Allan Whitmer
Original Whitmer House
Left to Right: Ben, Lois, Leroy, Allan, and Milford Whitmer
LLAN LOUIS WHITMER ~MY HISTORY~
Preface
This history is dedicated to my family, my children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, and nieces and nephews. The story is about the early part of my life, mostly about growing up in Alpine, Arizona. It was a wonderful time for us boys and all our family.
In 1996 I returned to Alpine and once again relived my childhood. Our names are still carved in the granite rocks above where the house was — it is no longer there. Gobbler Peak still stood out. We saw Uncle Harold’s house and the stream still trickled on, where Milford, Roy, and I were baptized, and the church was still standing. It is now being used as a school.
This story is seen through my eyes, but we all lived it, and I hope those who read it will enjoy it.
My thanks to my sister-in-law, Alene, who put this story together. She proof-read it and fixed spelling and other errors. Thank you. I love you. I want my nieces and nephews to know how much I love them and hope they can get an idea of a former time in Alpine.
Allan Louis Whitmer
August 2006
Published September 9, 2006
On February 19, 1933 in Alpine, Apache County, Arizona, I was born to Virginia Swapp and Ralph Judd Whitmer. My birth took place at home with my maternal grandmother, Margaret Amelia Mortenson Swapp, attending as midwife. Grandmother Swapp had been ordained a midwife by one of the General Authorities of the Church, but the records of that ordination have not been found, or possibly not recorded.
Front gate of the Whitmer home in Alpine, AZ
That cold February day the snow was so deep that only a mound showed where the car was. I was born about 1:00 a.m. and Grandmother was just getting things washed and straightened up when Dad’s brother, Don Whitmer, came in and said that she was needed at their home to help deliver Aunt Conda’s baby. Dad couldn’t get the car out so he caught and harnessed the team of horses to a sled to take Grandmother to Don and Conda’s. The deep snow caused the horses to lunge through and they had to be rested after six to eight lunges. Under better conditions, it would have taken only a short time to go the five miles, but they finally made it and Nelden J. Whitmer, my “twin” cousin, was born that night around 11:00 p.m.
In the spring of 1932, Dad and Mother bought 300 acres and a home from Oscar Jepson. This home in Alpine was a large five room frame structure with a large pantry and a front porch. The living room ceilings were twelve feet high and the floors were wood; the walls and ceilings were wall-papered and the room was warmed by a large pot-bellied wood fired heater. The kitchen was heated by a wood cook stove. The two bedrooms were always cold in the winter months. The WPA (Work Projects Administration) built the outhouse behind the house.
One day us kids took the ashes out of the wood stoves and put them in a wooden box, then out on the back porch. We went to Luna Lake for a while and on the way home we could see smoke pouring out of the house. Dad got water from the spring and put it out but it burned a huge hole in the porch floor.
Mother was a really good cook and could make wonderful bread, cakes and pies in that old wood cook stove.
Quite often there would be lightning storms and the lightning would come down the chimney and dance around on the stoves.
About 1942 or 43, our Stake President, Bryant Whiting built for us a concrete water tank angled toward the northeast of the house. Water was piped into the tank downhill from a spring in the upper Front gate of the Whitmer home in Alpine, AZ That cold February day the snow was so deep that only a mound showed where the car was. I was born about 1:00 a.m. and Grandmother was just getting things washed and straightened up when Dad’s brother, Don Whitmer, came in and said that she was needed at their home to help deliver Aunt Conda’s baby. Dad couldn’t get the car out so he caught and harnessed the team of horses to a sled to take Grandmother to Don and Conda’s. The deep snow caused the horses to lunge through and they had to be rested after six to eight lunges. Under better conditions, it would have taken only a short time to go the five miles, but they finally made it and Nelden J. Whitmer, my “twin” cousin, was born that night around 11:00 p.m.
In the spring of 1932, Dad and Mother bought 300 acres and a home from Oscar Jepson. This home in Alpine was a large five room frame structure with a large pantry and a front porch. The living room ceilings pasture across the road, a distance of about one mile from the house. With only gravity flow for pressure it ran very slowly. In later years the tank cracked and would never again hold water. Our home was one of only two with water piped into the house as most people had wells with ropes and buckets.
Dad built a screened back porch onto the house and nearby, a large cellar to store canned food, potatoes, carrots, and other fresh vegetables. In those days of no refrigeration, Mother kept and used the cream separator there because it was a cool place for the milk.
Our weekly baths were in a #2 washtub filled with water heated on the cook stove. There were seven of us to bathe and we would start with the youngest and work up until we had all had a bath. It would take two of us to carry out the tub, dump it, then bring it in and fill it again for the next person.
HAULING WOOD
Wood was the only source of heat for warmth and cooking. Gas was unheard of and at that time there was no electricity in Alpine. Cooking was also done with wood stoves.
Cedar, ~ pinion, juniper with pine were usually used in cooking. Pine was the mainstay for heat.
Hauling wood was a family affair, for fun and work. We would cut and load the wood, then have lunch. We would either take sandwiches or cook something in the dutch oven. Then we would start for home with team and wagon loaded with wood. Sometimes Dad would use a second team to skid a large log home to be sawed up and blocked later. Mother and us boys would bring the wagon.
Jepson Flat was a school section we had leased about five or six miles from the home place. When we went there to work it was usually a full day’s work and lunches were a big part of it. We always took Ralph and Virginia Whitmer at their home in Alpine
something to cook out when all the family went. Family cookouts are wonderful times to remember.
The John Jepson family lived about 200 yards from our house. Brother Jepson was Bishop of the Alpine Ward during the early years in our lives and we were close friends with them. When Dad was gone Florence Jepson helped mother every day, with us kids when we were small. Her son, Lamar Clark was Roy’s age and he played with us boys a lot. The rest of the family were adults.
Early in my life I can remember we made a trip to Safford and Douglas, Arizona and bought a few black Jersey calves and soon we started milking, separating the milk, and making butter to sell and use. We would fill 5 or 10-gallon cream cans and put them out by the mailbox for the mail truck to pick up and take them to Phoenix. After they were emptied at the dairy the mail truck brought them back on a return trip.
In those days everything was done by hand. When Dad was home he would do the milking, but it was mostly Mother, me and my brothers Milford and Roy, who milked the cows, turned the cream separator, helped make hard cheese, cottage cheese, and churned butter. When the cream turned to butter it was cleaned by pouring cold water over the butter and mixing and pressing out the buttermilk with wooden butter paddles. We then pressed the butter into wooden molds that made pound bars, ready to sell for .25 cents a pound.
Mother would start the cheese by filling a #1 tub with milk and putting it on a back burner of the old wood burning stove to cook real slow. When it was ready she would then add the rennet and put it in the cheese press. The rennet was available to buy when a trip was made to the store.
Dad made a cheese press by cutting the top and bottom out of a gallon can. He cut round blocks of wood to fit the can and used a tire jack to put on the pressure and squeeze out the whey.
Later, when the Coronado Trail was under construction, mother would pour the milk in bottles with cardboard stoppers, and every other day we would deliver the milk to the homes of the construction crew, pick up the empty bottles and return home. All of the kids had to help.
We had a large flock of 200 or more chickens and sold eggs. It was a tiresome job cleaning, candling, and packing the eggs into cartons. We had to use brushes made of a sandpaper substance to get off the big chunks of gunk. Every year we ordered about 200 baby chicks that had to be kept warm and the only heat we had for them were oil heaters. Several times the heaters exploded and the young chicks were killed but if there were any left alive they were as black as a chunk of coal, then we would have to replace them and start again.
We always had pigs and fed them pigweed, a weed that grew like wildfire, and every day we would gather an armload of pig weed and give it to the pigs along with their grain.
These were the days after the great depression and during World War II, when nothing was available to buy- no tires, shoes, gas, sugar, or flour. We were issued ration stamps for food, and were asked by the government to gather up all the scrap iron we could find so it would be available for the war effort.
Tramps and homeless people came by the house almost daily and would ask if they could chop wood for a meal. Mother always found something for them to eat but because some of them looked kind of scary, she would hand them something to eat and tell them to go on their way. One time she had put some fresh baked pies in the window sill to cool and someone stole them and she thought the thief was probably a tramp.
Some of the tramps would pull handcarts just like the pioneers. One time a family came through with a wagon pulled by a horse and a donkey teamed together. I remember Mother telling me that many times a family would stop and ask for a midwife, and Grandmother Swapp would deliver a baby then they would move on.
Because cash was very hard to come by, in order to make the payments on the ranch, Dad worked for a while with a crew maintaining the highway over the Coronado Trail. He had also worked building roads for the Forest Service at Pueblo Park, and as a fire guard at P. S. Knoll. Dad worked for a contractor named Blain Tenney building roads through the Petrified Forest with a team of horses and a fresno. He also worked on the construction of Big and Crescent Lakes, and was working there when Roy was born.
We had to be self-sufficient so we always grew a large garden and with the rain, and Ralph Whitmer cutting grain with his team of horses 4 Ralph using a grain binder water from our domestic spring we had plenty of water. We grew potatoes, corn, peas, green beans, beets, greens, green onions, leaf lettuce, radish, and turnips and would snack on these vegetables as we played or worked.
The altitude at Alpine was too high for anything else, although in Luna, New Mexico, just 12 miles away where Mother was raised, cucumbers, squash, cantaloupe, and tomatoes would grow.
Our supper meal was almost always homemade bread and milk with radishes, green onions, and leaf lettuce; unless something special was growing in the summertime.
All vegetables grown at a high elevation have a better taste and texture than those grown at lower elevations. Potatoes grown at lower elevations become mealy when cooked, but high elevation potatoes hold together. Apples too. The higher the elevation, the better the apple. Apples didn’t always survive the freeze in Alpine, but when they did they were good and there were also some good apples grown on the Blue.
Ralph Whitmer using a grain binder
The children were responsible for washing the dishes and we were always more willing to work when Mother would sing cowboy ballads, like Little Joe the Wrangler, Zebra Dun, and Billy Vanero. We had two dish pans on the stove, one to wash and the other to rinse the dishes; we would work and Mother sang. I can remember Grandmother, Sarah Jane Judd Whitmer, would hand crank her old Victrola record player while we listened to music. We had a piano but it didn’t move with us when we left Alpine.
We kept in touch with the outside world with a battery powered radio even though batteries were hard to get and expensive. We listened to the news, especially during World War IL On Monday night the Lux Radio Theater had a drama that we always listened to, and Dad would listen to the wrestling matches every week.
The snow shed had to be cleaned and refilled each winter. Snow was stored in the shed and covered with sawdust for insulation. We shoveled in the snow and packed it down to help keep the food cold, and we would also use some to make ice cream during the summer months.
The 300 acre farm was divided by the highway. The south half was mostly farmland and meadows, while the north half was hilly with pine and oak trees. The large open valleys were farmed, the rest was pasture for the cattle.
Dad and his brother, Don had a partnership in a saw mill that was set up on the Whitmer ranch, close to Uncle Rex’s and to Grandpa Whitmer’s (Angus Van Meter). The trees were cut from the hills on the property and Angus Van Meter Whitmer and Sarah Jane Judd wedding picture. They were married 7 November 1901 in Pima, Arizona.
milled for lumber. Later the mill was moved to our place and Dad made coffins from this lumber, including those he made for Uncle Harold’s boy, James Harold Whitmer who died at age 5 from accidentally drinking kerosene; for Uncle Von Whitmer’s little girl, who died of polio, and many others.
The north part of our place had a hilltop with white rock cliffs, about 20 feet high. We kids liked to play up and down these cliffs and where there were only a few places that were passable to get up and down the rocks, and we liked to try other ways, like swinging on ropes like Tarzan in the movies. We carved our names and messages into these rocks. It was only a half mile from the house and we had lots of fun times up there in our rocks, cooking outdoors – even frying chicken.
The south side was crop land, meadows and green pastures. A small stream, the head of the San Francisco River, cut through the south side from west to east. Willows grew heavily along its banks and there was a large hole in the creek. In 1940 when I was eight years old, I was baptized in that hole in the stream and also baptized in this place were my brothers Milford and Roy, and cousins David Keith Whitmer and Nelden J. Whitmer (my “twin” cousin).
An old water-wheel powered flour mill sat in one pasture, abandoned long before my day, because the water source went dry. There were meadow pastures for the milk cows and a few horses.
Oats, barley and wheat were the main field crops raised in Alpine. They were cut with a 1 930 R alph Whitmer working on the highway binder then shocked to dry and ripen before frost, as the growing season was too short to use a combine. When the shocks were dry we loaded them by hand with a pitchfork, onto wagons drawn by horses. Then we drove the wagons to the threshers and forked it in, again by hand, and the grain was threshed out. This was hard, back-breaking work.
The thresher started at one end of the valley and worked from farm to farm with all the men in the valley working at each place. The women at the farm where the threshing was being done, would feed all the men two meals a day, and all the horses were fed there. Thus the term “cooking for the threshers.”
Hay was put up the same way with a team of horses and a mower. It was cut and raked into rows, then piles, then loaded with a pitchfork onto a wagon and hauled to barns or stacks. We had lots of meadow hay we put into a large barn and fed to horses and milk cows in winter.
One spring Dad needed to retrieve his work horses to do his crop seeding so he took the car and went to Williams Valley where he caught his horse and, holding the rope out the car window, he led the horse as he drove along. The horse suddenly jerked back hard and pulled the rope through Dad’s hand and made deep rope burns.
On the fourth of July we always went to Round Valley to the rodeo held at a knoll between Alpine and Springerville. It was eagerly anticipated every year.
When Dad got a job on the Arizona State Highway we would go every Saturday night to Springerville to Becker Mercantile to cash his check and get groceries. The store had meat lockers and Dad had rented one to store a beef Each week he and Mother would get meat from the locker along with the rest of the groceries, then the family would all go get hamburgers at the lunch counter of the drug store, go out to a favorite spot in Springerville and eat, and then go to the movies.
During the war years there were newsreels on how the war was doing, then a cartoon and then the movie. We saw “Smokey, “ “Flicka, “ and others. We loved this and talked about it all the way home.
P.S. KNOLL FIRE GUARD
After the crops were planted and things taken care of at home, Dad went on fire guard for the Forest Service at P. S. Knoll, on the Black River in the White Mountains southwest of Alpine. No one knows what P.S. stands for. When the family was smaller we would stay with him. When I was only about two or three years old I had a small terrier dog that stayed with me wherever I went and sometimes when I wandered off into the trees and bushes, the folks would call the dog, and then follow him back to find me.
As the family grew larger we were no longer able to stay all summer at the tower, partly because the cabin had only two narrow camp cots that were very hard, but the main reason we stayed at home was because the cows, chickens, and other chores had to be done there. Mother and the boys took over these duties.
Once a week Mother would drive us to see Dad. The roads were Forest Service roads made by the hard labor of men with horses, they were not graveled, were very narrow and crooked, and when wet were slick and muddy. Several rivers and creeks had to be forded as there were no bridges.
Black River was the largest river, and the most fun to cross because we had to raise our feet onto the seats as the water ran through the floorboards of the car.
The fan belt had to be taken off so water would not be thrown onto the motor and drown it out. Once we lost a wheel in the middle of the stream, and we had to find it and put it back on. Another time when we were stuck in the stream a cowboy by the name of Arthur Slaughter, tried to pull us out by tying a rope to his saddle horn but the only thing he accomplished was to pull the horn out of the saddle. He then put the rope around the cantle of the saddle and was able to pull us out. Several times we had to chain up in the middle of the river to get across.
Dad always knew what time we should be at Black River and tried to meet us there if he could. Sometimes it was impossible to cross so Mother and us kids had to wade across.
Black River was about five miles down the mountain from the tower and if Dad rode his horse down, sometimes my older brother Milford and I would get to ride the horse back to the tower.
There was no water at the tower so we would catch rainwater off the roof of the cabin into a cistern and pump it out with a pitcher pump. This water was only good for bathing or mopping the floor. Drinking water came from a spring about two or three miles from the tower and carried in one or two-gallon canteens hung from a saddle horn. The horses also had to be taken there twice a day for water.
Dad usually had a pack horse and a saddle horse at the tower. When he spotted a fire he called in the location to the station in Alpine and left to go put out the fire, usually taking a saw, axe, hoe, and water sprayer. If he took a pack horse he usually took two 10 gallon water sprayers which were not filled until the last water hole was reached before coming to the fire. When the fire was extinguished Dad would return to the tower but if the fire was large and he didn’t return to the tower in the time the Ranger thought he should, a second crew was sent to help put it out. Many times Dad came back in the dead of night, trusting his horse to take him back to the tower.
During the first years Dad was at P. S. Knoll he had to go early in the spring before the roads were clear enough that the car could make it up there, and he also had to get his horses up there, so he would ride and pack in to the tower.
One of these years during the depression when money was unavailable, all the money we had was used to buy supplies for the summer. Dad was preparing to go to P.S. Tower and as he was loading his pack horse Blue Rocket, the horse came unglued and threw the groceries on the ground then kept bucking on top of them. The sugar and flour were both destroyed. It was hard to scrape up money to buy more, so Blue Rocket was tied to a tree so he could not buck and we reloaded the packs. The distance from Alpine to P. S. Tower was around 25 miles and by horseback it took two days to get there.
When our work was done we kept ourselves busy playing with toys we made with lumber from Dad’s saw mill. We made cars and trucks and even cut the wheels out with Dad’s carpenter tools.
There were a lot of chipmunks in Alpine and near P. S. Tower. We would make pens much like rabbit pens, to catch the chipmunks. We built box traps with a screen at one end and a trap door at the other. The trap door was triggered by a small dowel down through the top and fastened to the trap door. We baited them with grain and waited for the chips to come and believe it or not, we caught some chipmunks.
We made small harnesses out of old shoes we cut up, using the string and leather, and then hooked up those chipmunks to pull our toys. The younger ones were great pets but sometimes the older ones would bite the hell out of us and then it wasn’t so fun. They would chew their way out of the pens and we would have to catch more to replace them.
THE ALPINE SCHOOL
Mother and Dad started me in school when I was five- years-old, so Milford wouldn’t have to go alone. The school was a two-room rock building with windows along the west side. Each room had a large pot bellied heating stove with a cage around it to protect the children from burns. Because sliding and playing in the snow were our favorite games, the cage was usually covered with wet clothing to dry.
Some years we had two teachers but usually there was only one for all 8 grades. When I started school there were probably five or six students in my grade, but when I finished 8th grade there were only 2, myself and Barbara Hamblin. Some of the teachers I remember were Mrs. Longnecker, Mrs. Zona Foutz, Mrs. Peterson, Mrs. Nobles, and Mrs. Jones. There were probably others but I don’t remember their names.
With one teacher for all eight grades only reading, spelling, and math were taught regularly although we had books for other subjects, but seldom had time to get to them.
We lived about two miles from the school so we walked. In the winter we rode our sleds down the hills. The Hamblin family lived about two miles farther down the road and had a two-wheeled cart and a team of horses for transportation and they usually picked us up. The wagon box was filled with hay and we tied the horses to the wagon so they could eat while we were in school. One year the wagon lost the rim on one of the wheels, so we drove it on the spokes, and called it the ‘hickety bump.’ The Hamblin boys were younger than Milford and I so we helped them to harness and hitch up the team.
CHURCH
The only church in Alpine was the LDS church that was built when I was small. The local men quarried the white rock from the side of the mountain northeast of town, and hauled it with teams and wagons. For the most part, the rocks weighed approximately 70 to 100 pounds, and were one foot square. It was a small building with a chapel, several class rooms, bathrooms, a small gym, Relief Society room, and kitchen. It was a very nice building for the town of Alpine. On Sundays we went to church unless we were out of town.
I have many fond memories of teachers and friends from there. We played basketball in the gym and many community dances were held there. The curtain on the stage rolled up over a 4 inch tube, and there was a large mural of a mountain scene painted on it, and local ads painted around the scene.
Bishop Leslie Noble was the first bishop I remember, followed by Glen Hamblin and Avard Hall. Our Stake President was Bryant Whiting who served many years. (It was he who built our concrete water storage tank).
The congregation was small, around 50 people attending, and the meetings were one after another – Priesthood, Sunday School then Sacrament meeting; each about one hour long. At that time there were only a few families in Alpine who were not LDS.
CULTURAL CHANGES
Many changes occurred in our small community when a sawmill was built nearby. The people hired by the mill were a lower class of people that were called Okies and Arkies whose morals were not the same as ours. They were offensive to us which caused conflict between the two groups.
The Fite family were probably one of the first families to “invade” Alpine. The influence of these people on our community was a major factor in my folk’s decision to move.
Today there is an entirely different culture and Alpine is a “resort” town with hundreds of summer homes.
FAMILY FISHING TRIPS
Every year on opening day of fishing season, usually Memorial Day weekend, the “Worms for Sale” sign went on our front gate and we sold worms all summer for 5 cents a dozen. We later raised the price to 10 cents a dozen, but we always put in extra worms.
Memorial Day weekend also found the Whitmer family on Three Forks, a place on the Black River where three roads converged. This was a tradition carried down from Dad’s family, Grandpa Whitmer had taken his family there also.
Times were hard then during the Depression, so we carefully cut seven willow branches and trimmed and shaped them into our fishing poles. We tried to get the longest branch possible with good spring action and added about an 8 foot line, tied a leader and hook to the end and we were off.
Catch limits then were about 20 fish each and at the end of the day we had 140 fish to take home, and we had already eaten a lot in camp. We always went home with our limits · full and we tried to go every weekend. The fish were either packed in the snow house, or in a #2 tub of cool salt water so we could have fresh cooked fish.
Mom was a good fisher-woman, Dad was excellent, and I usually caught my share but Milford never liked fishing much and the other kids were still growing into it. There were other good fishing holes at George’s Lake, Black River, Luna Lake, Big Lake, Crescent Lake, and Diamond Rock.
George’s Lake, at the top of Grandpa Whitmer’s pasture was a beautiful place with pine, aspen, and willows, a cool, fresh spring of water which was good to drink, and watercress grew there. This is where I fished the summer I was thrown from Flicka, and broke my arm. I would ride Bell there, a distance of about five miles and spend the day, usually catching 5-6 fish each day.
LUNA LAKE
Luna Lake was at the lower end of Alpine in a large open valley around which was Dad’s forest permit for cows. The fishing was usually good here, but none of us liked lake fishing as well as we did fishing the streams. The lake was built by Luna, New Mexico residents to provide irrigation water for small fields and gardens.
One summer Milford and I were riding to check cows around Luna Lake and discovered the dam had broken and the lake was almost empty. Fish by the hundreds were swimming to the top of the water for air. I had a gunny sack tied to the back of my saddle and I went into the water and filled it with fish. I was bare-footed and cut my foot on a broken bottle and had to stop and wrap my foot. We brought home so many big fish that Mother had to can most of them.
Big Lake and Crescent Lake were large mountain lakes set in pine and aspen valleys near P. S. Tower. We fished there a lot when we could. The game warden was a man named Al Wilson. People claimed he could sit in his pickup on one side of Luna Lake and with his field glasses he could see the other side of the lake and count the number of fish hooks you had on your pole. He was not very well liked in the area and one time he raided and searched a hunting camp on the Blue. No one was there when he started, however, before he was finished, the owners returned and he was beaten so badly it was feared for a while that he might not live. He did live, but he never went on the Blue again.
THE “BLUE”
For many years Dad’s brother Harold Whitmer carried mail down the Blue River where there were many men hiding out from the law. Most lawmen stayed away because they never knew who or what was behind the next tree.
Uncle Harold said the robbers would often request the post office to bring items such as groceries and leave them behind a certain log in the woods, with instructions for him to look behind the log on his return trip, where he would always find a $5 or $10 bill as a reward for his efforts.
1. USPS Regional News. “Cowboys and Robbers on Mail Route Into Blue,” by Norman Massey.
The Blue river had to be forded 22 times to get the mail to the people and if it was high they had to put the mail pouch on the pack horses. Their son, Larry once carried the mail pouch on his back to get across.
Once when Harold tried to cross the Blue River two pack animals drowned. One pack saddle was Dad’s and I still have it here at my home.
The Blue was rough country; steep rugged brush land and the river ran fast. Both of my grandfathers, Angus Van Meter Whitmer and Melvin Swapp, wintered cattle in this country where the live oak kept the cattle alive even in bad winters though it required lots of salt with it.
Salt pits were at both Spur Lake and in the St. Johns country. It would be shoveled into the wagons and hauled in straight from the salt pits. It was rock bulk salt – about the size and shape of a raisin only with sharper sides. Logs were chopped and hollowed out and filled with this rock salt for salt licks.
Cows were never brought into the ranches because they were wild and hard to handle. In order to even get them out a lot of them had to be roped and practically dragged out. Some of them had their heads tied to one leg so they couldn’t run away, and some were necked together and driven out. Dad roped many a wild cow.
Uncle Melvin Swapp had a “catch dog” to help him with the wild cows. The dog would grab a cow by the nose and swing between her front legs, throwing her end over end. After this happened two or three times the cow tired out and could be caught and driven, or roped and dragged out.
Summer range wasn’t as brushy and steep and cows could be handled there without as much trouble. But all the cows were somewhat wild as most were never brought into the home ranches and were on the range their entire lives.
For $10.00 Dad bought a purebred Lassie type collie from Jack Brooks. We called him Sport and he was a pal and helper to us. As we rode to check the cows Sport would start to whine so Dad would tell him to get them and up the trail a little ways Sport would have the cows held in a bunch, and somehow he always knew which cows were ours because 9 times out of 10 he was right.
Jack Brooks had a large cow ranch on the Blue and he had Sport’s mother and sire. He also had his pick of the litter but he decided he wanted Sport and offered Dad $100 to get him back. This was a lot of money in those days and it was hard to turn down, but Dad kept Sport.
A short time later Sport died when he ate something that had been poisoned and put along the trail. No dog could ever take his place.
I got a black and white Cocker Spaniel from Dad’s brother Lawrence, shortly after he got out of the Army in the second world war. She was a family favorite and would follow me until I decided she was tired and put her behind my saddle.
Dad also got Lois a wirehaired terrier that was a good dog. Both of these dogs were intentionally run over by outsiders going through Alpine. Most ranchers with large herds were on their horses riding almost every day moving and caring for the cows and many of the calves were branded a few at a time, as all cowboys carried a small branding iron on the saddle with them. They would find an unbranded calf, rope it and brand it right there; afraid they might miss it another time. Dad had such an iron and I can remember roping and branding the late calves that were born after cows were turned out to graze in the mountains.
DAD AND THE 2 YEAR OLD COLT
I don’t remember the purpose but I do remember the occasion that Dad, Milford and I were out in the middle of a pasture riding double on a horse while Dad was on foot. A colt came up to us and Dad decided to move him into another field and the only thing we had to catch him with was a lariat rope. Dad started to tie the end without a loop around the colt’s neck when somehow he dropped the rest of the rope to the ground. While he was trying to get a nose loop on the colt, he stepped into the loop on the ground and just then the other horses, took off running and the colt decided he’d go too.
He was a large powerful colt and with the rope only on his neck, Dad could not hold him. Off he went, one end of the rope tied around his neck and the other end around Dad’s leg which frightened him more, and around and around the field he went.
Dad had held the rope in one hand which helped and with his other hand he was trying to get out his knife to cut the end that was around his leg; but every time he would just about get it he would hit a bump and be thrown into the air three or four feet.
All this time Milford and I were trying to stop the horses from running and after what seemed like forever, the horses slowed down and the colt came up to the horse we were riding. I jumped off and I don’t know how we did it, but somehow we slipped the rope off over the colt’s head, then the horses took off running again. Dad was banged from head to toe, and we had to go for the car to get him to the house, but soon he was okay.
THE BIG BEAR AND THE HUGE ELK
One summer a man, who I think was Jess Burke, came by the house with a bear on his pack horse. We had heard he would be by and were all out waiting to see this bear. He stopped and showed him to us; how big his feet were, and how they looked like the palm of your hand. The bear had been making trouble in the lower end of Alpine valley and Jess had been asked to track it down and kill it.
I also remember one day at school we watched a bear run by with some dogs chasing him. He ran across the white patch of rocks northeast of town with a trap on one leg and he had broken the drag chain. He was mad and the dogs were having trouble putting him at bay. He had been coming into Alpine at night and again, Jess was trying to put a stop to it.
Jess Burke, an outfitter, had a pack of 30 to 40 dogs and used them a lot. They were not hauled around in a pickup, but would follow him on his horse. The Burkes also had the store and post office in Alpine, as well as a hunting lodge at Diamond Rock. He and the dogs went by the school almost every day.
One year Uncle Harold Whitmer killed THE BIG ELK. This elk was called “Old Gray Spot” because he had a big gray spot over his hips. The men of the valley had been after him for several years because he was a monster with the largest antlers I’ve ever seen. They were 13 inches around at the base, and six feet from tip to base. Uncle Harold loaded him on his horse but he couldn’t carry him so he had to split the elk and bring it in one-half at a time. His horse, Poney Boy, carried many a whole elk before Old Gray Spot, and since.
For as long as the family can remember Old Gray Spot’s head and antlers hung on the wall in Uncle Harold’s and Aunt Bessie’s living room. He was used as a hat hanger and dwarfed their living room.
A CHRISTMAS DISASTER
I remember one Christmas when, as usual, the family went out to cut our Christmas tree. This particular year we were on the divide, near the campgrounds, and the snow was so deep we couldn’t get far off the road. Dad decided he would have to walk away from the road to find the tree we wanted. He, Milford, Roy and I, walked back off the road through the snow, found a tree, cut it down and started back to the car.
Dad was carrying the axe over his shoulder and dragging the tree through the snow when he stepped on a slick log and fell. When he went down the axe cut open the back of his neck and blood went everywhere. We tried to compress it with handkerchiefs. Milford and I took the axe and tree and went to the car as fast
as we could. When we got there blood was all over us which scared Mother nearly to death.
We were only about 5 miles from where the Tennys lived. Pearl was a registered nurse of the best kind and was a second doctor for all of Alpine. We took Dad there, and she was able to stop the bleeding, and closed the wound the best she could. Dad did not try to go on to the doctor since the snow was so bad and he didn’t think the doctor could do any better than Pearl Tenny. He should have gone to the doctor because infection set in and made it hard to heal so Pearl worked on it every other day, cleaning and re- dressing it until it healed, but it left a large, bad scar on the back of his neck.
MOTHER’S ILLNESS
After my brother Ben was born on July 5, 1938, Mother was very ill. There was no hospital in Springerville, but a Mrs. Slade, a friend of the family, was an R.N. and she took Mother into her home and cared for her under the doctor’s direction. Priesthood blessings saved her life several times.
After Mother did come home she was very weak and still didn’t feel well so Dad and we older boys (Milford, age 7, Allan, age 5, Roy, age 4, and Lois, age 2) had to take over the housework and also do the outside work.
Wedidthecooking,housecleaning,anddishes.Each Monday was our wash day and the washer had to be filled, as well as three #2 washtubs to soak and rinse the clothes, then the old gas washer was cranked up. Washing usually took three to four hours, because all the clothes had to be hung outside on the clothes lines to dry, then we drained the water and cleaned and mopped the porch and put the tubs away.
Then we brought in the dry clothes off the line, sprinkled the shirts with water and rolled them up to be ironed. On Tuesday we would iron all day long. Everything was
ironed in those days. We used iron flat irons that had to be heated on the stove and then reheated when they cooled. It was slow and I hated it but it had to be done.
MARGARET AMELIA MORTENSEN SWAPP
Grandmother was a hard worker even in her older years. She wasn’t a fancy cook but the meals she made were really good. There were always homemade bread, jams and jelly, pickles and relishes, vegetables and fruits. I loved, and still crave to this day, the taste of a piece of bread dipped in the thick cream on top of the milk can, then sprinkled with sugar -was it good! Grandmother liked to eat clabbered milk sprinkled with a little sugar, and fresh buttermilk.
Her milk and butter were put in a bucket, then she tied a rope on the bail, and lowered into the well to keep cool. All the water she used came from that well with the bucket.
Grandfather Melvin Swapp was in the freighting business and was often away from home. On November 15, 1915 he was killed in a freighting accident that occurred in Datil, Catron County, New Mexico. It is possible that he died of a heart attack, fell off the wagon and was run over. He is buried in the Luna cemetery.
Because Grandmother was alone and getting quite old I spent several summers in Luna helping her, and Roy also remembers spending some summers with her.
During the winter she usually spent time with her son Grant or another of her children, but in the summer she liked to be home. She raised a garden, and chickens, would gather eggs, milk the cow, and plant flowers. She loved to crochet, can vegetables and fruit, make her own soap, and be in her own house.
She kept her cows and range permits until her death and depended on her sons to take care of them for her.
Her home was a log house that had no foundation except rocks layered on top of each other. Skunks would get under the house each winter when she was gone so in the summer I would trap them. I was too young for a gun, so I had long ropes fastened to the traps and when I caught a skunk I would drag it to a foot log over the San Francisco River and drown them.
During my fourth grade school year, I stayed part of the winter in Luna with Grandmother and went to school there. It was a mile or so to walk through the fields to school and one day I came upon a mother skunk with four or five babies and I decided this was my chance to get rid of a bunch of skunks so I picked up a large rock, ran over and threw it on them and in return, I got sprayed. My clothes were burned and after lots of tomato juice baths and my body odor improved.
TRAP LINES
My brothers and I learned early in life how to set trap lines to catch coyotes, bobcats, beaver, and muskrats, how to skin them and stretch them out to dry, then pack them into a burlap bag and package them to send to the tanner for him to sell. Most of our school clothing was bought each year with money from furs and fishing worms.
We set a trap line that was probably 5-6 miles around so we rode our horses and carried a single shot 22 rifle to get the game from the traps. To set our larger traps, Milford would stand on one spring and I on the other, being very careful not to get our fingers caught. The horse we usually used for this trip was Tom, a small white horse that had belonged to Grandpa Whitmer until he left Alpine. When Grandpa was a game warden he rode Tom, and also used him when needed to check cows on the Blue.
Our traps were usually set the northern half of our place, through the forest that bordered it, and up to Grandpa Whitmer’s place. We had to be careful not to go too far because Uncle Don’s family also set traps on Grandpa’s place and the forest around it, and we didn’t want to interfere with each other.
HORSES I KNEW
Horses were always available for us to ride and we rode and played with them from the time we could walk.
One fall when I was around 9 or 10 years old Dad gave a colt to each Milford and me. Milford’s was Smokey, and I got Flicka. 17 Dad caught both foals at Williams Valley Flat corrals off Noble Mountain northwest of Alpine and he haltered and lead them home with a saddle horse. He tied them to a corral post and said, “There they are; feed them, gentle them down, and break them.”
Smokey broke into an outstanding cow horse and was later owned by Uncle Mel when we left Alpine. Flicka was from Dad’s old broodmare, Babe, the mother of many good colts. Flicka’s sire was a registered (Quarter horse owned by Garland Lee. The horse turned outlaw and Lee couldn’t break him so he turned him loose and he picked up a band of mares that included Babe.
Flicka, like her sire, was never broke enough to be trusted. I started trying to break her but I could ride her all day long, thinking she was so tired she wouldn’t buck, then come home, and be thrown in front of the saddle shed.
Once we were in the lower valley checking cows when about three fourths of the way home a hard rain and thunder storm was coming. Milford, Roy, and I picked up the pace to try and beat the storm.
About a mile from home the rain hit. We were in a full run when we came to a bridge with a wooden floor and I came to a place where the gravel was almost gone and Flicka lost her footing and went down at a full run. Both of us were banged up but Flicka was worse. Her front knee was skinned and ground full of dirt and gravel. It took lots of doctoring but she was finally well again.
Roy’s first horse that he always claimed as his, was called Jug. One time Dad was using Jug as part of a team to harrow a field. Roy was riding on Jug, and went to sleep. He fell off under Jug’s front feet just as the horse was putting his foot down. His foot touched Roy’s head just as Dad pulled back with all his strength on the reins. Jug must have felt Roy’s head and he put no weight on him and stood there until Dad pulled Roy out of the way.
As part of a team with another horse Dad sold Jug to a man in Concho, Arizona. Dad received payment for one horse but never got the money for the other.
Jug decided he wanted to come home and walked all the way, crossing around 24 cattle guards on the way. Since he hadn’t been paid for, Dad just kept him.
Bell was the first horse that we kids broke and Roy took her as his. Milford had Smokey and I had Flicka. Later Dad got Blaze and Star from the Walter mares on Noble Mountain. Star was Roy’s and Blaze was mine, but we didn’t have them long before we left Alpine.
The Walter mares were called that because Dad’s sister Ethel’s first husband was named Walter. In Silver City, New Mexico he had bought three mares with very good bloodlines. He turned them out on Noble Mountain and when he left Ethel he left the horses there and they stayed up there the rest of their lives.
Dad and Uncle Harold would round them up and keep the foals then turn them loose again.
Some of the horses we had in Alpine were Bob and Dan, who were Dad’s working team during the last years we were in Alpine. Dan was a bay stud, as big as a Clydesdale but fairly gentle, and a good work horse but Dad finally had to geld him.
Bob had been running wild and Dad and Uncle Mel caught him around Luna. The two horses were not a match in size, but they worked well together for many a day. They were what you call a “one family team.” Dad, Mother, Milford, and I could do anything with them but sometimes others who tried to work with them had trouble.
We would watch men try to harness them with no success, then one of the three of us would do it while the men watched. Milford and I would get buckets to stand on and one of us would hand the harness over as far as he could reach, and the other would pull from the other side and drag it over the horse’s back. We did the same with the collar, one would hold it while the other buckled it, and then we would pull the tail out of the britchen. If one of the men did get Dan and Bob harnessed he couldn’t pull the tails out.
They were probably two of the best and biggest work horses in Alpine valley and could outpull any of the other teams. All of Dad’s teams were good pullers because he had a way of handling them.
One time Milford and I were told to cultivate the potatoes. One of us usually rode the horse and guided him while the other ran the cultivator carefully through the potatoes to be sure and get only the weeds. This time I was told to ride the horse which Milford did not like, and an argument started. He complained that I was going too fast with horse, or too slow, or turning too much, or too much this and that.
Finally he tried to pull me off the horse by grabbing my foot but all he got was my shoe which made him more angry so he threw the shoe at me, missed and hit the horse.
The horse we were using that day was Dan who had been broke good to ride before he was used with a harness. When my shoe hit him, along with clods and other things that had been thrown, he exploded and took off, with me, cultivator, harness and all. Through the middle of the potatoes he went, tearing up half the patch, then he continued up the road toward the barns, and through a gate, catching the cultivator on the wire and tearing loose the harness. When nothing was left but the collar Dan finally stopped under two pines trees on a little hill behind the house.
We re-harnessed him, patched the cultivator together, and meekly cultivated what was left of the potatoes. However, to keep peace I had to run the cultivator and when Dad got home from work he was not too happy to say the least.
On one of our trips to Jepson Flat, about 5 miles from home, to work for the day, I was riding Flicka and Milford was on Smokey. Dad and Mom and the other children were in the wagon being pulled by work horses. From home to Jepson Flats, Flicka threw me 22 times, not counting the times I pulled her out of it.
To try and break her, Dad put her in the Forest Service pack string one summer. Pat Simpson, considered
one of the better bronc busters around, pulled a pack string and tried to ride her one day. But she would throw him whenever she wanted to and even in front of the saddle barn after a hard day’s ride in the mountains around Alpine.
One thing she had in her favor was speed. On the 4th and 24th of July celebrations I could easily win the horse races. She is probably the reason that the horse racing bug bit me, and it stayed with me when I had other horses.
When we left Alpine the Lee brothers from Eager bought Flicka.
THE BIG BANG-UP
0n a Sunday Mother’s Day, we were having a family farewell dinner for Uncle Don and his family who were moving from Alpine. We had eaten and were ready to play with our horses who were tied to the fence by the house.
I noticed a cow that was trying to calve and thought she needed some help. Dad and Uncle Don were in the upper field close to where the saw mill had been.
I ran and jumped bareback on Flicka and landed too far back on her. I was in a hurry and kicked her before I was really ready and she had started to run and then dropped her head and started bucking. Trying to hold on with my feet and a handful of mane I slid up on her neck and over her head taking the bridle off with me.
I got up and walked the 100 yards to the house and met Mother at the front door. She said something just as I passed out on the front porch so Mother yelled for Dad and they loaded me in the car and headed for the nearest doctor who was in Springerville. When we arrived the doctor was out of town, so we went on to St. Johns. Somewhere in between I came to, and the folks found what was supposed to be a doctor.
He cleaned up my face, eyes, and mouth and said not much could be done and I would be all right. He gave Mother some salve to put on the wounds and we went back home.
By Wednesday my left arm was killing me as was my face. Dad had Mother take me back to Springerville because he had to go to work. An X-ray showed I had a compound fracture of my left arm, and it was also broken at the wrist and out of joint. The doctor took off his shoe, put his foot in my armpit, and while Mother held me on the table, he pulled the joints into place and realigned the broken bones, then applied a cast.
My eyes and mouth were still full of dirt and gravel so he cleaned all he could out of my eyes, but later more was to surface. My lower lip was torn off the jaw and just hanging, still full of dirt and gravel and he cleaned it more and gave Mother some medicine and swabs so she could clean it every day. My left eye and lip took about six months to completely heal, it took a long time for my lip to grow back onto my jaw and for years, even after I was grown, it tingled.
My broken arm was an excuse not to do any work for a while so after about two weeks I would catch Bell, ride to George Lake in Grandfather Whitmer’s upper field, fish all day long and come home with my catch. It wasn’t long before I figured out how to take the cast off after I had left the house and that made fishing easier.
On my next visit to the doctor he decided to recast it, so I took some rocks and softened it up so it also could be removed. My arm finally healed in about a month.
That fall Dad ran the Walter mares into a corral and brought home two fillies and a colt. One filly he gave to Roy and the other to me to replace Flicka, but the trade was never complete because when we left Alpine I still had both mares. At that time all our horses were sold, and none were moved with us. The Lee brothers bought the mares and for several years when we visited Alpine we could find them, but in time they disappeared. Smokey and Dude were both sold to Uncle Mel and on visits we saw them until they died.
Uncle Harold took the colt called Poney Boy, and kept him for years. Those were the last foals the family got from the Walter mares because after Dad moved no one was able to bring them into a corral and a few years later the Forest Service did away with all the wild horses.
ROUNDING UP WILD HORSES
We did not need some of the horses during the summer and winter so they were turned out on the range and brought back in when they were needed in the spring for planting, and the fall for harvesting crops. The geldings would run in a bunch and were not hard to gather, but the mares would be picked up by the wild studs and had to be taken back out of the bands.
This required the horses to be run into a corral by one man riding hard to get in front of the bunch of wild horses and lead them into the corral. Other men would ride around the outside of the herd to keep them in a bunch and following the lead horses.
Early Quarter Horses
One of the Hamblin men, Jacob or Obid, brought a Steeldust stud into Alpine from Texas so Dad took his excellent broodmare, Babe, there to be bred.
There were always several bunches of wild horses around Alpine. and many of the better horses came from these wild ones. Also, there were studs and mares that were kept on farms and ranches that never were wild.
Horses like Blue Rocket, Wildfire, Smokey, Poney Boy, Babe, and Kate, all came from wild bunches and were all top horses. Babe was the mother of Dude, Bird, Flicka and others. Kate also had colts almost every year, but most were sold as remounts to the Army, as were many of Babe’s.
Babe and Kate were both used to farm in the spring and harvest in the fall. Kate was rather small for a work horse but she was willing and did not hold back but would take the hard pull which was the furrow with the plow.
Dad broke and used Dude while he was cowboying for hire on some large ranches in the area. He was an outstanding cow horse, and was used to rope cows in the pastures and out on the range.
Once when we had driven our cows into the Alpine Community Shipping Corrals to sell the calves, Dude was tied outside while Dad was working inside the corrals. Someone stole him (borrowed without permission) and used him to rope a big, rank, wild bull and drag it into the corral. Dude’s back was hurt in the process and Dad could not use him at all for a while, but he eventually healed.
Uncle Melvin Swapp tried for years to buy Dude from Dad and finally he agreed. The sale price included a big, tall work horse named Bob, another older work horse, a sorrel saddle horse, an older saddle horse and $100.00 in cash. That, you might say, was an excellent deal.
Uncle Mel had a large grazing permit and also took care of Grandmother Swapp’s cows. He rode the permit every day until Dude was over 20 years old, then he was retired, and finished his life in a pasture.
Bob was used in a team for farming, and the sorrel saddle horse was used for years by us kids. The other two horses Dad sold after he went to work for the state highway department.
WILDFIRE- RED ROAN (1000#)
Wildfire ran wild on Noble Mountain near Alpine. He was 4 or 5 years old and had been driven out of the band of mares by other studs. Uncle Harold wanted him, so he got Dad to help catch him. They started running into him on Noble Mountain but he always outran or out- maneuvered them and even after about a week of constant riding they had driven him off Noble Mountain into the South Mountain area, but still could not catch him. His feet were getting so sore on the rocky trail that he could be tracked by the bloody hoof prints on the rocks.
After an all-day run after him in which they thought he had evaded them again, they were able to drive him into a drift fence corner. He couldn’t jump up hill so he turned to come back over them and as he did Dad got a rope on him, but his saddle was loose from the day of hard riding, and when Wildfire hit the end of the rope it turned Dad’s saddle. After a few tense moments Uncle Harold got a second loop on him so he choked down and they were able to halter him and tie him to a tree. Their horses were too tired to try and lead him in and also time was getting short before dark so they left him tied and went home.
He was tied there for two days when they went back for him on fresh horses. By then he had learned to give to the rope some and they led him into Alpine off South Mountain.
He was gelded, gentled, and broke to ride. After a few years of being ridden he was the horse of choice to run wild horses on because he could be put in front of a wild band and lead them into a corral. It took a tough man to ride him as brush and limbs would tear a rider up, but nothing stopped him. Wildfire or Dad’s Blue Rocket were two of the few horses that could do it.
Uncle Harold used Wildfire for years, both cowboying and going to fires for the Forest Service, and Harold also used him to haul in the deer and elk that he killed both in and out of season.
THE MOVE TO NEW MEXICO
On January 10, 1947 the family moved from Alpine, Arizona to Fruitland, New Mexico. All the farming in Alpine was dry land, with no irrigation, there never seemed to be enough rain, and the crops were often ruined by hail. The last few years we were there the grasshoppers came in droves and we fought them any way we could and this was one of the big things that caused us to leave Alpine.
We drove the grasshoppers into windrows of hay, straw and weeds then set fire to the windrows; we set out poisoned sawdust, and put turkeys in the fields to eat them, but the drier it got the more they came.
We needed a miracle like the early settlers of Utah.
Our faith was as theirs but I guess that was not enough because the grasshoppers could clean out a field in a few days, leaving only the stems.
As the drought set in the rain and snow came less and less. The grasshoppers, and the heat, caused crops to fail, and the influx of outsiders, mostly very poor people coming in to work in the sawmills, changed the quiet life of Alpine, so the folks decided to leave.
Roy was in the eighth grade when Dad and Mother sold the farm in Alpine to Dr. Holbrook & Associates out of Tucson. The family had to vacate the farm immediately and found a temporary home in the workmen’s bunkhouse at the CCC Camp that was on the Coronado Trail road. The bunkhouse had huge bedrooms and we lived there for six months.
Dad and Mother traveled as far as Oregon looking for a place to call home. They finally settled on Fruitland, New Mexico where they bought 212 acres from the Thomas family. Fruitland was a quiet little town with entertainment for the youth and water for the crops. During that time the folks took Roy to a doctor in Phoenix and were gone for a few days. I was about 14 years old, and was home with the other kids while the folks were gone. There was no bread in the house so I got in the truck to go to Alpine to get some. The truck was the old one that Dad and Uncle Don had used to haul lumber to their saw mill.
On the way back the tie-rods came loose and I hit a big pine tree and wrecked the truck. Some highway workers came along and put the tie-rods back on so I could get home. Dad finished fixing the truck and it was this same old truck that we used for moving.
Allan and Milford went to New Mexico at the semester change and stayed with Uncle Loman and Aunt Gladys Swapp until the Thomases moved out of the house, then the rest of the family moved.
That winter in Alpine was a cold, bad one. The night we left the temperature went to -40°.
Our milk cow was ready to calve and we had waited days on her until finally Dad said, “We leave tomorrow, no matter what.” When we went to load her she was calving, so we waited until the calf hit the ground, then dried it the best we could, and got some milk inside it, then we were on the road. We stopped several times for the calf to get milk. The cold froze its tail and ears but otherwise it was okay.
The off driver’s side window was out of the old truck and Dad, myself and the dog were in it. The dog just kept knocking the cardboard out of the window. Boy was it cold!
Mother was following in the car with Milford, Roy, Lois, and Ben. Along Route 66 around Sanders, Arizona, we stopped to gas up and somehow the car key got broken, so Dad had to hot wire the old Plymouth to get us on the road again.
We finally arrived at our new home. There were two brick houses on the place but neither one was in good condition so we did some repair work on the houses and moved into the larger one.
The cold in Fruitland is a different kind of cold than Alpine. The wind blew off the San Juan River and we thought we would freeze that first winter.
We all had to start school mid-stream and had to walk 1/2 mile to catch the school bus. Frank Stock was the bus driver.
Life in Fruitland was a big change for us and because Dad no longer worked for wages money must be made on the farm. Soon after we arrived we built a milk barn and a dairy was started for cash flow.
We bought a few cows at first and went to lots of small auctions to buy one or two cows at a time, thus adding to the herd, along with the heifers we kept.
The cows were a mixture of Holstein, Guernsey and milking Short Horn. Soon we (Dad, Milford, and Allan) were milking, by hand, 20-25 cows, and that meant we were up in the morning before school to milk cows. We had two cows that gave a lot of milk, one we called Snowtail; a predominantly white Holstein, and the other a tiger striped Short Horn. Dad would milk from one side and I from the other, and both cows filled up a 12 quart milk bucket.
The younger kids ran the ‘potty bucket’ – every drop caught in that bucket was one that didn’t have to be cleaned and scrubbed off the floor because after the milking was done the barn and the milking equipment had to be washed and cleaned. The barn was inspected regularly and had to be spotless. Every morning a truck came through for Creamland Dairy and picked up our milk in 10 gallon cans.
Our friends would come and visit, or maybe help if they could until we were finished and could leave to go to a ball game or a movie.
Grain and corn had to be ground morning and night for the cows to eat, besides giving them hay and in the summer they were turned out to green pasture.
We raised corn, pinto beans, and some oats and barley.
The pinto beans and corn had to be hoed constantly because the cockle burrs and bindweed were taking over. The rows were a half mile long and we weeded three rows at a time, up and down. It was hard tiring work and I hated it.
Corn had to be hand picked in the fall, and between the cold wind blowing and corn husking we would ruin a pair of gloves in a day. We would pick, husk, and throw into the wagon; then we had to throw it into the grinder to prepare it for cow feed. Sometimes, when we could afford it, Dad would hire Navajos to help do the hoeing but the Navajo women did most of the work, and someone had to be there all the time to keep them working.
Sometimes when we were hoeing the lower fields next to the river, we would put out drag lines to catch fish. That helped break up the day and we caught quite a few catfish and suckers which we cooked in a pressure cooker to keep the bones from being a problem when we ate the meat.
The farm had 100 peach trees, 20 or so apple trees, pears, cherries and a long row of grapes. These all had to be pruned, sprayed, and picked. The peach fuzz would make us itch as we picked and we all hated the fruit work.
When a new highway was built it cut our place in half and went through the peach orchard taking out over half of the trees, so we only had enough fruit for ourselves. It also took the milk barn, corrals, and the shop and along with all that the milk cows were drying up, so soon we were out of the dairy business.
We tore down the milk barn to make a shop, but most of the other buildings were only junk lumber when we tore them down.
For us, and the town of Fruitland, hay turned into the biggest crop because much of it was retailed by the government and given away on the Navajo reservation.
Once the baler started it went steady until late in September as we did our own hay and also did custom baling in the valley.
The first balers we had were hard work. One person on one side throwing blocks and poking wires, and one on the other side tying the wire, and both eating the hay dust and leaves. We had to work fast to keep up with the baler.
We started pulling a wagon behind the baler and loading hay as it was baled which was a lot easier than walking beside the wagon and picking up the hay off the ground. Loading it onto a moving wagon was quite an art because we had to keep the hay on the wagon as it went over the furrows which caused the wagon to be thrown from side to side and it was HARD WORK .
Weeks at a time, day in and day out, we would load wagons pulled by the baler, or we would trade off and sit and block the baler all day long. About the time that things were going good the baler would bang, and the blocks and wires wouldn’t go through. The first few days your arm would be so sore you didn’t think you could do it again, but a few hours of catching the block and slamming it in the blocker would limber you up.
Tying the wires was just as fun as there was no time to rest because everything had to be just right. Then there was the hay dust: eyes, ears, nose, and mouth full of it all the time.
The first thing we did after a day in the hay fields was to hit the irrigation canal north of the house to get rid of the hay dust. Another favorite place to go was a big hole in the canal in Uncle Grant Swapp’s field. Big cottonwood trees grew over the canal and we tied ropes on the limbs that hung over the big hole. We would swing out and drop into the water. This was more or less the main swimming hole for the kids in the Kirtland/Fruitland area.
BATTLE WITH A BULL
Uncle Grant’s bulls were in the field where the swimming hole was and some of the local kids started
teasing the bulls. They would tease until the bulls would chase them and then they would run, grab the rope, swing out, and drop into the water. One of the bulls became mean because of the teasing. He was a red shorthorn, with really big horns, which could have been deadly.
One time Uncle Grant was gone and I was going to milk his cows. He had 5 or 6 cows and shipped the milk like we did. I went to the pasture and cut out the cows I needed to milk, all the time keeping that bull in sight.
I got the cows started toward the milk barn and thought the bull was safe with the remainder of the cows when suddenly he hit me from behind, knocking me to the ground, then rolling me around with his horns. Finally I got away from him and stood up but there was no place to go. I ran to a large cottonwood tree next to the canal, which, unfortunately, was dry that time of year. Around and around the tree we went until I tripped and fell into the canal, and he followed me right in and tore every stitch of clothing off my body. I had the waistband and a little of one leg hanging off my pants.
I finally got away and made a run for the barn, about a quarter mile away and that bull stayed right behind me; I jumped three fences and the bull did the same. He was gaining on me when I jumped an electric fence and this single wire fence stopped him – he was afraid to jump it.
When I reached the barn, Aunt Elnora got some clothes for me to put on. She wanted to go back out with me but I talked her into staying behind, so she was watching to see what happened in case she had to go for help.
I got a pitchfork and headed back to the bull and like the electric fence, the pitchfork turned him and held him back until I could get the cows to the barn. I was badly bruised and bleeding from a lot of horn punctures, but I milked the cows and kept them away from the bulls so I could milk them the next morning.
I still have multiple scars all over my hands and a few in the groin area.
The next day when Uncle Grant returned home, he immediately brought the bull in to take to the sale barn. The bull was in the corral where the loading chute was, and when they drove the pickup in to load him, he put a horn through the fender of Uncle Roy’s new pickup and this only made things worse for the bull. I remember the bull being Uncle Grant’s and Uncle Roy’s in partnership but in 1996 Aunt Elnora said the bull belonged to Uncle Loman Swapp and Uncle Grant had wanted to be rid of him for quite a while.
HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS
My junior year of football was cut short because I was in the hospital in Farmington with what the doctors called “walking polio.” I continued in the hay field because I was hard as a rock and thought I was tough. I played tackle and weighed around 145-150 pounds, and the tackles from Farmington High. Navajo Methodist Mission, and Cortez High, who played across the line weighed over 200 pounds and I still held my own. (The tackle from Mission was Big Jim Atcitty) The encounter with the bull happened just before school started for my senior year of high school. The bull had hooked me badly in the groin and up my back and the scars were there for years, and may be there still. The groin injury caused me to limp for years, but I wanted to play football so I didn’t let this stop me.
The most famous play of my high school years was at Grants, New Mexico. Arlin Bloomfield played end, both offense and defense, as we all did then. He was wicked on defense and few plays came around his end and he was equally as good on offense, but with all the passes he caught he never made a touchdown.
Well one such pass went for a touchdown at Grants, except for one thing – “someone” clipped and the play
was called back. Coach Miller couldn’t decide where I was needed most – in the game or on the bench for him to reprimand so for every play, for about the next 10 or so, I changed places, and you knew it when he reprimanded you. We lost the game so that night coming home on the bus he kept a cigar going, as was his habit when we lost. It was a long ride home.
THE SECOND BULL
The family was working cows in the corral at home in Fruitland and we were trying to get the bull into the crowding chute when he suddenly pinned me against the wall of the corral with his head and horns. Trying to get him off me I got my hand between the tip of a horn and a pole of the corral and he drove the horn through my left hand at the base of my index and middle finger. I still wear the scar of that horn. After washing it good and stopping the bleeding, and with it bandaged we were successful in getting the cows and bull through the chute. I don’t remember for what; probably fly spray which at that time we did about every 2 weeks.
THE FISHING TRIP TO EMERALD LAKE, ABOVE VALLECITO, COLORADO
About 1955-56 the Aaronic Priesthood boys, the age of my cousin Bill Swapp, from Kirtland had planned a :fishing trip to Emerald Lake. Their advisor, Jack Manning asked me to come along and help. The kids had some of the gear they needed and they had borrowed horses, trailers, saddles, pack burros and supplies. I was recruited at the last minute; all I needed was a saddle horse and transportation to get there.
We met in Kirtland and started loading supplies and horses. Several of the horses and trucks were borrowed from a horse trader Jack knew in Fruitland.
It took some time to get them loaded, then the horses in the truck got impatient and started kicking, but we started out anyway hoping when we were moving they would stop, but by the time we got there they had kicked the truck bed almost to pieces.
Going around the back side of Vallecito Lake Bill Swapp’s trailer came loose from the pickup and, as he watched, it went past him with two horses in it. It was Uncle Roy’s trailer and it hit a bank and wasn’t damaged too badly and the horses were okay. We re- loaded, hooked up the trailer and on we went.
When we arrived we unloaded the horses, from the trailers, and started the boys up the trail. Several boys had been there and knew the trail so they started out with others, but very few of the boys knew much about riding a horse — – all they could do was stay on.
Jack and I were left to bring a pack horse, a pack burro, a few heavy supplies, and lots of bedding. We packed the horse with the heavy supplies and some bedding and the last of the boys left with him. We had the burro, which Art Tanner, the owner, said could haul 300 pounds all day. We packed him with the sleeping bags that were bulky but light. Jack, his wife JoAnn, and I got on our horses and started up the trail and
had not gone far when we caught up with two of the pack horses. The packs were getting loose and the boys couldn’t tighten them, so I tightened them, took the pack horses and sent the boys on as they were in a hurry to catch up with the other boys.
Soon the burro started getting tired and would lay down in the trail. The first few times we could make him get up, but finally the only way he would get up was to take the pack off him and then he refused to get up even after we took the pack off him. He lay in the trail about 10-15 minutes until Jack threw a bucket of cold water on him and he got up, but I was sick of packing and unpacking him. I pulled the saddle off my horse and put the pack on him and put my saddle on the burro and he carried it on to camp while Jack and I took turns walking and riding.
Emerald Lakes are two natural lakes high in the mountains and were full of native fish but the boys quickly got tired of fishing and started exploring old mine sites that were almost straight up to get to and then they found little when they got there.
Jack,JoAnn and I wanted to fish and started on the lakes with just a fly pole. I caught lots of fish, but Jack and JoAnn weren’t doing as good so we moved to the stream that connected the two lakes. Then they started catching lots of fish andJoAnn was bringing them out two at a time and I couldn’t keep up with baiting her hooks. After a good fish fry that night we slept, with bears all around us, and came out the afternoon of the next day.
The boys could fish without a license so we were able to bring quite a few fish out with us which wasn’t as hard as going in because the burro carried my saddle and the horse’s packs were light.
After some trouble loading the horses we made it as far as Gem Village, Colorado before the horses kicked a hole in the truck bed. We had to unload those two horses and tied them to a fence and went home without them.
After we delivered the boys to their homes, Jack and I took a trailer and went back for the kickers. One of the horses that belonged to the horse trader had a bad cut on one leg.
After that trip I swore off using burros for packing. However, the Alpine Forest Service had 8 or 10 burros they packed all the time. The packs were loaded on them and they were turned loose to follow or be driven, and most of the time they just followed a saddle horse.
MORE HORSES
Buster was Dad’s cow-horse during the later years of his life in Cortez, Colorado. Lady was Milford’s mare he had purchased while he was working on the Navajo Reservation at Otis or B&W Trading Post. Steve Stolworthy and John Arrington had a few thoroughbred mares at Kimbeto Trading Post just south of Otis. Lady’s mother had died and they had given the filly to a Navajo lady to raise on a bottle. Milford had bought her from the Navajo lady and broke and used her for years.
I had Johnny Donaldson’s yellow stud, Garcia McOlie, at our place for a few years and during that time Milford offered Dad a colt out of Lady and then bred her to the stud.
Lady’s colt, Buster had a lot of”cow sense” and was able to watch a cow’s movements and react quickly and when he turned a cow he could leave you sitting in midair if you didn’t stay with him.
When Buster was a three-year-old we lost some steers out of Jess West’s place on Ryman Creek, Colorado. We had ridden for days looking for them when someone told us they were with the Perkins steers trailing down the Disappointment. At first the Perkins’s didn’t want Dad to cut the herd, but after he went ahead and cut his steer out, they wanted to buy Buster, but Dad would not sell him and he spent his life at the ranch in Cortez.
Ginger
Mother’s saddle mare
Ginger was sired by a horse in Oregon out of Gay Wright, an old mare I purchased from George Kimball
in Farmington. Ginger was young when I traded her to Milford for his mare, Lady. As part of the trade Milford got several horses. He later gave Ginger to Mother for a saddle horse, and from the time Ginger was about 4 years old Mother rode her whenever she could. They were a match and many hours Mother rode her alongside Dad and Buster as she loved to ride and help with the cows.
Ginger had one foal, a yellow horse colt sired by Buster, before he was gelded. Roy got the colt, named him Nugget, and rode him for a few years before selling him to Clifford Taylor, Jr. who rode him for several years.
Ginger and Mother both retired about the same time. They had many happy years together as Mother loved to ride, especially with Dad.
Yellow John
Spotted Juan and Yellow Honey
Early in the spring of1961 a horse trader came through Farmington and stayed a few nights at McGee Park. These were the early years at McGee Park and there was no race track, and very few stalls.
At this time I was in partnership with the Manning Brothers, Jack and Jim, and we found out that the horse trader was trying to sell some quarter horse mares so I went to McGee Park and picked out three of the mares – Yellow Honey, another good looking yellow mare, and a small brown mare full of King Ranch breeding. I took them to Shiprock and later in the spring they were all bred. Yellow Honey was taken to Spotted Juan and the others I have forgotten. Roy had Yellow Honey in Gallup, New Mexico for a few months to gentle her and break her to ride.
In April of 1962 Yellow Honey foaled a horse colt, but not without trouble as the colt was coming with one leg folded back. We were too far away for a vet and were not sure where to get one. I pushed the foal back into the womb and straightened the leg to come out properly, and with this help the colt was born.
On the seven-day foal heat, Yellow Honey was taken to Grand Junction, Colorado to be bred to On Top, a horse belonging to Carol Wilcox. While she was there Manning Brothers and I dissolved our partnership. I needed to get out of debt so from the partnership I took only Yellow Honey and her foal. All the other horses, about 25, and the cows, sheep, and farming and livestock equipment were kept by the Mannings.
At about this same time, May 2, 1962, I changed jobs from Bernards at Shiprock to Towaoc Trade at Towaoc, Colorado. Also I bought Crippled Kate from a horse trader in Farmington. Kay Ashcroft had sold the mare to him and she had by her side a colt by McGine, a horse in Farmington. I hadn’t had her long before she was killed by lightning and I raised the colt on calf manna.
Yellow John and Kate’s colt were weaned and raised together. Racing men would come to look at them, and would tell me that the big, long-legged one would out-run by 200 yards, the small shorter Yellow John.
How wrong they were because the last time I saw the long-legged one he was in a bucking string at the Fiesta ground in Durango, Colorado. Yellow John went on to make a Superior rating in racing, given by the AQHA.
Yellow John was broken at home by dad, Milford, and myself and just when we thought he was doing well, he was moved to the race track at Towaoc along with the Crippled Kate colt, and both were started in race training. John progressed well but the Kate colt bucked off the jockey until the trainers got tired of it and sent the colt home.
John was nominated and kept paid up for the Spanish Trails Fiesta Futurity and the Denver Laddy Stakes. Payments were due every month to keep him eligible for the races.
In June 1964, there was a race meet in Grand Junction and John was taken there for his first race, which he won. We then moved him to Durango for the Futurity. During the trials he was interfered with but still won
s heat and qualified for the finals to be held the next weekend. He came out of the gate first and held on to win by a neck or so. This paid me $1,200 plus dollars and that wasn’t chicken feed.
I think he was not out-run as a 2 year old until the Laddy Stakes in Littleton, Colorado. He had hurt his shoulder at a previous meet in Durango, but since I had so much money in the race already I decided to continue. The Vet said they thought he would be alright in a few days, but he had to run on three legs. He made the eleventh horse, only ten went to the final gate, and those starts in Denver were the only times he failed to bring home a check from a race.
He raced all over the southwest United States until he was 11 years old and had to be retired from the Pari- mutuel tracks.
The Cortez High School rodeo boys wanted him for a bulldog horse, but at 12-13 years of age, he died of a heart attack before they could train him.
On the Brush and Major tracks combined, I probably started him 200 to 225 times and failed to bring home a check only twice. Yellow John had a heart to run and gave all he had every time. He was as honest as they come and wherever he was stabled he was a pet.
Oro Juan
Oro Juan, a full brother to Yellow John, was a golden palomino out of Spotted Juan and Yellow Honey. I started him as a two year old stud on the track at McGee Park, and he could run and win, but he was not honest. One time he would run his heart out and the next time he would rear up and throw his head, and come in 5th or 6th with the jockey fighting all the way to keep him in line. After he was gelded he quit playing around and would consistently run an honest race. Not having the money to continue on with him I leased him to the trainer. Oro Juan had run the first time trial of the Futurity at Farmington but at the finals he played around and did not run as he should have.
The trainer took him on the Colorado Fair Circuit and won several Futurities, including Gunnison, Colorado. As I was not able to be with him, the trainer wasn’t as honest as he should have been when we won two blankets that I never received, and only got part of his win pictures. For this and other reasons, when I got a chance to sell him to Sam Hollar in Durango, I traded him for a one ton truck, which I sold to Milford and Dad.
Sam ran him as a 3 year-old on the Colorado Fair Circuit, but due to the lack of big money in those races, they retired him from racing and made a rope horse of him and while I never saw him rope, Roy and Alene said he was one of the best.
Later when Oro Juan was around 12 years old he was stifled in a freak accident and had to be put to sleep. Pam never forgave me for selling him even though we were at Klagetoh and couldn’t see him run, and had no place to take care of him.
EPILOGUE
In 1950 I graduated from Central High School in Kirtland, New Mexico. I had been working a little for Melvin (Red) Bloomfield, trucking supplies for the stores on the Navajo Reservation when I got an offer to work at Bruce Bernard’s store in Shiprock and went to work there.
In 1952 I decided I wanted to go to college and enrolled at Fort Lewis College in Hesperus, Colorado, but before the first semester was over I received my draft notice to enter the Army, so I wouldn’t be back for a second semester.
On April 15, 1953 I was inducted into the Army at Albuquerque, New Mexico and went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for a placement test. After a week I was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas and stayed there the remainder of my two years.
My serial number was US 54075951, and I was a Private in the 90th A.A.A. Gn. Battalion. In 1954 I was advanced to Corporal.
In April of 1955 I was discharged, came home, and went to work at General Supply in Farmington, New Mexico where I remained until May of 1956 when I went to work as camp manager at Kerr McGee Corporation’s uranium mine at Cove, Arizona.
In 1958 I went back to Bruce Bernard’s in Shiprock and also into partners with Manning Brothers, buying and selling cattle. We also had a hay processing contract partnership with Navajo Farms trainees. We split that partnership in 1962 and I went to work at Towaoc Trading Post, south of Cortez, Colorado.
In late February 1967, Mother and I went to Mountain Home, Idaho to help Roy and Alene prepare for a move to Utah. We loaded a horse trailer with some of their things. Their baby daughter, Jennifer, was just a few weeks old and Mother and I took the trailer and Jennifer and drove home.
When Roy and Alene arrived at their new home at the Northwest Pipeline housing area at La Sal Junction, Utah, we brought Jennifer and their belongings to them. Alene’s sister Pam was there to help them unpack, and I met her for the first time.
Things were going fine until the spring of 1967 when two girls came into the trading post, and flirted with me, trying to make me think they were looking for jewelry. I don’t know why, but that evening I called one of those girls, named Pam, for a date and we dated a few times.
On April 30, 1967, my grandmother, Sarah Jane Judd Whitmer, died at her home in Safford, Arizona and I took my folks to the funeral, so I hadn’t called Pam for about two weeks.
One day I was working my race horse, Yellow John, at the track in Kirtland that was across from Pam’s home and she came over and we talked for a while and arranged for a date, and just kept dating. Around the last of July we decided to be married and set the date for August 18, 1967.
Pamela Beth Evans and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple after which we borrowed Roy and Alene’s car and went to Canada for a honeymoon. This year of 2006 we will have been married for 39 years.
When we returned I went back to work at Towaoc Trading Post and Pam set out making a home for us in an old house I found. On June 28, 1968 a little girl we named Leanne, came to live with us.
Leanne was only a few months old when we decided to change jobs and this time we went to Klagetoh Trading Post south of Ganado, Arizona. Work there was good and in a short time the owners turned over the store to me.
While we were at Klagetoh our next two children were born; Shane Allan on May 28, 1970 and Stacey Lynn on May 21, 1971. Shortly after Stacey’s birth we returned, for the final time, to Cortez, Colorado and I went back to work at Towaoc Trading Post.
Delanie Dawn was born March 18, 1975, and Carlos Judd was born on December 24, 1979.
In 1976 I became Postmaster in Towaoc and retired in February, 1997.
We have nine grandsons: Leanne’s son, Ryan Rich. Shane and Karla’s sons, Justin and Jarrett Whitmer. Stacey and Jimmy McCall’s sons, Chance and Chase. Delaney and Wayne Gustafson’s sons, Taylor, Trenton, and Todd, and Heidy and Carlos’s son, Sheldon Judd Whitmer.
We also have two beautiful granddaughters, Kealy Rich and Heidy, and Carlos’s daughter Kiffany Whitmer.
We have been blessed so much. Life has had its ups and downs, but I know my Savior lives and loves us. Take care. I love you
Dad
