noise hoping he would be the kind of baby that would sleep though anything. It was not to be. I was already used to putting pillows over the phone so that it wouldn’t wake Lee up, who mostly worked evenings or nights. The vacuum would wake him, also the dishwasher, the dog barking and especially the doorbell, which got disconnected. I don’t think I have ever had as many door to door salesmen as while Dustin was a baby. I even put a sign on the door that said if they were selling or soliciting to do not knock on the door, just go away. I added a Beware of Dog sign and if they did knock on the door I met them with Sandy. Sandy was very good at making salespeople leave quickly.
I still detest anyone that goes door to door for any reason or calls me on the phone trying to sell, solicit, or ask for donations.
Dustin was just the beginning of boys in our family. Jan, my youngest sister, was also pregnant with her first child. She had marred James Edmonds a few years before. Jim was in the Army at that time and their first year or so was spent in Kentucky. Now Jim was in Korea and Jan couldn’t go but Jim had plans to be able to come home in time for the birth of their child. He made it home in time to be at the birth of his son. James Marvin Jr. was born on October 6, 1980 just three months and three days after Dustin was born.
My parents were now double thrilled to have two grandsons. But Jan was living at their house and it was pretty hectic there for several months from what I understood as Jan got an infection after JJ was born. Jim spent a lot of time taking care of her and his son with Mothers help and Sarah was there, too. Of course Daddy had to make more problems by demanding that JJ be picked up and held every time he made the least bit of noise which was not good for the baby or any one else’s nerves. And of course Daddy was to go to get up and help take care of the baby.
I remember that JJ weighed over eight pounds, had black hair and would have dark brown eyes soon. Dustin had to be exactly the opposite with very light, blonde hair and blue eyes. Both boys took after their dad’s families in looks. Wee were never able to live close together do to job situations and, still, Dustin and JJ were very close. We did everything we could to make sure that our only child and his three cousins got to see each other as much as possible. JJ got a brother, Eric Joseph, three years later on October 19, 1983, during a few years that Jim worked for PD Copper Smelter in Playas, NM. After a year or so he decided to enlist in the Air Force and was stationed in Homestead, FL. Three years after Joe was born Cynthia Julia was born in Florida on October 12, 1986. I always teased Jan about being able to have all three of her kids in October which is also the month that her husband was born in.
Lee and I were still having trouble making ends meet. I did not want to have to go back to work and we figured that a babysitter would cost more than I would make with the job. There was a new neighbor, Peggy, across the street and next door to Shirley. Peggy opened a daycare in her home as she didn’t want to leave her one year old son with a sitter either. I decided to try some babysitting, too. The first and best kids that I got were two little girls in grade school that came every afternoon after school until one of their parents would come pick them up. They were usually with us for about two to three hours each afternoon. Crissy was six and the older girl was eight. I wish I could remember her name. They were wonderful girls never causing any trouble, doing their homework, watching TV, playing quiet games, and they loved Dustin, the dogs and cats. And the animals got along with them. Even Sandy adored them.
Later I took in two other kids, a boy and a girl, the same ages and it was trouble from the beginning as I suspect it had been with their previous sitters. I ended up having to tell their mom I couldn’t take care of them. There were also a couple of babies and toddlers that didn’t seem to stay long either.
When Dustin was eleven months old Lee’s mom, Goldie, sister, Linda, brother, Don, and his mom’s brother Dwight and his wife, Mammie came to visit us from West Virginia. It was the second time they had come out to see us, the first time being while we lived on Aztec. We had made a couple of trips back east to visit them, once right after Lee got out of the Navy and again the summer right before we moved to Albuquerque. I was totally stressed out as was Lee. By now Dustin was almost walking and could move with lightning speed anywhere in the house. He was not good with strangers as most babies that age aren’t and refused to have anything to do with his grandma, aunts, and uncles. I think Dustin refused to walk while they were visiting on purpose to frustrate his grandma Goldie. As soon as they left he was walking –er – running.
Lee’s family was afraid of Sandy and Kelly so the dogs were banned to the backyard which they couldn’t understand. Cotton went and hid but Ginger was a pest doing her best to upset Goldie by getting in her lap every time she sat down, especially if it was to eat. The poor women would freak out, being afraid to even push the cat off of her lap. Ginger was banned to the bedroom.
We were still very broke but wanted to make a good impression by showing them a little of the Albuquerque area. We knew it had to be in our budget and places we could also take Dustin. The first time they had come we had gone to the desert as they had never seen one, even digging a few small cholla cactus plants for them to take back. We had also gone to Old Town, the top of the Sandia Mountains and the Albuquerque Zoo. Plus they had wanted to see a ‘real Indian’. I had read there would be a small parade on Central to honor some Indian doing and we took them but all the Indians were just riding down the street in cars and trucks. They were disappointed and found it hard to except the fact that Indians or Native Americans were just like everyone else. This time I think we just went to a few stores where they could buy some souvenirs and out onto the desert some. We didn’t do much except play with Dustin and take lots of photos. They wanted to try some Mexican food but we knew we couldn’t afford to take them to a restrant and we knew how much of a brat Dustin could be in one. We used that as the main reason for not going and I cooked a big Mexican meal of pinto beans, enchilada’s, tacos, Spanish rice, and chili con carne. They weren’t thrilled with it. Goldie and Linda wouldn’t even taste anything that had chili in it. So we were glad we hadn’t taken them out for a true Mexican dinner. Thankfully I had opened a can of corn, and another of green beans.
I think it was just as bad for them as it was for us and all because they wanted to see our son, their grandson/nephew. That was the important part. A little baby boy that we had all be waiting for so long. Lee and I were married almost ten years when we finally had Dustin. Lee was thirty years old and I lacked one month being twenty-nine. Dustin and I were both born on the 3rd of our birth month.
To me the number 3 became a special number. I had thought so before Dustin’s birth but when he was born on the 3rd I knew it was. Both of us had been born right at 3pm on the 3rd. I was the oldest of 3 girls and my mom was the oldest of 3 girls. Lee was the middle child of 3 children in his family. My sister, Jan, had 3 children. Between us we had 3 boys. As of this writing Lee and I have owned 3 houses. For almost ten years we had 3 black and white cats that were brothers from the same litter. I have had 3 female, Siamese cats, so far. At this moment we have 3 black cats. (But the number and color of our cats seem to be always changing). Several times we have had 3 dogs at the same time. Right now I have 3 boys’ horses, if you can count one big horse and two ponies. And my mom, who was such a big influence in my life, died on the 3rd of September, 2003.
Before Dustin was born I had bet a woman who lived down the street from us and became a casual friend named Joyce. She had two daughters just starting high school, Lisa and Erin, and a son, Jake. I don’t remember how we met but I do remember that Lisa hung around a lot, and on a few days when I couldn’t take care of the kids I babysat, Joyce and Lisa would take them; like when Lee’s family came.
Lisa was as horse crazy as I had been at that age and one day she and a couple of friends asked if I could take them to a nearby riding stable to spend a couple of hours riding. After calling Joyce at her job to OK it with her I took them. At the time we had agreed on I returned to pick them up. I was early and they weren’t ready yet. I didn’t mind. I was enjoying just looking at the horses as it was the first time I had been near a horse in years. I had pushed the thought of ever having a horse to the farthest corner of mine and tried to keep it buried there, even though I still watched every old and new western TV show and movie that I could and read every book I could on horses mostly sticking to the fiction books as nonfiction would make me want one even worse. This day was to be special. I had parked near a small corral that only had one horse in it. A sorrel quarter horse mare. I got out of the car, got Dustin out of his carseat and stood holding him a few feet from the corral and the mare. She looked at me with her big dark eyes and it seemed to me that somehow we connected. Maybe it was the fact that I had recently had a baby, (at that time I think Dustin was about 8 months old) and I could tell she was expecting her baby soon. She wandered a round in a small circle and moaned a few times, then straddled her legs and two tiny hooves appeared under her tail. With another big groan she sank to the ground and the little baby horse was out. The mare stood up quickly, turned and began cleaning up the baby. In seconds the big head of the foal was up and in a couple of minutes it was trying to stand. I looked around for someone that might be concerned about the mare and her new baby and at that time a man came running out of a barn and walked up to the man. He looked at me and I said she just had it. He sighed and said something about how he had been watching her all day expecting it and as soon as he had to turn his back on her for a few seconds to take care of something she had it. He petted her and we both noticed that there were several people starting to gather around the corral including the kids I was to pick up. He stooped over, picked up the baby, and said he would take them inside where he could check them over better and they wouldn’t be bothered by gawkers. I agreed it was what I would have done, too, but I was sorry to see him walk away carrying the foal with it’s mama following him. Year later when Dustin decided he was going to become a professional horseman, I always felt that he had been “marked” by that experience that day of seeing a horse have her baby, even though he was less than a year old and had no idea what was happening. In fact I’m not even sure he really saw it happen. I had always heard of children being “marked” by something that had happened while their mom was pregnant or soon after they were born. (Children who hear lots of music while in the womb become musicians, or a child that escapes a fire while a baby becomes a firefighter, a child that follows his grandparent in the garden becomes a farmer.) I also remembered all those books I had read while I was pregnant with him. My favorites were Louis L’Amour who wrote about cowboys and western adventurers http://www.louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm
And Dick Francis who wrote about England and race horses www.dickfrancis.com
Was it possible Dustin knew what I was reading about before he was born? Had I been marked by the horses in the parades my parents took me to see while I was a baby? Of course it was also in our genes I think. Lee grew up on a farm where he worked with the neighbors when they used a big old draft horse to help cut and haul logs out of the woods. Both of my parents had grown up in a farm environment mostly where they had horses and mules. Granddad Green was a cowboy in Texas as a boy and I remember Mother and Gram saying he was raising and training mules when Mother was little. I remember the story of her wondering into the mule pen when she was just walking. Their dog, a pointer, named Don followed her and kept his self between the mules and my mom even getting kicked to keep her from being kicked.
I have a photo of my Grandpa Barnett when he was seventeen with his horse which looked to be a black horse (it was a black and white photo of course, since it would have been about 1900) The horse looked to be a Morgan type horse. My second horse was a black Morgan. I still cry when I think of my BlackJack being gone.
I have another old faded, photo of Gram’s dad with a horse named Old I get the impression he is a quarter horse or as they were know then a ‘steel dust’ horse. Yes, it was in our genes, even if mine and Lee’s parents never had horses. Another story I remember from Mother is when she and her cousin, Johnny Green, were about five or six and would go out into the field to ride on one of the horses. They never wore shoes in the summer so Johnny would use his toes to climb the horse’s leg to where he could reach its mane and pull himself up on the horses back. Then Mother would climb its leg with her toes to where she could reach Johnny’s hand so he could help pull her up behind him. She said it was an older, real gentle horse named that they could ride without even a rope to guide him.
If I had thought about something ‘marking’ Dustin when he was born I would have thought it was the dogs or cats. Except for Lee’s mom and sister I think everyone on both sides of our family like if not outright loved dogs and cats. Oddly Dustin loves cats but doesn’t care for dogs now that he is grown. Maybe it had something to do with the cats sleeping with him and helping keep him warm while the dogs would wake him with their cold, wet noses. Both Sandy and Kelly would have done anything to protect him. I remember putting down food for the dogs, turning a round to do something for a minute to turn back to find Dustin eating commercial dry dog food between the two dogs while they waited patiently for him to finish so they could then eat. Dustin would have been crawling then but not walking yet. To learn to walk he would crawl over to Kelly, who would let him pull on her until he was standing and then she would very, very slowly walk with him while he held onto her. He would grab handfuls of hair and skin in his little hands and pull which I am sure didn’t feel good as he did it to me, too. He would also pull on her ears, tail and squeeze her around her neck. She never seemed to mind. He tried it with Sandy who didn’t mind either but Sandy was taller and it didn’t seem to work as well. Kelly was just the right height for a baby to walk with.
When Dustin was about a year or so my friend, Joyce, gave us a pair of zebra finches she had as she and her family were moving. Dustin adored the two little birds as they hopped here and there in their cage and called ‘cha chee, cha chee’ which prompted him to call them Gee Gee’s and then all birds became Gee Gee’s in his baby language. After reading up on the lively, active birds I bought a nest added it to the cage and soon we had baby Gee Gee’s.
Hummmm I wondered if I could make a few dollars breeding the prolific little birds. Probably not but it might be fun. So we soon had several cages of zebra finches. I then added a pair of canaries and a pair of parakeets. I had had parakeets and canaries as a girl and enjoyed watching, listening to, and caring for the birds. I found I could sell a few of the babies to some local pet stores for about $4 each. Not much but it paid for their feed.
After a couple of months at the California address we decided to find a better house in a better neighborhood. We bought our first house at 11101 San Jacinto, NE in July of 1978. It was a cute house with a Swiss chalet look to it, and wasn’t the normal look in Albuquerque which may be why it appealed to us. I took to selling Tupperware when we first bought the house to help make ends meet but it was still hard. In a sort of desperate move to keep from losing the house just months after we bought it we offered to let Dave Boggs rent one of the bedrooms from us. He agreed but wanted to bring his girlfriend, Rosalie with him. Dave and his family were from Claremore, Oklahoma and had gone back for a visit recently where he had met Rosalie and then convinced her to come to Albuquerque. A few months later they got married and moved into an apartment but they lived with us long enough for us to get over the rough spot of being first time homeowners.
The house was a nice large three bedroom, two bathroom house. A den had been added on next to the kitchen and a small concrete deck ran the length of the house and about ten feet wide. There was a huge built in fireplace/grill on one end and it was walled in about three feet up with screen wire the rest of the way up to the roof. When we were trying to buy the house the FHA people said the little greenhouse on the back wasn’t up to code and looked tacky and wanted the owners to remove it. I told them I wouldn’t buy the place if that happened. I used it lots for my houseplants in the summer and even some in the winter. Plus we used it to let the cats out without going outside all the way. There was even a doggy door for the dogs so they could get in to the greenhouse but not all the way into the house. It was on the south side of the house and collected lots of heat. In the summer it frequently got to hot but in the winter I would open the sliding glass doors to the den and let the heat in the greenhouse into the house. It was our first solar heat.
Both my sisters got married soon after we moved to this house. Janice and Jim Edmonds were married in July 14, 1978. Sarah and Mike Hogaboon were married soon after.
It was about this time that I got a job working for Tree Top Nurseries. They were at a location on the corner of Tramway and Montgomery several miles from the house but by now I finally had my driver’s license and was driving the Duster. At this job I drove a big, old white van from one office to another taking care of plants that they had. They contracted with the place I worked with for the plant watering service and I did the work. When I wasn’t doing that I worked at the small nursery learning more and more about plants. And I wished that I had gone into agriculture while I was in college. It seemed I had found my preferred line of work after trying several different things. Secretary in the Navy, museum helper, flower shops taking FTD orders and making fruit baskets and general helper, and selling Tupperware. I really liked working with plants. I liked growing them. I guess I was taking after my parents and grandparents more than I thought. Plus, Lee really liked growing plants. I preferred houseplants at this time and Lee liked gardening. We put a small garden in the back yard. The back wasn’t big enough for more along with room for the dogs and the huge, old cottonwood that was there. We had a bit of lawn in the back and a better one in the front with a picket fence around it. It took several tries but we finally got a redbud tree to service in the front yard. There was a big boxwood hedge between us and the neighbors on one side that we didn’t care for and just the drive ways on the other side.
Across the street were our best neighbors, Shirley and Jim. Their kids were in high school. Shirley was a kindergarten teacher and Jim did security work I think I remember. They loved dogs and cats the way Lee and I did and several of each. We never became great friends but they were nice.
It was not long after we moved into this house that my youngest sister, Jan, married her sweetheart from when she was in college, James Edmonds. Jim was in the Army as he felt he might make a career of the military the same as his dad had done. At this time they were stationed in Kentucky.
And my other sister, Sarah, had married Mike Hogaboon, whom she had known in college. Mike was a music teacher, too, and had a job teaching school in Grants, NM. Later Mike would go into the forest service as a fire fighter for several years until Sarah couldn’t handle him and his problems and they would get a divorce.
By this time Ginger was pretty content to mostly be a house cat but Cotton would sneak out now and then. He really liked to lay up on the roof to the house and watch the traffic and kids from there. We hadn’t realized it when we moved in but we were only a block from a grade school and each morning and each afternoon there were lots of little kids walking up and down the street on there way home. But Cotton didn’t like strangers trying to pet him when we had company. One day some guy knocked on the door and said his cat was on my roof. I went out and looked and it was Cotton. I told him it was my cat. He started getting mad and wanted to argue with me. I wasn’t in the mood. I said, “Look, there’s the ladder. You go up and get him and if he’ll let you, you can keep him. But my white cat doesn’t like strangers and if it’s Cotton he’ll scratch the hell out of you.” The man started to argue some more. “I’m not going to go up on the roof and get that cat,” I said. “And if it’s your cat, eventually he’ll come down and go home if he wants to.” After some more spuddering the man left. I guess he didn’t want to go up on the high-pitched roof and maybe try to pick up someone’s elses cat that might not want to be picked up. And I don’t think he wanted to argue over a cat with a pregnant woman in her yard. He left and I never saw him again. It wasn’t long before the cat came down and it was Cotton. I made a point of trying to keep him in for a while as I didn’t want that man or someone else trying to steal him.
I was pregnant at that time. After ten years of trying to have a baby and having six miscarriages, I was pregnant again. I had made it through the first few months when I usually had the miscarriage and had quite my job as I never felt good and couldn’t do it right any longer. Now I was showing and surprising the neighbors. Shirley and I talked one day and she said “When did that happen?” I laughed and said about eight months ago. I had lost so many babies I didn’t want to let anyone know until I couldn’t hide it any more. I didn’t even tell my parents until I was about five months along. After so many miscarriages before I was convinced that this baby wouldn’t make it either.
My GYN doctor, Dr. Dennis Ready had done lots of testing but there was never a good answer as to why I lost all the others and this one – well I don’t think I could have kicked him out.
I had one theory but there is no way to prove if it was really the answer or not. Even Dr. Ready thought I was nuts when I mentioned it to him. Due to the fact that I had to quit working we were, as usual, very short on money with only Lee working. But that fall Lee and I had gone deer hunting and Lee killed a nice size buck. With very little money for food we ate mostly deer and beans. That meant that I was eating very little food with all that un-natural junk salt, and preservatives that food that is made in a factory has. The deer had lived on good mountain grass. We had butchered the deer and frozen it with in about 48 hours after it was killed. I did fry a lot of the deer in oil but a lot of it was also boiled and added to all those pinto beans. The beans were cooked like Mother had taught me in a pressure cooker. I added some boiled deer meat, salt, pepper, and a handful of chili powder. Maybe the chili powder helped too. New Mexico chili is supposed to be good for any thing that might make a person ill accept maybe indigestion and heartburn.
Or maybe it had to do with the fact that I think that our son was conceived that fall while Lee were on an elk hunting trip to the Jemez Mountains. It was the only time Lee ever was able to get an elk permit. Elk permits are done by a drawing as there are a limited number of permits. We saw a couple of bull elk but they were always to far away to even try to shoot at. A few weeks later we went to Silver City for the deer hunt. Not only did Lee get the deer he got his turkey that year, too. At that time if you got a deer permit it included the turkey but we never seemed to see any turkey when hunting, although we did see lots when we weren’t hunting. Lee didn’t even have a shotgun with him which is usually what people use for turkey. He killed it with his deer rifle, almost gutting it with the shot. It was a young bird but, boy, was it tough. Since we were visiting with my parents Mother helped me pluck the feathers that turkey and as we thought it would be tough we boiled it first and then fried it. That is the way that Lee had been taught to fix squirrel when he was a boy by his mom.
As a boy Lee had been taught to hunt before he even started school. By the time he was five he had a .22 rifle that he would go squirrel hunting with and he said a lot of the time it was all the meat he and his family would have to eat that day.
After much thought and many discussions we settled on a name for a boy, Dustin, but were never sure of one for a girl. The baby was due to be born June 15, so Daddy brought Mother up about then. It was to be three more weeks before he would be born. It was hot, and I was big with the ‘basketball’ as Lee frequently teased me about. And then my feet, ankles and legs started swelling. About June 30th I went in for another checkup. Dr. Ready looked at my feet and ankles and said we would like me to check into the hospital on July 2nd if I hadn’t had him by then. Of course I didn’t so off I went on July 2nd to the hospital and to have my labor induced so I would have this baby that didn’t want to be born. Another reason Dr. Ready wanted to induce my labor is that he wanted to be the one to deliver my baby after all this time and he was going on vacation on July 4th. On the morning of July 3rd he came in and broke my water and we got into having a baby in earnest. He came back about noon and said he would see me that evening as he didn’t think the baby would come until them. At about 2 pm I was suddenly fully dilated and the nurse called his office in a hurry. His office was in the building next to the hospital so he was there in just minutes with his office nurse who asked if she could go in the delivery room with me as she, too, was anxious to see me have a baby after all this time. I wish I could remember her name but it is lost to me. As Mother and Lee didn’t seem to want to go into the delivery room I was only more than glad to have her come in and hold my hand. She had held it to many times to help me through a D & C procedure after the miscarriages.
Dustin Lee was born right at 3pm on July 3rd, 1980. He weighed 7 pounds and 8 onzes. Dr. Ready held him up for me to see and told me to touch him and count his toes, but I said no, I wanted to hold his hand. For some reason it seemed important to do that. I didn’t know then that those tiny, pink important to do that. I didn’t know then that those tiny, pink baby hands would one day be big hands that would be able to stroke, and gentle scared, and upset 1000 pound horses with ease.
Dr. Ready started to put the baby on my chest but then handed him to the nurse saying she would clean him up. I was so thrilled to finally get birth to my baby boy after all those long months I didn’t think too much of it and then I started to fell really faint and dizzy. Dr. Ready got back into position and told me to push to expel the afterbirth. I don’t know if I did or not. Then I remember someone said ‘she’s bleeding heavy,’ and then someone was putting another IV into my right arm and I already had one in my left arm.
I’m not sure how long I was there while they got the bleeding stopped but finally I was in the recovery room and a nurse brought Dustin to me and said to feed him. She didn’t tell me how but turned and left in a hurry. Maybe she was busy and didn’t realize it was my first time. After a few minutes we got the hang of it and Dustin started nursing. Only later did I find out that while Dr. Ready had been taking care of me a nurse had cleaned Dustin up and introduced him to Lee and Mother.
By then it was late and I guess Lee and Mother went home to make the phone calls to let Daddy and Lee’s family know about the baby. The next day was July 4th and it was the quietest one I ever had as far as the fireworks were concerned but now the noise was the crying of babies. On the 5th Dustin and I were allowed to go home. When Lee and Mother came to pick us up they found me standing by the bed staring at my son with a pile of tiny baby clothes beside him. I had no idea how to dress him let alone how to chance a diaper. I had never done anything with a human baby in my life. I never did the baby sitting that most teenage girls do. Mother laughed and said, “Just pretend he’s a kitten that you need to put clothes on.” So I did. With her help.
I was kind of nervous about going home and it wasn’t just that I didn’t know what to do with a baby. We still had two dogs, Sandy and Kelly, and two cats, Ginger and Cotton. How were they going to adjust to a baby? Several people had suggested that I should get rid of the dogs especially Sandy or make them stay outside all the time because they would be jealous of the baby and would hurt it. But I couldn’t get rid of them or even make them stay outside. I really didn’t think there would be a problem. Neither did Lee, Mother, or my neighbor, Shirley. And we were all right.
Lee went in first and made sure the dogs were outside. I carried Dustin in and laid him on the cough. In a few minutes Lee let the dogs in to see me as they were somewhat upset that I had been gone for a couple of days. But they knew things were different. They came in real easy instead of rushing in like normal to greet me. Their noses were in the air and they were smelling and looking. The sent of the baby must have been strong to them. Sandy eased up to look at me and then at the baby. I had grabbed the camera and as the big, 100 pound German Shepherd laid her head down by that tiny baby and gave a big sigh I snapped a photo. It was as if she was saying, “Well, it’s time you brought home this baby and let me see him.”
None of the dogs or cats ever tried to hurt Dustin even though they had never been around a baby. And Sandy was eight years old while Kelly was four. Ginger was six and Cotton was five. It wasn’t that they were young animals. One of the worse things the dogs did was to always be going into the bedroom and checking on him after I would put him to bed. Sandy was the perfect height to lay her nose on the bed and poke it though the bars of the crib enough to touch him with her wet, cold nose and wake him up. Kelly wasn’t tall enough but she tried.
The cats, Ginger and Cotton would simply jump lightly into the crib and sleep with him. Daddy through fits about that as he believed the old wives tale about a cat stealing a baby’s breath and killing it. Lee and I didn’t but would move the cats out when we found them sleeping with him as we didn’t figure Dustin needed to eat cat hair. It was odd that as much as both cats were prone to sleeping on mine and Lee’s legs I never caught either of them actually laying on the baby. They seemed to know that they shouldn’t. They just seemed to want to be near him the same as the dogs did.
I remember Mother stayed with us about two weeks after Dustin was born which was a really big help for me. During that time I learned how to take care of my baby son. I learned to diaper him, bath him, and dress him as well as nursing him. I was determined that my baby would not be a bottle baby. I had plenty of milk for him and he thrived and grew quickly. Of course Lee was a very devoted father and my dad was thrilled to have a grandson after having three daughters. Even most of his brothers had had all girl kids. Boys were a rarity in our family.
I don’t remember much about those first few months with Dustin except that he could be a wonderful baby one moment and screaming with colic the next. I was never able to determine what caused the colic except that it was because I was a first time mom and wasn’t sure what to do with him a lot of the time. I remember walking miles and miles with a crying baby held in every position I could think of that might relieve his tummy ache, which is what colic is. I remember using every remedy I any one suggested with little success. When Lee was home he would help, and frequently Shirley came over and walked the floor with him to help. A lot of the time the rocking chair did more good that walking with him did. I began to feel I was glued to that rocker. I bought a used stroller and that would help as long as I was pushing it back and forth. Sometimes I gave him a warm bath several times a day as it might help. If I did luck out and get him to sleep without a spell of colic and screaming I found that any noise was bound to wake him up. When he was born I thought that I would expose him to all kinds of noise hoping he would be the kind of baby that would sleep though anything. It was not to be. I was already used to putting pillows over the phone so that it wouldn’t wake Lee up, who mostly worked evenings or nights. The vacuum would wake him, also the dishwasher, the dog barking and especially the doorbell, which got disconnected. I don’t think I have ever had as many door to door salesmen as while Dustin was a baby. I even put a sign on the door that said if they were selling or soliciting to do not knock on the door, just go away. I added a Beware of Dog sign and if they did knock on the door I met them with Sandy. Sandy was very good at making salespeople leave quickly.
I still detest anyone that goes door to door for any reason or calls me on the phone trying to sell, solicit, or ask for donations.
Dustin was just the beginning of boys in our family. Jan, my youngest sister, was also pregnant with her first child. She had marred James Edmonds a few years before. Jim was in the Army at that time and their first year or so was spent in Kentucky. Now Jim was in Korea and Jan couldn’t go but Jim had plans to be able to come home in time for the birth of their child. He made it home in time to be at the birth of his son. James Marvin Jr. was born on October 6, 1980 just three months and three days after Dustin was born.
My parents were now double thrilled to have two grandsons. But Jan was living at their house and it was pretty hectic there for several months from what I understood as Jan got an infection after JJ was born. Jim spent a lot of time taking care of her and his son with Mothers help and Sarah was there, too. Of course Daddy had to make more problems by demanding that JJ be picked up and held every time he made the least bit of noise which was not good for the baby or any one else’s nerves. And of course Daddy was to go to get up and help take care of the baby.
I remember that JJ weighed over eight pounds, had black hair and would have dark brown eyes soon. Dustin had to be exactly the opposite with very light, blonde hair and blue eyes. Both boys took after their dad’s families in looks. Wee were never able to live close together do to job situations and, still, Dustin and JJ were very close. We did everything we could to make sure that our only child and his three cousins got to see each other as much as possible. JJ got a brother, Eric Joseph, three years later on October 19, 1983, during a few years that Jim worked for PD Copper Smelter in Playas, NM. After a year or so he decided to enlist in the Air Force and was stationed in Homestead, FL. Three years after Joe was born Cynthia Julia was born in Florida on October 12, 1986. I always teased Jan about being able to have all three of her kids in October which is also the month that her husband was born in.
Lee and I were still having trouble making ends meet. I did not want to have to go back to work and we figured that a babysitter would cost more than I would make with the job. There was a new neighbor, Peggy, across the street and next door to Shirley. Peggy opened a daycare in her home as she didn’t want to leave her one year old son with a sitter either. I decided to try some babysitting, too. The first and best kids that I got were two little girls in grade school that came every afternoon after school until one of their parents would come pick them up. They were usually with us for about two to three hours each afternoon. Crissy was six and the older girl was eight. I wish I could remember her name. They were wonderful girls never causing any trouble, doing their homework, watching TV, playing quiet games, and they loved Dustin, the dogs and cats. And the animals got along with them. Even Sandy adored them.
Later I took in two other kids, a boy and a girl, the same ages and it was trouble from the beginning as I suspect it had been with their previous sitters. I ended up having to tell their mom I couldn’t take care of them. There were also a couple of babies and toddlers that didn’t seem to stay long either.
When Dustin was eleven months old Lee’s mom, Goldie, sister, Linda, brother, Don, and his mom’s brother Dwight and his wife, Mammie came to visit us from West Virginia. It was the second time they had come out to see us, the first time being while we lived on Aztec. We had made a couple of trips back east to visit them, once right after Lee got out of the Navy and again the summer right before we moved to Albuquerque. I was totally stressed out as was Lee. By now Dustin was almost walking and could move with lightning speed anywhere in the house. He was not good with strangers as most babies that age aren’t and refused to have anything to do with his grandma, aunts, and uncles. I think Dustin refused to walk while they were visiting on purpose to frustrate his grandma Goldie. As soon as they left he was walking –er – running.
Lee’s family was afraid of Sandy and Kelly so the dogs were banned to the backyard which they couldn’t understand. Cotton went and hid but Ginger was a pest doing her best to upset Goldie by getting in her lap every time she sat down, especially if it was to eat. The poor women would freak out, being afraid to even push the cat off of her lap. Ginger was banned to the bedroom.
We were still very broke but wanted to make a good impression by showing them a little of the Albuquerque area. We knew it had to be in our budget and places we could also take Dustin. The first time they had come we had gone to the desert as they had never seen one, even digging a few small cholla cactus plants for them to take back. We had also gone to Old Town, the top of the Sandia Mountains and the Albuquerque Zoo. Plus they had wanted to see a ‘real Indian’. I had read there would be a small parade on Central to honor some Indian doing and we took them but all the Indians were just riding down the street in cars and trucks. They were disappointed and found it hard to except the fact that Indians or Native Americans were just like everyone else. This time I think we just went to a few stores where they could buy some souvenirs and out onto the desert some. We didn’t do much except play with Dustin and take lots of photos. They wanted to try some Mexican food but we knew we couldn’t afford to take them to a restrant and we knew how much of a brat Dustin could be in one. We used that as the main reason for not going and I cooked a big Mexican meal of pinto beans, enchilada’s, tacos, Spanish rice, and chili con carne. They weren’t thrilled with it. Goldie and Linda wouldn’t even taste anything that had chili in it. So we were glad we hadn’t taken them out for a true Mexican dinner. Thankfully I had opened a can of corn, and another of green beans.
I think it was just as bad for them as it was for us and all because they wanted to see our son, their grandson/nephew. That was the important part. A little baby boy that we had all be waiting for so long. Lee and I were married almost ten years when we finally had Dustin. Lee was thirty years old and I lacked one month being twenty-nine. Dustin and I were both born on the 3rd of our birth month.
To me the number 3 became a special number. I had thought so before Dustin’s birth but when he was born on the 3rd I knew it was. Both of us had been born right at 3pm on the 3rd. I was the oldest of 3 girls and my mom was the oldest of 3 girls. Lee was the middle child of 3 children in his family. My sister, Jan, had 3 children. Between us we had 3 boys. As of this writing Lee and I have owned 3 houses. For almost ten years we had 3 black and white cats that were brothers from the same litter. I have had 3 female, Siamese cats, so far. At this moment we have 3 black cats. (But the number and color of our cats seem to be always changing). Several times we have had 3 dogs at the same time. Right now I have 3 boys’ horses, if you can count one big horse and two ponies. And my mom, who was such a big influence in my life, died on the 3rd of September, 2003.
Before Dustin was born I had bet a woman who lived down the street from us and became a casual friend named Joyce. She had two daughters just starting high school, Lisa and Erin, and a son, Jake. I don’t remember how we met but I do remember that Lisa hung around a lot, and on a few days when I couldn’t take care of the kids I babysat, Joyce and Lisa would take them; like when Lee’s family came.
Lisa was as horse crazy as I had been at that age and one day she and a couple of friends asked if I could take them to a nearby riding stable to spend a couple of hours riding. After calling Joyce at her job to OK it with her I took them. At the time we had agreed on I returned to pick them up. I was early and they weren’t ready yet. I didn’t mind. I was enjoying just looking at the horses as it was the first time I had been near a horse in years. I had pushed the thought of ever having a horse to the farthest corner of mine and tried to keep it buried there, even though I still watched every old and new western TV show and movie that I could and read every book I could on horses mostly sticking to the fiction books as nonfiction would make me want one even worse. This day was to be special. I had parked near a small corral that only had one horse in it. A sorrel quarter horse mare. I got out of the car, got Dustin out of his carseat and stood holding him a few feet from the corral and the mare. She looked at me with her big dark eyes and it seemed to me that somehow we connected. Maybe it was the fact that I had recently had a baby, (at that time I think Dustin was about 8 months old) and I could tell she was expecting her baby soon. She wandered a round in a small circle and moaned a few times, then straddled her legs and two tiny hooves appeared under her tail. With another big groan she sank to the ground and the little baby horse was out. The mare stood up quickly, turned and began cleaning up the baby. In seconds the big head of the foal was up and in a couple of minutes it was trying to stand. I looked around for someone that might be concerned about the mare and her new baby and at that time a man came running out of a barn and walked up to the man. He looked at me and I said she just had it. He sighed and said something about how he had been watching her all day expecting it and as soon as he had to turn his back on her for a few seconds to take care of something she had it. He petted her and we both noticed that there were several people starting to gather around the corral including the kids I was to pick up. He stooped over, picked up the baby, and said he would take them inside where he could check them over better and they wouldn’t be bothered by gawkers. I agreed it was what I would have done, too, but I was sorry to see him walk away carrying the foal with it’s mama following him. Year later when Dustin decided he was going to become a professional horseman, I always felt that he had been “marked” by that experience that day of seeing a horse have her baby, even though he was less than a year old and had no idea what was happening. In fact I’m not even sure he really saw it happen. I had always heard of children being “marked” by something that had happened while their mom was pregnant or soon after they were born. (Children who hear lots of music while in the womb become musicians, or a child that escapes a fire while a baby becomes a firefighter, a child that follows his grandparent in the garden becomes a farmer.) I also remembered all those books I had read while I was pregnant with him. My favorites were Louis L’Amour who wrote about cowboys and western adventurers http://www.louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm
And Dick Francis who wrote about England and race horses www.dickfrancis.com
Was it possible Dustin knew what I was reading about before he was born? Had I been marked by the horses in the parades my parents took me to see while I was a baby? Of course it was also in our genes I think. Lee grew up on a farm where he worked with the neighbors when they used a big old draft horse to help cut and haul logs out of the woods. Both of my parents had grown up in a farm environment mostly where they had horses and mules. Granddad Green was a cowboy in Texas as a boy and I remember Mother and Gram saying he was raising and training mules when Mother was little. I remember the story of her wondering into the mule pen when she was just walking. Their dog, a pointer, named Don followed her and kept his self between the mules and my mom even getting kicked to keep her from being kicked.
I have a photo of my Grandpa Barnett when he was seventeen with his horse which looked to be a black horse (it was a black and white photo of course, since it would have been about 1900) The horse looked to be a Morgan type horse. My second horse was a black Morgan. I still cry when I think of my BlackJack being gone.
I have another old faded, photo of Gram’s dad with a horse named Old I get the impression he is a quarter horse or as they were know then a ‘steel dust’ horse. Yes, it was in our genes, even if mine and Lee’s parents never had horses. Another story I remember from Mother is when she and her cousin, Johnny Green, were about five or six and would go out into the field to ride on one of the horses. They never wore shoes in the summer so Johnny would use his toes to climb the horse’s leg to where he could reach its mane and pull himself up on the horses back. Then Mother would climb its leg with her toes to where she could reach Johnny’s hand so he could help pull her up behind him. She said it was an older, real gentle horse named that they could ride without even a rope to guide him.
If I had thought about something ‘marking’ Dustin when he was born I would have thought it was the dogs or cats. Except for Lee’s mom and sister I think everyone on both sides of our family like if not outright loved dogs and cats. Oddly Dustin loves cats but doesn’t care for dogs now that he is grown. Maybe it had something to do with the cats sleeping with him and helping keep him warm while the dogs would wake him with their cold, wet noses. Both Sandy and Kelly would have done anything to protect him. I remember putting down food for the dogs, turning a round to do something for a minute to turn back to find Dustin eating commercial dry dog food between the two dogs while they waited patiently for him to finish so they could then eat. Dustin would have been crawling then but not walking yet. To learn to walk he would crawl over to Kelly, who would let him pull on her until he was standing and then she would very, very slowly walk with him while he held onto her. He would grab handfuls of hair and skin in his little hands and pull which I am sure didn’t feel good as he did it to me, too. He would also pull on her ears, tail and squeeze her around her neck. She never seemed to mind. He tried it with Sandy who didn’t mind either but Sandy was taller and it didn’t seem to work as well. Kelly was just the right height for a baby to walk with.
When Dustin was about a year or so my friend, Joyce, gave us a pair of zebra finches she had as she and her family were moving. Dustin adored the two little birds as they hopped here and there in their cage and called ‘cha chee, cha chee’ which prompted him to call them Gee Gee’s and then all birds became Gee Gee’s in his baby language. After reading up on the lively, active birds I bought a nest added it to the cage and soon we had baby Gee Gee’s.
Hummmm I wondered if I could make a few dollars breeding the prolific little birds. Probably not but it might be fun. So we soon had several cages of zebra finches. I then added a pair of canaries and a pair of parakeets. I had had parakeets and canaries as a girl and enjoyed watching, listening to, and caring for the birds. I found I could sell a few of the babies to some local pet stores for about $4 each. Not much but it paid for their feed.
Maxine St in Albuquerque
Maxine St.
When Dustin was about two we had to sell the house on San Jacinto to keep from loosing it. We certainly didn’t want to sell it but it was the only way we could see out of our financial dilemma. When it did sell we had to get out of the house quickly and I found a house to rent only a few blocks away on Maxine St. So we packed everything including dogs, cats, and birds and moved. I was still doing baby sitting and for a while we had things better without having to count our pennies quite as much.
It was on here that on a trip to the pet store for bird seed I saw a black kitten that looked to be about six weeks old in the middle of a busy intersection. I pulled up in the middle, opened by door, scooped up the kitten and tossed him into the back seat of the car. We had another cat. When I got home and showed it to Dustin, he gently reached out to pet it and I told him it was a baby kitty cat. He looked at me with this question look and said, “My baby kitty cat.” I think I was glad that I couldn’t find where the kitten belonged after putting an ad in the paper and contacting animal control. Spook became our newest member of the family and was quickly accepted by the other two dogs and cats.
We met Beth and Phil Huddleston while we lived here. They became very good friends for the next ten years. The had recently moved to Albuquerque from Ohio and Phil got a job at International Harvester where Lee worked. I’m not sure where they were living at that time but I know that they bought a house in the South Valley area of Albuquerque not to long after we met them. Beth and I quickly became friends. She wasn’t much older than Lee but had had her two boys when she was quite young and with her first husband. Mike and Fred were living with them at that time and they were just out of high school. They had a black Great Dane named Midnight. Midnight was the first Dane I had ever been around. She didn’t seem as big as I had always thought Danes were but then she wasn’t one of the really big ones. She was a sweet older dog. Not long after they bought there house which had about two acres with it they got a mixed breed dog that they named Wezel. She was a strange dog but they loved her. They also bought a couple of horses. One was Money, a nice bay mare that was a quarter horse cross. I don’t remember much about the other horse. Seems like they didn’t care much for her so they sold her and got a Appaloosa gelding named Cappy. Again they didn’t have him that long and sold him then got an Appy mare that they named Whisper. Whisper was a buckskin mare with a few white spots on her butt. She had one blue eye and one brown eye. I really liked her. While they had Whisper and Money they bred both of them. Money to a big black Thoroughbred stallion that belonged to someone they knew nearby to them. Someone else near them had an Appy stallion they bred Whisper to. Money had a black filly they named Velvet and Whisper had a buckskin colt which they sold later on. I really liked that colt and would have given anything to have had him but knew I had no way to keep him. I didn’t think I could even afford the feed for him if they kept him at their place so I hardened my heart and never said any thing about him to them or Lee. Dustin seemed interested in the horses but not overly. Since I had never been able to have a horse and it had always been so difficult for me to love them so and not be able to have one I never encouraged Dustin to have any thing to do with them. I didn’t want him to have the heartache I had always had from not being able to have one. I did want him to be more interested in dogs but he wasn’t.
Dustin started putting words together in a sentence at what I think was a very young age. While we lived on Maxine he started asking me all too frequently during the day, “my daddy come home now.” He might have been able to put the words together to make since but he still had no concept of time. All I could do was tell him “Not yet. After while.” Of course when Jan heard that Dustin was putting words together like that I think she was jealousies. JJ was still pointing at things and just grunting when he wanted to ask for something.
It was while we lived here that Lee bought a table saw, radial arm saw, a used lathe and a band saw. Knowing nothing about how to use these saws and make things out of wood I was thrilled to see what Lee was doing. He made shelves, candlesticks, plant stands, and tables. I quickly leaned how to help him sand the wood, put stain and polyurethane on what he made and to use the band saw. For years we have made howling coyotes and other wooden toys and small pieces of furniture and tried to sell them at arts and crafts sales as well as garage sales but never were able to make any money at it. But I have lots of nice wood furniture in my home that Lee has made with a little help from me. And everyone I know has been given a howling coyote and a dream catchers. While we lived on Nyasa Lee, Dustin, and I would build a large addition 20 x 20 feet on the back of the house to be a family room with a woodstove. It had a short staircase that lead to a balcony running along the room where it joined to the house that was 6 feet wide by 15 feet long. It was quite an undertaking but looked really nice when finished.
Then when we move to the house we are in now on 10th St. we gave the saws a real workout building horse shelters, hay and storage shed, a firewood shed, tool shed and a covered porch off the back door as well as lots of fencing to confine the horses.
We were not happy living in the house on Maxine and decided that Lee would quite his job and we would move to Silver City and see if life there would be better than it was in Albuquerque. On top of everything else my parents seemed to be getting older and not doing well. Especially Daddy. While we were here the doctors at the VA Hospital found a small tumor in his peturatary gland at the base of his brain. They did some sort of surgery that was new at that time. They went in through his nose and into his brain and removed the tumor. He seemed to do well afterward but got quite upset when his dad died while he was in the hospital and none of us were able to go to Grandpa’s furnal in Cortez, Co. because we weretaking care of Daddy. I had been so glad we had made one trip to Silver with Dustin when he was about a year old and Grandma and Grandpa were able to see my son. Plus they got to see Dustin and JJ together at that time. That was also when I got to get some photos of Dustin with a very old Bonnie and Tag and Smokey, the dogs and cat we had first got long before I ever thought of leaving home, getting married and having a son.
When Dustin was about two we had to sell the house on San Jacinto to keep from loosing it. We certainly didn’t want to sell it but it was the only way we could see out of our financial dilemma. When it did sell we had to get out of the house quickly and I found a house to rent only a few blocks away on Maxine St. So we packed everything including dogs, cats, and birds and moved. I was still doing baby sitting and for a while we had things better without having to count our pennies quite as much.
It was on here that on a trip to the pet store for bird seed I saw a black kitten that looked to be about six weeks old in the middle of a busy intersection. I pulled up in the middle, opened by door, scooped up the kitten and tossed him into the back seat of the car. We had another cat. When I got home and showed it to Dustin, he gently reached out to pet it and I told him it was a baby kitty cat. He looked at me with this question look and said, “My baby kitty cat.” I think I was glad that I couldn’t find where the kitten belonged after putting an ad in the paper and contacting animal control. Spook became our newest member of the family and was quickly accepted by the other two dogs and cats.
We met Beth and Phil Huddleston while we lived here. They became very good friends for the next ten years. The had recently moved to Albuquerque from Ohio and Phil got a job at International Harvester where Lee worked. I’m not sure where they were living at that time but I know that they bought a house in the South Valley area of Albuquerque not to long after we met them. Beth and I quickly became friends. She wasn’t much older than Lee but had had her two boys when she was quite young and with her first husband. Mike and Fred were living with them at that time and they were just out of high school. They had a black Great Dane named Midnight. Midnight was the first Dane I had ever been around. She didn’t seem as big as I had always thought Danes were but then she wasn’t one of the really big ones. She was a sweet older dog. Not long after they bought there house which had about two acres with it they got a mixed breed dog that they named Wezel. She was a strange dog but they loved her. They also bought a couple of horses. One was Money, a nice bay mare that was a quarter horse cross. I don’t remember much about the other horse. Seems like they didn’t care much for her so they sold her and got a Appaloosa gelding named Cappy. Again they didn’t have him that long and sold him then got an Appy mare that they named Whisper. Whisper was a buckskin mare with a few white spots on her butt. She had one blue eye and one brown eye. I really liked her. While they had Whisper and Money they bred both of them. Money to a big black Thoroughbred stallion that belonged to someone they knew nearby to them. Someone else near them had an Appy stallion they bred Whisper to. Money had a black filly they named Velvet and Whisper had a buckskin colt which they sold later on. I really liked that colt and would have given anything to have had him but knew I had no way to keep him. I didn’t think I could even afford the feed for him if they kept him at their place so I hardened my heart and never said any thing about him to them or Lee. Dustin seemed interested in the horses but not overly. Since I had never been able to have a horse and it had always been so difficult for me to love them so and not be able to have one I never encouraged Dustin to have any thing to do with them. I didn’t want him to have the heartache I had always had from not being able to have one. I did want him to be more interested in dogs but he wasn’t.
Dustin started putting words together in a sentence at what I think was a very young age. While we lived on Maxine he started asking me all too frequently during the day, “my daddy come home now.” He might have been able to put the words together to make since but he still had no concept of time. All I could do was tell him “Not yet. After while.” Of course when Jan heard that Dustin was putting words together like that I think she was jealousies. JJ was still pointing at things and just grunting when he wanted to ask for something.
It was while we lived here that Lee bought a table saw, radial arm saw, a used lathe and a band saw. Knowing nothing about how to use these saws and make things out of wood I was thrilled to see what Lee was doing. He made shelves, candlesticks, plant stands, and tables. I quickly leaned how to help him sand the wood, put stain and polyurethane on what he made and to use the band saw. For years we have made howling coyotes and other wooden toys and small pieces of furniture and tried to sell them at arts and crafts sales as well as garage sales but never were able to make any money at it. But I have lots of nice wood furniture in my home that Lee has made with a little help from me. And everyone I know has been given a howling coyote and a dream catchers. While we lived on Nyasa Lee, Dustin, and I would build a large addition 20 x 20 feet on the back of the house to be a family room with a woodstove. It had a short staircase that lead to a balcony running along the room where it joined to the house that was 6 feet wide by 15 feet long. It was quite an undertaking but looked really nice when finished.
Then when we move to the house we are in now on 10th St. we gave the saws a real workout building horse shelters, hay and storage shed, a firewood shed, tool shed and a covered porch off the back door as well as lots of fencing to confine the horses.
We were not happy living in the house on Maxine and decided that Lee would quite his job and we would move to Silver City and see if life there would be better than it was in Albuquerque. On top of everything else my parents seemed to be getting older and not doing well. Especially Daddy. While we were here the doctors at the VA Hospital found a small tumor in his peturatary gland at the base of his brain. They did some sort of surgery that was new at that time. They went in through his nose and into his brain and removed the tumor. He seemed to do well afterward but got quite upset when his dad died while he was in the hospital and none of us were able to go to Grandpa’s furnal in Cortez, Co. because we weretaking care of Daddy. I had been so glad we had made one trip to Silver with Dustin when he was about a year old and Grandma and Grandpa were able to see my son. Plus they got to see Dustin and JJ together at that time. That was also when I got to get some photos of Dustin with a very old Bonnie and Tag and Smokey, the dogs and cat we had first got long before I ever thought of leaving home, getting married and having a son.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Silver City & Albuquerque
Here are some of Mother's memories of Silver City and Albuquerque, NM.
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After Boyd and family moved to Silver City Boyd got very interested in geology, and mining as Silver City was built as a mining community. The Santa Rita Copper Mine is to the southeast of Silver City and has been mined for several hundred years. Indians were mining there before the white man came. The site listed below has an excellent history for the area where the mine is.
http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Articles/Southwest/Grant/SantaRita-Thetownthatvani.html
Before long Boyd was prospecting for his own mine. He had a turquoise mine for a while in the Burro Mountains to the southwest of Silver City. He got quite a bit of good turquoise out of it and made many turquoise buttons for his wife and girls to use on their clothes. He polished lots of pieces of turquoise to be used on necklaces and in rings. I remember Mother, Catherine having what seemed like lots and lots of turquoise when I was a girl but don’t think it was as much as I thought it was when I got older. Mother did let me have one piece that I took to a Navajo silversmith when I was 17 and had made into a ring. I wore it constantly for years and years. It needs some repair work now so I can wear it again. Sarah, Janice and I divided the turquoise and all of the 1920’s though 1940’s costume jewelry that she and Gram left to us.
For several years Granddad, Boyd, was partners with a couple of other prospectors and they had different mines mostly in the Burro Mountains. They went to places called White Signal, Alma (now a ghost town and not named after my grandmother), Shakespeare, (also a ghost town), all of which are in the Burro Mountain area near Silver City, NM. The Burros are high desert, shrub growth with juniper and pinion trees very similar to what we have here where I live on the West Mesa area west of Rio Rancho, and Albuquerque, NM. There are lots of rolling hills that tend to drop off into dry arroyos that can run full of water when a rain storm comes. Those rains are apt to bring all kinds of rocks and ore down from higher up when they happen. Gold, silver, turquoise, copper, and a few other ores can be found there in small amounts. I don’t think there were any huge mining claims there just small ones that a person or family might seek out a living from if they worked at it real hard. This was during the Depression and with all his health problems Granddad couldn’t get much in the way of work to feed his family with so he tried mining. If he actually made any money with it I couldn’t say but it did seem to save his life. The doctors in Texas told him he had about six months to live but by going to New Mexico and living mostly outside in the desert seemed to help and he lived for another 16 years.
Mother was able to find the general area where the Elks Tooth Mine was that Granddad and a partner worked for a while in the 1930’s. This would have been when she and Daddy moved there in 1970. When Lee and I lived in Silver City from 1971 to 1973 we explored that area a lot. For a while Daddy, Robert Barnett, had a mining claim filed in that area probably in the 1980’s. At about the same time, Mother’s cousin, Rex Green filed a couple of mining claims there, too.
In the 30’s when Granddad was mining there he would live out there in a tent all week and work while Gram and their three daughters lived in Silver City. On Friday evening Gram and the girls would drive out and stay with him until Sunday morning when they would go back to Silver City for church. Gram and Granddad helped start the Church of Christ that they went to in Silver. I remember reading a book written by a woman who was the wife of one of the preachers hired by the church. She and her husband were from back east somewhere and she seemed to think they had moved to one of the most remote places on earth. Gram had bought one of her books after she wrote it. But it was quite funny in many places and I do think she learned to like Silver, at least a little bit.
Mother told me many stories about living in Silver City and about the mining camp at the Elks Tooth (There are two teeth on a bull elk that are almost pure ivory and are valuable as ivory is. Most hunters that hunt elk will pull the ivory teeth and keep them. A lot of them are made into jewelry.) At the Elks Tooth mine Granddad used a contraption he called the Groundhog to help with the mining. All prospectors and miners back then would make different things to help them get the gold ore out of the dirt. Most were screens and shaker boxes that rocked the dirt back and forth to let the gold fall through so the dirt and other rocks could be separated out and discarded. Granddad and his partner made the Groundhog out of running gears of an old car. They would put a couple of shovel fulls of small rocks and dirt into a box that would be shaken allowing the smaller gravel and hopefully gold fall through into smaller boxes or screens where it could be looked at to see if there was gold. They had rough, rubber mats under the screen to catch any gold that could be found.
He, also, did some gold mining using the traditional gold pan held in a stream of water that allowed the user to swirl the pan allowing the sand and dirt to be siphoned off as the gold would be heavier than the dirt. I have a gold pan that may have been Granddads or it might have been Daddy’s. Mother wasn’t clear on who it had belonged to.
At this camp and at others Granddad would have problems with the native wildlife coming in to help themselves to his food and other gear. At one camp he found he could put his can of milk that he used in his coffee in a fork of the tree that shaded the camp and it would stay cool as well as being handy when needed. Only the milk started to disappear faster than it should have. After several days of careful watching Granddad saw a small squirrel had discovered the can of milk and learned to tip the can just enough to get a drink of milk then when it let it go the can would return to the correct place in the tree.
Another time Granddad said there was a coyote started hanging around trying to steal scraps of food. They thought it was a female that had a litter of pups somewhere that she was feeding. For some reason she stole on of Granddad’s leather gloves and they would see her carrying it around. They never did figure out if she did it cause she liked him or as a toy for her pups or just because she could. They said it was very much like a tame dog would do.
And another time they had a mountain lion or cougar start hanging around their camp. They saw the big cat tracks lots of time and could see from the tracks that the cat was watching them from just out of sight many times. They were mining in an old mine shaft at that time and frequently there would be the tracks of the cougar in the tunnel when they would go back in the morning, and at other times they thought the cat was hanging around the entrance to the tunnel while they were in there. No, Granddad didn’t seem to be afraid of any of the wild animals that came around. Actually he was the kind of person who might have been a wildlife conservationist or naturist in this day and age. He liked and respected all of nature and her animals and learned as much as he could about nature teaching it to Alma and his daughters and anyone else that wanted to learn.
This was the depression era and they didn’t always have the best food so Granddad would kill rabbits for them to eat when he got a chance as well as a deer in the fall each deer season. Silver City has always been know as a good area for hunting mule deer, white tail deer, turkeys, and elk, as well as bear and cougar. One day he was talking to some friends when they spotted a jack rabbit sitting off a ways from them. One of the friends told Granddad he couldn’t hit the rabbit with a rock so of course Boyd had to take the dare. He selected his rock and threw it at the rabbit hitting it and killing. He had played baseball as a boy and I think he played on a baseball team some in Silver City and was good at throwing baseballs so it was no surprise he hit the rabbit. I am sure it made them a good supper that night. Mother said that they would boil the rabbit and then make a stew or fry it.
Mother said they had lots of friends who were living in the Burro Mountains and mining during this time. One of them was named Valle Tulloch (I am not sure of the spelling) and his wife. They dug into a hillside and built a room to live in. They added a front wall and a roof to keep the dirt from sifting down. They had a wood stove, a couch, and a table and chairs, and a bed in the room. They hung canvas from a wooden roof in the room to keep out rain. They had a large, furry, white cat to help keep down the mice, that would visit them each night after they went to bed during warm summer nights when the door was left open for cool air. Valle and his wife got in the habit of reaching down from the bed and petting the cat as it walked by in the dark. One night the moon was bright and he looked down after he had petted the cat a couple of times and realized he was petting a skunk. The skunk didn’t seem to mind and they wondered how many times he had petted it on other nights without even realizing it wasn’t the cat.
One day this same couple had gone to Silver City for supplies and when they came back their nice, snug home in the hillside hole was a wreak. Tracks showed that a mountain lion had come through the window. It had got into a large can of shortening, ripped open a bag of flour, and bit into several cans of food. Could it have been the lion that Granddad had seen around his camp? No one will ever know.
I’m not sure but this might have been the same couple that Mother told another story of. One day the wife had re-arranged the furniture in the house. By now they had a dresser with a large mirror on it like was common back then. That night they went to bed and during the night the husband woke up. There was a full moon shining through the window and when the husband sat up in bed he saw a naked man staring back at him. He grabbed the shotgun he kept beside of the bed and shot the stranger. Only then did he realize he had shot his reflection in the mirror. His wife just laughed and laughed at him.
It was somewhere in the Silver City area that some pictures were taken of Alma and her daughters swimming in an irrigation ditch on summer. The story was that there were huge old willow trees near the ditch and a windmill that pumped water into a big water barrel.
There was an Old Prospector that Granddad met that had 12 mules and a little dog that rode on a pack saddle on one of the mules. He had sold everything he and his wife had and taken to prospecting when she died except a set of expensive silver ware. He liked Granddad’s three daughters so much he gave each of them a spoon out of the set of silver ware. I am not sure who had the spoon that was Mothers. She said it had a date of 1912 on it.
Another old prospector that Granddad knew once flashed too much money and someone kidnapped him, stole his money and dropped him down a mine shaft. But he was found before he died of starvation and lived to tell the tale. I think she said it was the same man who told of having a daughter in San Francisco that disappeared when he lived there. He spent thousands of dollars to find her. She had got in the car with the wrong person. She was drugged and he found her just before she was shipped off to China to be sold on the black market.
A man that Mother knew at some time in Silver City gave Mother some silver kitchen ware that he had that he said he had bought for his wife when she was alive. He had used the huge silver pot as a coffee pot on his campfire for years and it has a dent in the side. I have it. There was a matching salt & pepper shaker, a sugar & creamer sets, a two handled drinking cup, another cup, jelly cup with handle. All are nice, old silver but none match which makes me wonder at the story he told about buying it for his wife. Could he have simply collected in his travels or maybe it was stolen. Who knows what those old prospectors might have done before they got the gold favor. Mother may have met this man after she married her first husband known as Slim.
In about 1941 the Green family moved from Silver City, NM to Albuquerque, NM where Granddad could get better care at the Veterans Hospital. In 1942 Mother married Slim when she was about 18. It seems that her mother, Alma, may have insisted that they get married as she thought it might be ‘necessary’. Also, I seem to remember that Slim may have had some medical training at some point and Alma thought he might be able to take care of Catherine better as Catherine had asthma since she was quite small. In fact the asthma got so bad sometimes that they didn’t think Catherine would live to be grown. At that time there was little known about asthma or how to take care of a person when they had an asthma attack. Bad luck has passed the asthma on to all three of Catherine’s daughters, and all four of her grandchildren have a touch of it, also.
Not long after she and Slim married they and a couple of friends, Milton Andrew and his wife, and brother made a trip into the then new Gila National Forest to see the Gila Cliff Dwellings that were to become quite a tourist attraction in the 1960’s to now. Now there is a paved road most of the way to the Dwellings but then there was barely a trail to them. The left with the tractor and wagon from Doc Campbell’s Store. The store is still open in Gila for outfitting and supplies for travelers and tourists. Plus they guide hunters into Gila Wilderness. There is a good article about the history of Doc Campbell’s Store and the Gila Hot Springs at these sites.
http://www.gilahotspringsranch.com/aboutus.htm
http://geoheat.oit.edu/bulletin/bull23-4/art6.pdf
Site with old black and white photos of Gila National Forest and Gila Cliff Dwellings.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/about/history/gila/index.htm
Most people that wanted to see the cliff dwellings went in on horseback at that time but their group decided to pull a wagon, or trailer with a Ford tractor. They rode in the wagon with all their food, bedding, and gear while one man drove the tractor. Kate told how there were ‘screaming points’ where the trail was so narrow and high up they thought for sure that they would fall off a cliff. They stopped at a place called Lyon’s Lodge for one night. They camped for several days in a meadow below the Cliff Dwellings and explored the area and Dwellings. Kate told of exploring the old Anasazi houses one day and then when she went back there was a mountain lion track over her track where she had crawled through one of the tiny doors. Even at that time most of the pots, arrow heads, and other things left by the original Indians that had lived there had been stolen by pot hunters and other people that had come to see the Cliff Dwellings. (When Kate and husband Bob moved to Silver City in 1970 they visited the Cliff Dwellings many times as did their daughters and friends.)
In the last years before the death of Doc Campbell, he and his wife, Ida, became good friends with my dad. Daddy made several trips into the Gila Wilderness with Doc, first as an elk hunter and later at the request of Doc’s family as a friend and someone to help look after Doc who was a good bit older than my dad. Doc insisted on going on the guided hunting trips offered by his family but his family was beginning to fear for his safely so asked my dad to go as a friend.
Mother told us the stories that Milton had told her about his first trips into the Gila area in about 1944. He told about the big herds of deer, lots of rattlesnakes, and how he had seen a mountain lion and her babies living in the cliff dwellings. Milton said on one of his first trips he saw a hole or cave in the rock cliff near the cliff dwellings which can still be seen today. Being the adventous kind of man he was with thoughts of lost gold treasures he attached a long rope to a tree or rock on the top of the cliff and had his friend let him down over the edge of the cliff. He said that the rope wasn’t quite long enough to allow him a good look in the cave and the rope started twisting and turning when he got to the end of it. He didn’t get a good look but he couldn’t see anything that looked very interesting. Maybe just some sticks that could have been either a rats nest or possibly the nest of a hawk or eagle. He had his friend pull him back up and planned to get a longer rope and go down again. As far as Mother knew he never did try to get back into the cave again. It certainly was a good story.
Milton told Mother about a man named Bear Moore. I don’t know if anyone ever knew his real first name. He was called Bear because he had been attacked by a bear and had a badly disfigured face from the attack. Because he didn’t want to scare people or have them make fun of him he lived in seclusion as a hermit on the West Fork of the Gila River a few miles west of the Cliff Dwellings. There were stories of Nat Shaw a bear and lion hunter, and Ben Lilly, another bear and lion hunter who graduated from the University of Mississippi and then became a mountain man and hunter with a big pack of hounds. In the early 1900’s there was a renegade Apache Indian that lived in the Gila Mountains with his wife and 2 or 3 children. They traveled all over the Gila area killing game, robbing camps and stealing horses. Mother didn’t know if they were ever arrested or not.
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While she and Slim were married they did a lot of traveling around New Mexico. She told of going to Acoma Pueblo and buying some small Acoma pots made by a young girl. She couldn’t afford to buy any of the bigger ones made by the well known potters. She told of finding an old cast iron skillet in the mud after a rainstorm in the Los Lunas, NM area. There was an old adobe house nearby that had a dirt floor. (Year later in late 1970’s and early 1980’s Lee and I would explore a big, old, wood frame house that had been abandoned that looked as if it might have been an old ranch or hunting lodge. I think a lodge as it was near the river where a lot of hunting was done. Nearby was an old, adobe one room house with a dirt floor, that I wondered if it could have been the same one Mother (Kate) found that time. I stopped at the ‘lodge’ with Mother one time when we were driving from Albuquerque to Silver City but she said she couldn’t be sure. The ‘lodge’ has since been torn down which is a shame as it could have been remolded when we saw it. From the back door you could look down on a pond near the Rio Grande River where there were usually hundreds of snow geese in the winter, as well as ducks, and Canadian geese.)
It was while she was living with Slim that Kate had a pet skunk. Someone found two baby skunks and knew how to safely remove the sent glands with a sharp pocketknife before the babies could throw the musk that comes from the glands. One skunk baby didn’t live very long but Kate had the other one for several years. There are a couple of pictures of it and a dog they had. She always talked about her pet skunk but said they really shouldn’t be kept as pets.
Catherine, also known as Kate, lived with Slim for a couple of years. She always said she was thankful they didn’t have any children. Slim was quite a bit older than she was and did a lot of drinking. He got a job in Portland, Oregon working on a dairy farm, which was something he had done a lot of, and he and Kate moved to the farm near Portland. Kate didn’t like it there. She said it seemed like it rained all the time. It must have been a really bad year for rain. (Ironically her youngest daughter, Janice, and family would move there to live in 1999. They like it there.) She said the moved back to Silver City, NM where Slim’s drinking got worse and she divorced him and moved to Albuquerque, NM where her parents had moved to. She said there were good times with Slim as well as bad. He played guitar at dances frequently and she enjoyed going to them, dancing and singing the old western songs.
Boyd and Alma moved to Albuquerque sometime in the 1940’s to be near the VA hospital there. Kate moved back in with them and her sisters when she divorced Slim.
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It was here that Boyd bought a home in what is now called the North Valley of Albuquerque on Don Louis Rd. I have not been able to find a Don Louis Rd. in the North Valley. There is one in the South Valley now but it is not the correct road.
While here he became a self-taught taxidermist. Alma and Kate helped him with the work. He also did a lot of handyman work for anyone that would hire him and learned to do flagstone work which is considered quite and art. He laid flagstone in the patio in their backyard and several people in Albuquerque hired him to do flagstone work at their homes. It is possible some of that flagstone work is still in some of the old homes.
Kate learned to do fur work sewing fur into fur coats, stoles, and muffs for the rich people of Albuquerque. She, also, did leather coats, gloves, and vests. When I was a child I that it was really fun to look thought the pieces of fur and leather that my mom had left over from she did this kind of work. She kept the pieces in two large heavy, cardboard barrels with metal lids. Sarah and I have some of the left over fur and leather now. We have made a few things out of some of it. I can’t object to using the leather from cattle that have been butchered for food. As for killing any kind of wild animal for its fur I am completely against it. Too many of our wildlife had become almost extent do to hunting and killing simply for a fur coat. Especially leopard, cheetah, zebra, American bison, bobcat, bear, mink, marten, beaver, and other fur bearing animal. And the use of animal parts for souvenirs in other countries is just total ignorance, stupidity, and worse, greed. Guess it is best not to get me started on this subject.
I think mom may have worked in several different clothing shops in Albuquerque, one being a fur shop. For a while she worked for a shop called Pioneer Wear in Old Town Albuquerque. The store was still there in 1967 to 1969 when we lived in Albuquerque then.
Mother, Kate,
Over the next few years all three sisters met and married. Elnora met and married Alfred Botts, whose family was from Texas, also. Alfred had come out from California on a visit and renewed acquaintances with the Greens asking Elnora to marry him. On returning to California he had sent Elnora a bus ticket so she could come and visit him in California which she did and agreed to marry him and move there. After they married they moved to El Cajon, CA near San Diego, where they lived from then on. They had four children Jerry, Bruce, Lynda, and Shirley. Elnora still lives there.
Wanda moved to the Los Angeles, CA area to go to a school and when the money for school ran out after the first year she found a job in the L.A. area. She met and married Dale Dickson and they lived in Torrance, CA where Wanda still lives. She and Dale had three children Denise, Dana, and Diana.
Before Wanda moved to California she met a man in the Air Force stationed at nearby Kirtland Air Force Base. I think his name was Smitty or at least that is what he was called. Smitty had some friends and they started going to the Green home when they could to visit with the three sisters. One of the men was Robert Barnett. He and Kate started dating and on August 31, 1950 they were married in a small ceremony in the Green backyard. In early November of that fall Mother, Daddy, and my mom’s parents, Body and Alma went on a deer hunting trip. It was at that time that Mother became suspicious that she might be pregrent.
A few months later in November of 1950 my granddad when to the bus station in Albuquerque, I don’t remember why he went there, but he died while there. I never got to know him as I was born the following August 3, 1951.
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After Boyd and family moved to Silver City Boyd got very interested in geology, and mining as Silver City was built as a mining community. The Santa Rita Copper Mine is to the southeast of Silver City and has been mined for several hundred years. Indians were mining there before the white man came. The site listed below has an excellent history for the area where the mine is.
http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Articles/Southwest/Grant/SantaRita-Thetownthatvani.html
Before long Boyd was prospecting for his own mine. He had a turquoise mine for a while in the Burro Mountains to the southwest of Silver City. He got quite a bit of good turquoise out of it and made many turquoise buttons for his wife and girls to use on their clothes. He polished lots of pieces of turquoise to be used on necklaces and in rings. I remember Mother, Catherine having what seemed like lots and lots of turquoise when I was a girl but don’t think it was as much as I thought it was when I got older. Mother did let me have one piece that I took to a Navajo silversmith when I was 17 and had made into a ring. I wore it constantly for years and years. It needs some repair work now so I can wear it again. Sarah, Janice and I divided the turquoise and all of the 1920’s though 1940’s costume jewelry that she and Gram left to us.
For several years Granddad, Boyd, was partners with a couple of other prospectors and they had different mines mostly in the Burro Mountains. They went to places called White Signal, Alma (now a ghost town and not named after my grandmother), Shakespeare, (also a ghost town), all of which are in the Burro Mountain area near Silver City, NM. The Burros are high desert, shrub growth with juniper and pinion trees very similar to what we have here where I live on the West Mesa area west of Rio Rancho, and Albuquerque, NM. There are lots of rolling hills that tend to drop off into dry arroyos that can run full of water when a rain storm comes. Those rains are apt to bring all kinds of rocks and ore down from higher up when they happen. Gold, silver, turquoise, copper, and a few other ores can be found there in small amounts. I don’t think there were any huge mining claims there just small ones that a person or family might seek out a living from if they worked at it real hard. This was during the Depression and with all his health problems Granddad couldn’t get much in the way of work to feed his family with so he tried mining. If he actually made any money with it I couldn’t say but it did seem to save his life. The doctors in Texas told him he had about six months to live but by going to New Mexico and living mostly outside in the desert seemed to help and he lived for another 16 years.
Mother was able to find the general area where the Elks Tooth Mine was that Granddad and a partner worked for a while in the 1930’s. This would have been when she and Daddy moved there in 1970. When Lee and I lived in Silver City from 1971 to 1973 we explored that area a lot. For a while Daddy, Robert Barnett, had a mining claim filed in that area probably in the 1980’s. At about the same time, Mother’s cousin, Rex Green filed a couple of mining claims there, too.
In the 30’s when Granddad was mining there he would live out there in a tent all week and work while Gram and their three daughters lived in Silver City. On Friday evening Gram and the girls would drive out and stay with him until Sunday morning when they would go back to Silver City for church. Gram and Granddad helped start the Church of Christ that they went to in Silver. I remember reading a book written by a woman who was the wife of one of the preachers hired by the church. She and her husband were from back east somewhere and she seemed to think they had moved to one of the most remote places on earth. Gram had bought one of her books after she wrote it. But it was quite funny in many places and I do think she learned to like Silver, at least a little bit.
Mother told me many stories about living in Silver City and about the mining camp at the Elks Tooth (There are two teeth on a bull elk that are almost pure ivory and are valuable as ivory is. Most hunters that hunt elk will pull the ivory teeth and keep them. A lot of them are made into jewelry.) At the Elks Tooth mine Granddad used a contraption he called the Groundhog to help with the mining. All prospectors and miners back then would make different things to help them get the gold ore out of the dirt. Most were screens and shaker boxes that rocked the dirt back and forth to let the gold fall through so the dirt and other rocks could be separated out and discarded. Granddad and his partner made the Groundhog out of running gears of an old car. They would put a couple of shovel fulls of small rocks and dirt into a box that would be shaken allowing the smaller gravel and hopefully gold fall through into smaller boxes or screens where it could be looked at to see if there was gold. They had rough, rubber mats under the screen to catch any gold that could be found.
He, also, did some gold mining using the traditional gold pan held in a stream of water that allowed the user to swirl the pan allowing the sand and dirt to be siphoned off as the gold would be heavier than the dirt. I have a gold pan that may have been Granddads or it might have been Daddy’s. Mother wasn’t clear on who it had belonged to.
At this camp and at others Granddad would have problems with the native wildlife coming in to help themselves to his food and other gear. At one camp he found he could put his can of milk that he used in his coffee in a fork of the tree that shaded the camp and it would stay cool as well as being handy when needed. Only the milk started to disappear faster than it should have. After several days of careful watching Granddad saw a small squirrel had discovered the can of milk and learned to tip the can just enough to get a drink of milk then when it let it go the can would return to the correct place in the tree.
Another time Granddad said there was a coyote started hanging around trying to steal scraps of food. They thought it was a female that had a litter of pups somewhere that she was feeding. For some reason she stole on of Granddad’s leather gloves and they would see her carrying it around. They never did figure out if she did it cause she liked him or as a toy for her pups or just because she could. They said it was very much like a tame dog would do.
And another time they had a mountain lion or cougar start hanging around their camp. They saw the big cat tracks lots of time and could see from the tracks that the cat was watching them from just out of sight many times. They were mining in an old mine shaft at that time and frequently there would be the tracks of the cougar in the tunnel when they would go back in the morning, and at other times they thought the cat was hanging around the entrance to the tunnel while they were in there. No, Granddad didn’t seem to be afraid of any of the wild animals that came around. Actually he was the kind of person who might have been a wildlife conservationist or naturist in this day and age. He liked and respected all of nature and her animals and learned as much as he could about nature teaching it to Alma and his daughters and anyone else that wanted to learn.
This was the depression era and they didn’t always have the best food so Granddad would kill rabbits for them to eat when he got a chance as well as a deer in the fall each deer season. Silver City has always been know as a good area for hunting mule deer, white tail deer, turkeys, and elk, as well as bear and cougar. One day he was talking to some friends when they spotted a jack rabbit sitting off a ways from them. One of the friends told Granddad he couldn’t hit the rabbit with a rock so of course Boyd had to take the dare. He selected his rock and threw it at the rabbit hitting it and killing. He had played baseball as a boy and I think he played on a baseball team some in Silver City and was good at throwing baseballs so it was no surprise he hit the rabbit. I am sure it made them a good supper that night. Mother said that they would boil the rabbit and then make a stew or fry it.
Mother said they had lots of friends who were living in the Burro Mountains and mining during this time. One of them was named Valle Tulloch (I am not sure of the spelling) and his wife. They dug into a hillside and built a room to live in. They added a front wall and a roof to keep the dirt from sifting down. They had a wood stove, a couch, and a table and chairs, and a bed in the room. They hung canvas from a wooden roof in the room to keep out rain. They had a large, furry, white cat to help keep down the mice, that would visit them each night after they went to bed during warm summer nights when the door was left open for cool air. Valle and his wife got in the habit of reaching down from the bed and petting the cat as it walked by in the dark. One night the moon was bright and he looked down after he had petted the cat a couple of times and realized he was petting a skunk. The skunk didn’t seem to mind and they wondered how many times he had petted it on other nights without even realizing it wasn’t the cat.
One day this same couple had gone to Silver City for supplies and when they came back their nice, snug home in the hillside hole was a wreak. Tracks showed that a mountain lion had come through the window. It had got into a large can of shortening, ripped open a bag of flour, and bit into several cans of food. Could it have been the lion that Granddad had seen around his camp? No one will ever know.
I’m not sure but this might have been the same couple that Mother told another story of. One day the wife had re-arranged the furniture in the house. By now they had a dresser with a large mirror on it like was common back then. That night they went to bed and during the night the husband woke up. There was a full moon shining through the window and when the husband sat up in bed he saw a naked man staring back at him. He grabbed the shotgun he kept beside of the bed and shot the stranger. Only then did he realize he had shot his reflection in the mirror. His wife just laughed and laughed at him.
It was somewhere in the Silver City area that some pictures were taken of Alma and her daughters swimming in an irrigation ditch on summer. The story was that there were huge old willow trees near the ditch and a windmill that pumped water into a big water barrel.
There was an Old Prospector that Granddad met that had 12 mules and a little dog that rode on a pack saddle on one of the mules. He had sold everything he and his wife had and taken to prospecting when she died except a set of expensive silver ware. He liked Granddad’s three daughters so much he gave each of them a spoon out of the set of silver ware. I am not sure who had the spoon that was Mothers. She said it had a date of 1912 on it.
Another old prospector that Granddad knew once flashed too much money and someone kidnapped him, stole his money and dropped him down a mine shaft. But he was found before he died of starvation and lived to tell the tale. I think she said it was the same man who told of having a daughter in San Francisco that disappeared when he lived there. He spent thousands of dollars to find her. She had got in the car with the wrong person. She was drugged and he found her just before she was shipped off to China to be sold on the black market.
A man that Mother knew at some time in Silver City gave Mother some silver kitchen ware that he had that he said he had bought for his wife when she was alive. He had used the huge silver pot as a coffee pot on his campfire for years and it has a dent in the side. I have it. There was a matching salt & pepper shaker, a sugar & creamer sets, a two handled drinking cup, another cup, jelly cup with handle. All are nice, old silver but none match which makes me wonder at the story he told about buying it for his wife. Could he have simply collected in his travels or maybe it was stolen. Who knows what those old prospectors might have done before they got the gold favor. Mother may have met this man after she married her first husband known as Slim.
In about 1941 the Green family moved from Silver City, NM to Albuquerque, NM where Granddad could get better care at the Veterans Hospital. In 1942 Mother married Slim when she was about 18. It seems that her mother, Alma, may have insisted that they get married as she thought it might be ‘necessary’. Also, I seem to remember that Slim may have had some medical training at some point and Alma thought he might be able to take care of Catherine better as Catherine had asthma since she was quite small. In fact the asthma got so bad sometimes that they didn’t think Catherine would live to be grown. At that time there was little known about asthma or how to take care of a person when they had an asthma attack. Bad luck has passed the asthma on to all three of Catherine’s daughters, and all four of her grandchildren have a touch of it, also.
Not long after she and Slim married they and a couple of friends, Milton Andrew and his wife, and brother made a trip into the then new Gila National Forest to see the Gila Cliff Dwellings that were to become quite a tourist attraction in the 1960’s to now. Now there is a paved road most of the way to the Dwellings but then there was barely a trail to them. The left with the tractor and wagon from Doc Campbell’s Store. The store is still open in Gila for outfitting and supplies for travelers and tourists. Plus they guide hunters into Gila Wilderness. There is a good article about the history of Doc Campbell’s Store and the Gila Hot Springs at these sites.
http://www.gilahotspringsranch.com/aboutus.htm
http://geoheat.oit.edu/bulletin/bull23-4/art6.pdf
Site with old black and white photos of Gila National Forest and Gila Cliff Dwellings.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/about/history/gila/index.htm
Most people that wanted to see the cliff dwellings went in on horseback at that time but their group decided to pull a wagon, or trailer with a Ford tractor. They rode in the wagon with all their food, bedding, and gear while one man drove the tractor. Kate told how there were ‘screaming points’ where the trail was so narrow and high up they thought for sure that they would fall off a cliff. They stopped at a place called Lyon’s Lodge for one night. They camped for several days in a meadow below the Cliff Dwellings and explored the area and Dwellings. Kate told of exploring the old Anasazi houses one day and then when she went back there was a mountain lion track over her track where she had crawled through one of the tiny doors. Even at that time most of the pots, arrow heads, and other things left by the original Indians that had lived there had been stolen by pot hunters and other people that had come to see the Cliff Dwellings. (When Kate and husband Bob moved to Silver City in 1970 they visited the Cliff Dwellings many times as did their daughters and friends.)
In the last years before the death of Doc Campbell, he and his wife, Ida, became good friends with my dad. Daddy made several trips into the Gila Wilderness with Doc, first as an elk hunter and later at the request of Doc’s family as a friend and someone to help look after Doc who was a good bit older than my dad. Doc insisted on going on the guided hunting trips offered by his family but his family was beginning to fear for his safely so asked my dad to go as a friend.
Mother told us the stories that Milton had told her about his first trips into the Gila area in about 1944. He told about the big herds of deer, lots of rattlesnakes, and how he had seen a mountain lion and her babies living in the cliff dwellings. Milton said on one of his first trips he saw a hole or cave in the rock cliff near the cliff dwellings which can still be seen today. Being the adventous kind of man he was with thoughts of lost gold treasures he attached a long rope to a tree or rock on the top of the cliff and had his friend let him down over the edge of the cliff. He said that the rope wasn’t quite long enough to allow him a good look in the cave and the rope started twisting and turning when he got to the end of it. He didn’t get a good look but he couldn’t see anything that looked very interesting. Maybe just some sticks that could have been either a rats nest or possibly the nest of a hawk or eagle. He had his friend pull him back up and planned to get a longer rope and go down again. As far as Mother knew he never did try to get back into the cave again. It certainly was a good story.
Milton told Mother about a man named Bear Moore. I don’t know if anyone ever knew his real first name. He was called Bear because he had been attacked by a bear and had a badly disfigured face from the attack. Because he didn’t want to scare people or have them make fun of him he lived in seclusion as a hermit on the West Fork of the Gila River a few miles west of the Cliff Dwellings. There were stories of Nat Shaw a bear and lion hunter, and Ben Lilly, another bear and lion hunter who graduated from the University of Mississippi and then became a mountain man and hunter with a big pack of hounds. In the early 1900’s there was a renegade Apache Indian that lived in the Gila Mountains with his wife and 2 or 3 children. They traveled all over the Gila area killing game, robbing camps and stealing horses. Mother didn’t know if they were ever arrested or not.
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While she and Slim were married they did a lot of traveling around New Mexico. She told of going to Acoma Pueblo and buying some small Acoma pots made by a young girl. She couldn’t afford to buy any of the bigger ones made by the well known potters. She told of finding an old cast iron skillet in the mud after a rainstorm in the Los Lunas, NM area. There was an old adobe house nearby that had a dirt floor. (Year later in late 1970’s and early 1980’s Lee and I would explore a big, old, wood frame house that had been abandoned that looked as if it might have been an old ranch or hunting lodge. I think a lodge as it was near the river where a lot of hunting was done. Nearby was an old, adobe one room house with a dirt floor, that I wondered if it could have been the same one Mother (Kate) found that time. I stopped at the ‘lodge’ with Mother one time when we were driving from Albuquerque to Silver City but she said she couldn’t be sure. The ‘lodge’ has since been torn down which is a shame as it could have been remolded when we saw it. From the back door you could look down on a pond near the Rio Grande River where there were usually hundreds of snow geese in the winter, as well as ducks, and Canadian geese.)
It was while she was living with Slim that Kate had a pet skunk. Someone found two baby skunks and knew how to safely remove the sent glands with a sharp pocketknife before the babies could throw the musk that comes from the glands. One skunk baby didn’t live very long but Kate had the other one for several years. There are a couple of pictures of it and a dog they had. She always talked about her pet skunk but said they really shouldn’t be kept as pets.
Catherine, also known as Kate, lived with Slim for a couple of years. She always said she was thankful they didn’t have any children. Slim was quite a bit older than she was and did a lot of drinking. He got a job in Portland, Oregon working on a dairy farm, which was something he had done a lot of, and he and Kate moved to the farm near Portland. Kate didn’t like it there. She said it seemed like it rained all the time. It must have been a really bad year for rain. (Ironically her youngest daughter, Janice, and family would move there to live in 1999. They like it there.) She said the moved back to Silver City, NM where Slim’s drinking got worse and she divorced him and moved to Albuquerque, NM where her parents had moved to. She said there were good times with Slim as well as bad. He played guitar at dances frequently and she enjoyed going to them, dancing and singing the old western songs.
Boyd and Alma moved to Albuquerque sometime in the 1940’s to be near the VA hospital there. Kate moved back in with them and her sisters when she divorced Slim.
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It was here that Boyd bought a home in what is now called the North Valley of Albuquerque on Don Louis Rd. I have not been able to find a Don Louis Rd. in the North Valley. There is one in the South Valley now but it is not the correct road.
While here he became a self-taught taxidermist. Alma and Kate helped him with the work. He also did a lot of handyman work for anyone that would hire him and learned to do flagstone work which is considered quite and art. He laid flagstone in the patio in their backyard and several people in Albuquerque hired him to do flagstone work at their homes. It is possible some of that flagstone work is still in some of the old homes.
Kate learned to do fur work sewing fur into fur coats, stoles, and muffs for the rich people of Albuquerque. She, also, did leather coats, gloves, and vests. When I was a child I that it was really fun to look thought the pieces of fur and leather that my mom had left over from she did this kind of work. She kept the pieces in two large heavy, cardboard barrels with metal lids. Sarah and I have some of the left over fur and leather now. We have made a few things out of some of it. I can’t object to using the leather from cattle that have been butchered for food. As for killing any kind of wild animal for its fur I am completely against it. Too many of our wildlife had become almost extent do to hunting and killing simply for a fur coat. Especially leopard, cheetah, zebra, American bison, bobcat, bear, mink, marten, beaver, and other fur bearing animal. And the use of animal parts for souvenirs in other countries is just total ignorance, stupidity, and worse, greed. Guess it is best not to get me started on this subject.
I think mom may have worked in several different clothing shops in Albuquerque, one being a fur shop. For a while she worked for a shop called Pioneer Wear in Old Town Albuquerque. The store was still there in 1967 to 1969 when we lived in Albuquerque then.
Mother, Kate,
Over the next few years all three sisters met and married. Elnora met and married Alfred Botts, whose family was from Texas, also. Alfred had come out from California on a visit and renewed acquaintances with the Greens asking Elnora to marry him. On returning to California he had sent Elnora a bus ticket so she could come and visit him in California which she did and agreed to marry him and move there. After they married they moved to El Cajon, CA near San Diego, where they lived from then on. They had four children Jerry, Bruce, Lynda, and Shirley. Elnora still lives there.
Wanda moved to the Los Angeles, CA area to go to a school and when the money for school ran out after the first year she found a job in the L.A. area. She met and married Dale Dickson and they lived in Torrance, CA where Wanda still lives. She and Dale had three children Denise, Dana, and Diana.
Before Wanda moved to California she met a man in the Air Force stationed at nearby Kirtland Air Force Base. I think his name was Smitty or at least that is what he was called. Smitty had some friends and they started going to the Green home when they could to visit with the three sisters. One of the men was Robert Barnett. He and Kate started dating and on August 31, 1950 they were married in a small ceremony in the Green backyard. In early November of that fall Mother, Daddy, and my mom’s parents, Body and Alma went on a deer hunting trip. It was at that time that Mother became suspicious that she might be pregrent.
A few months later in November of 1950 my granddad when to the bus station in Albuquerque, I don’t remember why he went there, but he died while there. I never got to know him as I was born the following August 3, 1951.
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