"Echoes from the Thundermug": Creede Boyhood, Part Two

Inside Plumbing Blesses Creede

There was nothing good about a run to the biffy in 30 degree below zero temperatures on a snow-filled path or carrying two loaded pails on a neck yoke to a mother waiting for enough water to do her Monday's wash. Indoor plumbing was surely the greatest improvement recorded in the town of Creede.

Barnett, Shaw, Duncan and Davis water needs were served by a well on the hillside below the Billy Barnett house. The well was dug near a spring that surfaced in gravel above the Creede sediment formation. This impervious bed held water for all the wells on the mesa.

South from the Barnett well, Dad Bill had a well beneath an enclosed porch for the use of Charlie Matson and Ed Snow. Herbert Barnhart's well serviced the Shillings and Comstocks, while further down the mesa George Webber had a deep well with windmill that kept a steady supply of clear, potable water for several homes.

Saturday nights and Monday mornings were busy periods for all the little shavers in Creede as we filled the copper boilers on kitchen stoves, reservoirs on the ends and outside tubs for cold rinses of the wash. We Jackson boys were lucky enough to have a hand pump on our well while, for the most part, others had weighted dip buckets on the ends of ropes run through a pulley several feet above the well. On a bitterly cold day, ice would cover the platform, and eventually stiffen the rope to where it wouldn't stay in the pulley. The youngsters carrying neck yokes would have frozen pants legs and shoes after the first trip.

In summer, rodents liked the cool confines of the wells and when the water developed a distinctive metallic taste, someone had to crawl down and dip out the putrefying remains of rats, mice or squirrels usually floating on top. It was as natural as blowing your nose to flip or pick hairs or swimmers from the dipper as we drank.

The Saturday night bath was dreaded by all, more so in winter. I was usually last in line and always had a soap ring around my middle to match the one on the old galvanized tub. In winter, we would place the tub far enough from the stove to open the oven door and have that wonderful warmth when toweling. On less frigid nights, the tub was placed nearer with the oven door closed. On one such night, I lost the bar of soap as I reached for the towel. I stooped over to retrieve the soap and placed my buns against the hot oven door. I was steam cleaned and branded in one fell swoop with one cheek bearing a "K" the other an "O" and a portion of the patent number.

Ozark Adventures

This whole story is the same road trip John tells, in slightly different words, in "Once Around the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Long Green and Short Stuff." Both versions are reproduced here in full, as printed.

We were going to Missouri to visit our grandfather Davis who looked forward to our arrival with all the enthusiasm of a convict on death row awaiting the arrival of his warden and a priest for the last walk.

Mom Jo, sat in the front seat looking prim and pretty, anxious to show off her trio of boys. Dad Bill made last minute checks of the moving parts of the car hoping the engine would fall out and spare him the tortures of being cooped up with his sons and heirs. Joel, Scooter and I, were cocked and primed for the adventures before us. Our slingshots were carefully packed and a can full of the right size rocks rested hidden beneath a jacket in case there were no rocks in Missouri. We had hoped our little friends would be there to bid us goodbye, so we could tell them again how we would be over a thousand miles from Creede where there were all kinds of poisonous snakes, tarantulas, alligators and long green tobacco, whatever that was.

We were in Kansas before I wet my pants the first time. After two stops to let me empty my stomach (I always got car sick) and after Joe had told Dad he thought he was on the wrong road I knew better than to ask him to stop again. I tried to pee in our can of slingshot rocks but Joe and Scoot wouldn't let me so there was no alternative but to let loose and hope the stale smell would be absorbed before reaching Mom Jo's nose.

Brother Joel may have flunked English but he could read a road map. After turning umpteen 90 degree section corners we wound up in Oklahoma where the roads were even worse than those in Kansas. All dirt and since these were the dust bowl days it was like going up hill all the way toiling from rutted, pocked surface to miles of tire deep sand. Dad was constantly shifting gears, cursing this God forsaken country that broiled grasshoppers and wind whipped them into the radiator core causing the engine to overheat and praying for a valid excuse to turn back. On one pass to a lower gear the shift lever came completely out of the transmission. At the sounds of renewed cursing we gathered around Dad's neck to see what the trouble was. He was hunched forward trying to keep us mobile, holding the shifting lever by the knob as it dripped oil on the rubber mat over the transmission while elbowing us back to the rear seat.

We continued in low gear to a single pump gas stop where a weather beaten old fellow, with more mechanical experience than Dad's succeeded in working the lever back in the transmission and replaced the keeper. Joe told him the story of how we had come all the way from Colorado as Scooter and I tried to knock a grasshopper from the glass bowl on his gas pump with our slingshots. He looked immensely relieved when we resumed our journey.

We bombarded Dad with questions as miles of sun scorched earth passed behind us. A lone jack rabbit leaped in front of the car hoping to end his misery under the wheels but succeeded in only getting bumped and rolled to the roadside where he looked as though he was beckoning us back for a second chance. At the thousandth query of, "When will we get to Missouri?" Dad moaned, "When you can see a tree again and you can pour water instead of shoveling it." We wondered why he was so grumpy as we held our arms out the rear windows trying to catch flying grasshoppers at the same time letting in clouds of dust that brought the first words of protest from Mom Jo.

Missouri was like an oasis in the desert after the trials of Kansas and Oklahoma. Water ran in streams boasting crawdads and perch, a persimmon tree treated us to ripening fruit and a stocky old fellow with a handlebar mustache welcomed us to a farmhouse setting back by a hollow just off the road between Southwest City and Noel. We had been briefed repeatedly during the trip as to what would be expected of us in becoming acquainted with grandfather Davis. Mom was anxious for initial impressions to be rewarding for all concerned and positioned herself to clap a hand over the mouth of the first offender. Dad, being a realist, was prepared for the worst. We rarely gave him cause to be otherwise.

After the first day grandfather Davis began absenting himself for longer and longer periods of time until Mom packed our belongings in the car for the return trip. He returned to bid us goodbye with few reminders of his newfound grandsons to plague his thoughts at night. We had succeeded in killing a tarantula that had the misfortune of getting trapped in Aunt Mary's new galvanized wash tub. We ruined the tub in the process. We were banned forever from Alexanders' because we knocked down a years supply of drying long green tobacco in ridding the barn of mice. We had seen Mr. Thompson go to the bathroom in his garden using his own feces to fertilize the vegetables and we had wasted a whole day by hiding by Dovy Magee's house because she had been bitten by a copperhead and was supposed to die. She recovered without learning of our disappointment.

We were traveling again via a new route, hopefully shorter and with better roads. Dad had entrusted Joe with the navigator's role and Scooter and I were hanging out the windows shooting up the last of the supply of rocks at mailboxes and jackrabbits. East of Wichita, Kansas, on a lonely stretch of road, we approached a car with half the hood unlatched laying over the other half and two rough looking characters hailing us. Dad had been undersheriff to Bill Orthen for several years and carried his .45 revolver on all trips. He laid it on the seat by Mom as he got out and told her keep an eye on them. Dad wasn't at all mechanical minded but when one of the men asked if he would look at their engine and see if he could figure out why it quit he dutifully stuck his head near the opening and began fingering the wiring. As one of the men bent down with Dad and began pointing at various parts the other raised a tire iron over his head and was all set to zap him when Mom stuck the six shooter out the window and hollered, "Billy, look out!" The gun was waving over a half acre and in all likelihood she would have hit Dad had she pulled the trigger but the thugs saw it was for real and scattered into roadside shrubbery. We were yelling "Kill them, kill them," as Dad vaulted the short distance between cars to retrieve the gun and Mom Jo faded from consciousness.

We had been to Missouri. We had been in three states other than Colorado which, in a sense, made us world travelers to our little friends. We had brought back a terrapin (small turtle) that, if it bit you, would not release its hold until it heard thunder, so they said in Kansas anyway. We had a dried up tarantula leg and best of all we had the adventure in Kansas to tell about that got better and better with age. We even had Mom Jo blasting away at the escaped convicts. Fame had come to the Jackson boys.

Flatus Before Dessert

Two passages below are the same stories John also tells, in different words, in "Once Around the Thunder Mug": the Polly Davis mud-pie game, and Bob Bennett's birthday dinner at the Barbers' — see Chapter I, "Cousin Polly and Mud Pies" and Chapter II, "Birthday Cakes and Pucker Power." Both versions of each are reproduced here in full, as printed.

It was lunch break. I had just polished off a turkey sandwich and lifted the lid of a container filled with jello pudding Inez had prepared the previous evening.

From my viewpoint, I could see the entire Powderhorn Valley, San Luis and Stewart peaks plus a small herd of deer feeding in a clearing just below me. I was just congratulating myself on having the faculties to enjoy such scenery and reverie when I looked at the pudding.

Good Lord, I thought, the old gal's trying to poison me. This conglomeration looked worse than the mud pies Polly Davis served me when we were making small footprints on Creede's mesa. Common sense told me if Inez was trying to poison me, she would have made the works look palatable at least, not such a purplish glob as this, as I smelled the first dip.

Polly liked to play house and while I didn't especially like being tied down at such a tender age there were usually rewards from Aunt Caroline's kitchen if I played the part of a doting husband and father.

After she advised me of my chores in the game, Polly would gather her ingredients — dry fine dirt, a coffee can filled with water, various weeds and flowers. Then she would furiously mix all together into the proper consistency, plop it into jar lids, pat it and pinch the edges, pretend to bake it, then hand one to me for my starving belly and comments.

The play acting was over when I received the finished product. Polly insisted on her pies being eaten and before I finished one she would hand me another, garnished with rose hips, followed several days later by two tablespoons full of castor oil.

As that memory faded with the last movement of the deer into cover, I thought of the time Charlotte Lane McClure and I were invited to Howard Barber's ranch where he and Pearl were hosting a birthday dinner for Bob Bennett, a son-in-law. Charlotte and I walked from the Lane ranch, a mile or more, to the Barbers', went through the proper greetings and were seated on a rough wood bench before a platter of fried chicken, mounds of mashed potatoes, milk gravy and fresh baked oven rolls. On a butcher's block, in plain sight, rested the largest rectangular cake I had ever seen, loaded with white icing and decorated with mouth-watering pink icing.

We had been working on a pot of lima beans and cabbage the last two meals at Gram Lane's and this layout looked larrupin' good. Lima beans and cabbage, combined, have a tendency to generate gas in the intestinal tract and before I had stripped two chicken legs of meat I could feel the methane building up.

I ate faster with one eye on the cake, hoping the others would get their fill and let Bob blow out the candles so we could get to the serious part of the meal. Howard was wound up in a hunting story and barely picking at his food, Pearl was seeing to it that everyone had seconds or thirds and all this time my methane generator, fueled by the lima beans and cabbage, was near out of control.

I puckered 'til I was completely puckered out and the safety valve finally blew. It sounded like an off-key clarinet interrupting a violin solo muted only slightly by the wood bench. I looked left and right hoping the blame would fall on Martha or little Freddie and I would still get my share of the cake but Howard had zeroed in on me with the first note, tipped back in his chair and roared with laughter.

Pearl tried to console me with, "Slips don't count Johnny," but I was totally disgraced. I pushed myself over the bench, bolted past the open front door and didn't stop running until I was in the darkness of the milk shed, where I cried and cursed the lima beans and cabbage that had beat me out of a piece of the best cake to ever grace a table on Moonshine Mesa.

Let's Hear That One Again

Each winter we drag out the boxes of photographs with the express purpose of placing them in some semblance of order in the numerous albums we have acquired over the years. It is a losing battle. Try as I might, to sort the pictures, within minutes I am lost in a criss-crossing network of memory webs that return me to lost generations of mannerisms, colloquialisms and wit of the gentle and not so gentle people who made growing up in Creede a unique and rewarding experience.

There, holding the reins of a bridle encircling the head of "Old Dynamite", a white burro, was Lee Davis and it seemed like only yesterday that he and I rounded up David Manning from the house where Genevieve Hargraves now lives to hide behind Mortensen's back shed, smoke Bull Durham and look at cowboy magazines. David had an old pair of discarded cowboy boots, several sizes too large with soles flapping. Both he and Lee had bandanna neckerchiefs with honest-to-God lamb vertebra chokers that they tightened in the front then twisted to the rear so the triangle of red hung down in the front like Tom Mix wore his. I had neither boots or neckerchief but the magazines were mine, given to me by the moonshiner and sawmill operator, Bill Tingley.

After our smoking session we would walk out between the Mortensen and Prince houses where Grandma Mort would be knitting or crocheting in her rocking chair on the front porch. "Been sneaking around my sheds again," she'd holler, "Probably smoking too. I'll spank your 'Star Spangled Bottoms' if I ever catch you smoking."

Gram Mort was rather large and rheumatic. We knew she could never catch us but it was worth the confrontation to hear her threaten that she would "spank our Star Spangled Bottoms", our first belly laugh of the day.

During the Dust Bowl days, a family moved from Oklahoma to a vacant house near us. A small black and white print depicts, better than words, the poverty of these unfortunate folks who found a new and better life in Creede. We became friends of the older boys of this family and spent as much time as we could spare around their new home just to hear their mother talk. She had evidently had a hard, working life from the time she was old enough to swing a hoe or milk a cow. Anything mentioned by someone else she had done at one time or another.

"Why hell, dearie, I've shucked more corn than patch hell a mile." "Hells bells, I've chopped more wood than patch hell a mile." And when her husband had been laid up with a broken leg on their farm, "I plowed more ground with our old mule than patch hell a mile." Her boys never got spanked, she was always going to switch them, "'til their tails stuck to their bellies."

Here is a picture of our Missouri farm where in the mid '30s we tried to grow strawberries in the red, rock rich soil, finally giving in to the elements and raising chickens instead. We still went broke but not as fast as cultivating strawberries. Our neighbor lady, a widow, brought vegetables to us and would stay to visit a "spell" with Mom Jo.

Elmira knew everyone in McDonald County and she knew everything worth knowing about everyone. At the end of a factual tale that needed extra emphasis, she would look Mom Jo in the eye sternly and state, "And you can put that in your pipe and smoke it." We had heard that saying for many years running from a cranky old maid who chased us from her premises many times in Creede, and "she can put that in her pipe and smoke it."

The Allen sisters passage below is the same story John also tells, in different words, in "Once Around the Thunder Mug," Chapter I, "Allen Sisters; We Don't Chew Our Tubakkur Twice." Both versions are reproduced here in full, as printed.

And over in that pile, a picture of the Allen sisters, Mabel and Ollie, who drove their milk cows over the mesa daily from their home and corrals at the lower end of Creede to lush pasture in upper Slaughterhouse Gulch. They usually passed just above our house and if we judged they would be near enough to Ed Snow's garage we would hide there and pelt the cows with rocks from our slingshots. This usually sent the holsteins on high with Mabel and Ollie running and puffing to head them back in the right direction.

Mabel caught sight of us one day, before we could duck into the garage, and came storming to the house, where she told Mom Jo, "Your young'uns are chasing our cows all over the hill with their tails up over their backs."

Mabel was talking so fast and so heatedly Mom couldn't understand her. Timidly, she asked her to repeat herself. Mabel fairly shouted, "Better dig the wax out of your ears Josie, I don't chew my tuhbakkur twice." From then on Mabel's reply became a byword with us, "We don't chew our tuhbakkur twice."

A somewhat out-of-focus print shows us with our adopted Aunt Olga, who baked us banana cream pies with crushed graham cracker crusts. Olga was a heavyweight, she could curse like a stevedore and fought with her fists, to the dismay of her husband Hal, our favorite butcher. Hal was a handsome, easy going fellow and liked to have a drink or two with the miners when he finished his shift at the Majors grocery. This perturbed Olga to no end. If Hal's speech was slurred or his steps unsteady when he reached the front door, she would yank him inside and beat him to a bloody pulp.

Dad Bill and I were on our way to "Hoot" Owsley's Emporium one evening and met Hal staggering down the sidewalk. He had wrecked his car. Olga had blacked his eyes and tore hell out of the furniture before leaving him and he thought he had probably lost his job. As they discussed his woes, Dad said, "Looks like you are really having a string of bad luck, Hal."

Hal grinned, through swollen lips, and replied, "Well Bill, it's a damned sight better than not having any luck at all."

Never Bet a Cinch

Granddad Lane and I had been sawing blocks from Red Spruce logs with a two-man cross-cut saw when they drove in. Al Hibbs and Arthur Davis had taken an unscheduled holiday to drive around country roads shooting at prairie dogs with Al's new .22 caliber pistol.

Granddad and I took a breather as Al showed off his new toy and asked me if I could round up some tin cans to shoot at. We had a generous supply of Columbine milk cans sacked to go to the dumpground from which I dug out all I could carry and spaced them on a bank of soft soil near the root cellar.

Granddad had given me a .22 caliber rifle the year before and I asked him if I could shoot with Al and Art. He nodded in agreement and I ran to the house for my prize. My shells were mainly for chicken hawks and prairie dogs but I had a full box of "long rifles" and I was itching to show what a good marksman I had become.

Al and Art were having problems scoring, missing as many cans as they hit but I was knocking one spinning with every shot. Al looked at me and said "I see you're shooting long rifles, Johnny, and I'm shooting shorts." He handed me one so I could verify that it was smaller than mine. "Tell you what I'll do," he went on. "I'll bet you a dime that my pistol will shoot a slug deeper into a block of wood with shorts than your rifle will put one in using long rifles." I couldn't imagine how anyone who knew firearms as well as Al Hibbs could be so dumb. I didn't have a dime and had to borrow one from Granddad who was sitting on a block of wood smiling.

We placed a solid block on the pile at belly height, facing us, and Al told me to shoot first. I put the barrel within a few inches of the wood and fired. Al kneeled further away, aimed and fired. With that done he took Granddad's axe and split the block along the lines of entry of the slugs. I had just lost a dime, not just ten cents but ten licorice sticks or two packages of Blackjack gum. Al's little pistol, shooting shorts, had penetrated a full two inches beyond the slug of my long rifle shell fired from a rifle. My slug was barely an inch in the wood.

I coughed up the dime grudgingly. As Al pocketed the coin he asked for one of my long rifle shells. He took one of his own then dug our slugs from the wood with his pocket knife. "Look here, Johnny, see how your lead slug expanded? Mine are copper clad and don't expand like your slug which is made out of soft lead. That's why it went in so deep." He gave me back the dime and advised "Never bet a cinch, kid, you'll lose every time." That was over 60 years ago and I have proven him right many times.

Black Drought Basics

More years ago than any of us wish to remember Billy Wills hired me for the summer months as chore boy at his and Loraine's Lake Cliff Ranch.

This proved to be my introduction to military life Basic training came at the hand of Loraine with occasional periods of rest and rehabilitation in the hands of Billy whose life was also drastically changed when he married this refugee from a far off land called Oklahoma.

It was easy to see how Billy had been captivated by Loraine, she reminded me of Paulette Goddard, the movie actress, and still is a beautiful lady as well as retaining the authority of a first sergeant.

I was continually greeted by "Young man! You march yourself right back outdoors and clean those shoes off!" or "Young man! March yourself straight to the porch and hang that jacket up!" At times, when I offered rebuttal, "Young man! Not another word from you." Billy also stood at attention and received his share of orders and only when milking time came, with Billy working the old cow's plumbing and me feeding the calf, could we relax and joke about our taskmate.

I had begun practicing small irritants to nettle Loraine that asserted a grain or two of independence while falling short of outright rebellion. I just wasn't ready for complete subservience to this lady whose conversations were sprinkled with y'alls and yonders.

We carried on this sparring for weeks and I was gaining confidence if not somewhat smug at my new found bravado. I seriously underestimated, however, both her depth of perception and her ability to handle incorrigibles. At a very appropriate time she ladled me out two tablespoons full of an Oklahoma remedy for all ills called Black Drought.

It had a pleasant taste but within the hour everything that wasn't tightly anchored, from my stomach downward, wanted out. There were fires and lightning, contractions and protractions, the dust hardly settled from one run to the toilet when the next one started.

On recovery, I nearly wore out a pair of shoes cleaning them before entry in the house and I did everything but salute for the remainder of my stay. I never learned if Billy's obedience came about because of the same remedy, but I was certain even the strongest constitution could stand no more than one dose of Black Drought.

Years later, after a hard day's labor in a mine, I struggled through the door of our honeymoon cottage to be greeted by "You march back out and clean those boots off." I retreated under the steely eyed stare of first sergeant Inez Mae with visions of a bottle of Black Drought resting somewhere in the house, a wedding present from Loraine Wills.

A Short Tail About Ginger

Fred Birdsey loved his dog. Not only was he an excellent retriever in bird hunting but he created fewer problems than the immediate family of this proprietor of "Soapy's Barber Shop and Pool Hall."

It was a common sight to see the large Irish setter padding down the sidewalk, head held high and jaws clamped on a package of round steak from Major's grocery as Soapy followed behind dodging the strings of slaver from either side of the dog's mouth. Soapy insisted the dog had a "feather bite" and never punctured the wrapping paper holding the main course of the Birdsey's evening meal.

I once drove the duo on a duck hunting trip to several upriver ponds and sloughs. As Soapy worked a chaw and told of other hunting trips, Ginger anxiously paced back and forth on the rear seat of Dad Bill's car, poking his snout out the half open rear window from time to time to smell the breeze and withdrawing it just in time to avoid being splattered by streams of tobacco juice that Soapy loosed into the wind to be sucked back through the rear window and form patterns resembling the wall paper behind the spittoons in the Elks Lodge.

The old dog was a wonder to watch as he sniffed through the tules and swamps retrieving mallards and teal dropped from flight by Soapy's pump shotgun. Less than wonderful to watch was his reentry in the car stringing slimy algae amid the tobacco stains and tracking ooze over the rest of the seat. Dad Bill wasn't very proud of me when he surveyed the condition of his car and lone mallard hen I brought home.

Soapy liked to fish the Rio Grande from piers of the D.& R.G.W. Railroad bridge near Wason Ranch. The pools, created by the piers, hosted large rainbow trout and Soapy had the knack to coax them onto the end of his line.

He was thus engaged one weekend with Ginger laying in the tracks behind him when a freight train appeared on a surprise run to move a string of Emperius Mining Co. concentrate and crude ore cars. The setter alerted Soapy to the onrushing disaster, as he never suspected any weekend rail activity, and the roar of the river effectively muted the sound of the fast approaching locomotive.

Grabbing his creel and with line dangling from his flyrod, Soapy sprinted to the North end of the bridge. On looking back he saw his faithful old retriever still on the tracks watching the oncoming engine, completely petrified. Soapy ran back and had time only to grab the dog by the collar and vault to the edge of the pier where he held fast with arms and legs to a stringer and Ginger as the train thundered past, squalling and steaming in a futile attempt to stop. The engineer had seen Soapy return for the dog and tried valiantly to stop before reaching the bridge.

Ginger, in struggling against his collar, had failed to get completely off the track and lost all but two inches of his tail to the wheels of the locomotive. There were no other injuries to Soapy's pal and companion, but he died within a week of the accident despite the ministrations of Witt Thomas, who subbed as a veterinarian for the animals around Creede. The above serves to prove that even old Irish Setters can't live without their tail.

Toils and Foibles of the Depression Kid

During the first years of the great depression jobs of moderate monetary return were reserved for adults and ambitious kids had to be content with the tasks of lesser return such as herding milk cows to pasture from houses in Creede and returning them in the evening for milking. The lucky lads who vied for these jobs were paid weekly salaries of twenty-five or fifty cents depending on the number of cows.

The job most desired and one we really scrapped for was the twice annual turkey picking provided by A.H. Major and performed in an old tin warehouse by the creek behind his store. Harl Spillman was Major's butcher and did the hiring for preparation of Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys. A single light cord provided illumination for a dozen or so of Creede's finest pickers.

The birds were shipped in cages from which we snared them one by one to be hung by their feet at a height suitable for the size of the picker, while the pickers held their birds tightly Harl pierced their brains with a sharp knife and the fun began. If the lad didn't hold his bird tightly enough and it disengaged its wings we would all be splattered with blood as well as the final bowel movement of the poor turkey, its last act of defiance.

We were paid ten cents a bird and several of the fastest pickers could earn over a dollar in an evening's work. Tearing the skin was a serious crime punishable by loss of the job so each of us strived to pull the feathers straight out and were extra careful around the base of the wings and neck where the skin was most likely torn. One little fellow had severe problems at one of the pickings. The first torn bird was overlooked by Harl but when the second one emerged with torn skin draped down the carcass the boy was promptly discharged. This meant more birds for us and we weren't overly sympathetic. We were well into the third round of picking, the firing and disappearance of Harry all but forgotten, when suddenly we were being drenched. Harry had crawled up on a partition overhead and was urinating over the lot of us. Les Turnipseed was in the direct line of fire and received the brunt of this revenge by a disgruntled ex-employee of the Benevolent Order of Turkey Pickers of Creede Town.

As economic conditions improved and promising silver veins were uncovered at the Last Chance and Amethyst mines, more and varied jobs opened up for the depression kids. Mayor Wallace Leary and the councilmen approved hiring of students for maintenance of streets and alleys, the students to be paid with poll tax and dog tax receipts which they in turn collected from the voting and dog owning citizens. The collecting for the receipts was sometimes a problem but it was better to have someone owe us three dollars than to be totally broke. Also, a fringe benefit lay in the chance of driving the Model B Ford truck that had a genuine hydraulic dump bed. Bernard Shaw, who had lost his left arm to a buzz saw at a very young age, handled this truck like an expert. Not only was he proficient as a truck driver he could shovel gravel and perform every other task required in such jobs.

We graduated from town maintenance to summer work with Mineral County. Kearney Higgs was foreman at this time with Frank Powell on the grader, Fred Ast bulldozer operator, John LaFont and Lee Love truck drivers. Oldsters Fred "Soapy" Birdsey, Art Neal and Witt Thomas joined us at laborers' pay of four dollars per day.

It was a long old dirt road then from county line to county line to be worked a mile at a time first throwing out the large rocks and weeds with pitchforks as Frank Powell graded, then raking and shoveling the smaller rocks into the trucks. We worked up many diversions to relieve the monotony of the job not the least of which was making a target of speeding cars for the tobacco chewers.

We were at a point near Fir Creek grade one day when a fast approaching dust trail signaled the approach of a speeder ignoring the "slow—men working" signs set out by the truck drivers. Lee Love and Jolly Bittick worked up bulging mouths full of fresh juice by the time the dude arrived and let fly simultaneously from both sides as he sped by. Jolly's windage and timing were perfect, the tobacco juice splattered over the windshield and down the drivers side. Unfortunately for the driver, his window was down and unfortunately for Jolly he was a large man and took exception to the speckles on his face and white shirt. We couldn't see the car through the dust cloud as he slid to a stop but there was no doubt about his intentions. Jolly swallowed his chew and wiped off all evidence before the fellow stomped back to us looking very capable of turning all of us inside out. Intervention by Kearney, who reminded the man he was in the wrong by speeding past a working crew, prevented blood letting though it didn't help Jolly's other predicament at all as his stomach refused to accept the large cud he had swallowed and would momentarily evict it.

Home 'Library' Taught Johnny to Read

There it is again, blaring out from page one of a local newspaper in quotation marks and bold type, "Why Johnny Can't Read." It is never why Harry or Joe or Billy or Tommy can't read. It is invariably "Why Johnny Can't read" like all Johnnys are lacking three staves for a round barrel or five bricks short of a full load.

Johnnys can read! Johnnys can read because they didn't waste their time in a two-holer just sitting and waiting for the forces of nature to act. There was always a Saturday Evening Post or Colliers magazine along with last year's Sears-Roebuck catalog and, if we were lucky, a western magazine with all pages intact might be hidden near a rafter.

Before we learned that a high-fiber diet kept the digestive tract in tune, the standard treatment to grease the skids was two slurps of castor oil or a teaspoon of Ipecac hidden in something potent enough to disguise the taste. It was easier on the temperament to spend an extra hour on hold than to gag down castor oil. If you were going to warm the seat for that length of time, you could either swat flies or read. I read, and that is mainly why Johnny can read today.

We often wondered why one of our grandfathers spent so much time in the biffy — up to two hours some days. This worried Mom Jo, who feared her cooking — or non-cooking — could be partly to blame.

We solved the mystery one day by sneaking through brush to the rear of the structure, where a loose board afforded a pretty fair view of the interior. There, with his trousers up, feet lodged in a hole and his back against a wall rested Grandfather. Breathing foul air, gathering cobwebs, he was reading a hardback in the only place the poor old fellow could be totally alone and able to concentrate.

Wheels for Reet

I have told the story of a dog driving a car and being picked up by the town marshal many times over the years without a soul believing me. I am pleased to write, that after 55 years, I finally have confirmation of the feat from one of the participants.

It was a ho-hum day in the little town of Creede Colorado in 1939 when Jack Whitaker, son of Doctor Whitaker, and Joel Jackson, son of Country Treasurer Bill Jackson, took Jack's dog for a drive in Dr. Whitaker's 1935 Plymouth sedan. Before they were underway Jack asked "Reet", short for Rio Rita, if he wouldn't like to drive. The dog nodded his head and the necessary changes in positions were made so Reet would be in full view of the road. Joel stooped over under the steering wheel with his head under the dashboard and his hands in control of the clutch, brake and gas pedal. Jack placed Reet on Joel's back with his front paws on the upper curve of the steering wheel and he took over the passenger side using his left hand to shift gears and help Reet steer.

They were off. Reet loved it, a giant leap for the dog world to have one old sheepdog tooling along with his nose to the windshield in near total command of wheels and two humans. They passed the dumpground, Federal Fish Hatchery and Wason Ranch at a fair clip and were approaching McKinney Springs when the Cudahy meat salesman appeared on the horizon on his bi-monthly trip for orders from the merchants in Creede. The gentleman knew nearly everybody in the community and waved at Dr. Whitaker. They had passed before he fully realized that a dog was driving Dr. Whitaker's car and pivoted in his seat for a better view. He became the first casualty of Reet's chauffeuring when he slid into the barrow ditch, vaulted the bank and stopped barely short of Fahnstock's four-strand barbed-wire fence.

This didn't upset Reet in the least who was all in favor of going on to one of the valley towns but they wheeled around in the La Garita driveway and headed back to Creede. Again, nearing McKinney Springs, United States Forest Ranger Don Kipp appeared making a dust trail behind his 1937 Ford Coupe on his way to Del Norte. Don was known to tip the bottle and when he passed Dr. Whitaker's car with a dog at the wheel he immediately thought he was experiencing a bout with D.T.'s. He turned around and followed his nightmare.

They re-entered town and executed the two corners to main street flawlessly with Reet, at times, sticking his nose out the partly rolled down window for fresh air. He was in such a position when they passed the town Marshal, Mr. Eugene Thom. Gene had a 1936 Chevrolet pickup without a scratch or blemish on it and he was proud of it but here was a flagrant violation of the law. He made a U-turn, passed Dr. Whitaker's Plymouth and forced it to a halt. He thought Jack was drunk and the dog was probably driving him home but he was sure the dog did not have a driver's license. He was right.

The excursion ended well, everyone involved had a good laugh and Reet went to dog heaven with a marvelous tale for his peers thanks to Jack Whitaker who is a doctor in his own right and recently wrote me from Indiana.

Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams

About 50 years ago, Mineral County High School fielded a basketball team that stirred fear in the hearts of hoopsters from Hooper to Del Norte. Well, ...almost.

We looked like an assortment of street urchins as we took to the court in ill fitting, unmatched suits.

Our team was Charlie Church, center and tallest at barely six feet; Scooter Jackson and Gavin Skinner, guards of a sort; Ralph Snow and John Jackson as forwards, or so the roster stated.

We practiced in a tin-covered warehouse that had neither height nor width for regulation play, but it had room for a basket at either end and an old office that served as a dressing room.

There was no heat save for a large pot stove near the dressing room. Nails exposed in the roof caused more than one ball to be patched until we learned the proper trajectory.

A fall to the tongue-and-groove pine floor made for a session with Mom and a needle to remove splinters. A full game meant the tin tub would be placed by the kitchen stove at home so the mothers could be sure they had the right offspring.

The old building was loaded with dust from windstorms; passing freight trains doused the west side with steam, soot and cinders; plus there were the remnants of hay, grain and coal stored in early years.

We were the Bulldogs in 1941. Our principal and first coach, Charles Mashburn, left to teach in California and was replaced by Mr. E.D. Watson who told us, straightforward, that he knew nothing about basketball but would back us to the hilt and arrange for scrimmage with any Valley team willing to do battle with us.

We were left on our own to fashion a squad that would carry the colors and not bring undue shame on our house of learning.

Our first game was with Del Norte's second string. We were going to play in an honest-to-God gymnasium with a real audience and had it been the championship team from Joe's (Jack McCracken-Ace Gruenig), we would have been no more concerned. We were there to win.

Paul Sittler coached the Del Norte boys and within the first few minutes, we realized there was more to the game than roughhousing and running. We lost 18-9 but, as a bonus, we were allowed to stay and watch the first string, Quentin Underwood, Charles Voris, Leo Zeigler, Harry Zeiler, et al., tangle with Alamosa.

Our next game was also with Del Norte. Coach Sittler brought his crew to Creede to play in our warehouse, a mistake never repeated. As I remember, Sammy Wright, Billy "Jake" West, Billy or Bobby Bond and perhaps Jerry Zeiler were among these pioneers. Coach Sittler was flabbergasted when he walked into our Bulldog quarters and saw the sorry state of the building.

It was so poorly lighted, you couldn't see from one end to the other, so cold you could easily see your breath and dust already fogging up from the stamping feet of the audience trying to restore circulation in numb limbs.

Del Norte came out in sweat suits for the encounter, but the stalwart Bulldogs played four quarters in their colors, blue and white at the first whistle, filthy black by the end of the first quarter.

It was a slam bang game, more fouls committed than one could count, with no penalties. The referees just wanted the torture to end as fast as possible. We lost. However, the margin was narrower, 15-9. We had a special place in our hearts for Coach Sittler and his team after that meeting.

I'll never forget our game with Hooper. Our transportation was made up of the '38 Ford of Mr. Watson and one borrowed vehicle. We were all instructed to have at least 50 cents with us, of which 25 cents went into the gasoline kitty and the remainder for the evening meal.

We arrived in Hooper early and ate at a small cafe that boasted a new electrical device with a penny slot in the top. With a copper, one could test his ability to withstand the shock of 120-volt current. It had two handles which were gripped with left and right hands then turned inward for the reward of a light tingle or a pants wetting full surge with the handles at full tilt.

I had a dime left after my meal of a hamburger and cherry soda. I had it changed to pennies and put one in the slot to test the shocker. I stopped with a fair charge then was joined by the others for a competitive go.

Ralph Snow and I were the only ones able to take the full surge and Ralph quit with one tooth-rattling twist. This was my first and only taste of fame and I made the most of it. Even one of the residents dug up a couple of pennies to watch the kid from Creede hold the needle at full charge with his eyeballs twirling and his knee caps trying to change places.

For weeks after that exercise, all I had to do was join my finger tips and my eyes would light up like a pinball machine.

Hooper beat us in a high scoring game, 30-24, but at this stage, we had learned a couple of things. We could run the tails off any team in the Valley and we had mastered the showers, a considerable accomplishment for a rag-tag group unacquainted with bathroom facilities.

One of the last so called scrimmages was with Monte Vista, a power house that year. Not a soul in the city turned out to watch the champs drive us through the floor, but there, right in the front row, sat our own Creede pep squad, teacher Dorothy Krausnick and students Cherie Larson, Emma Mae Wilson, and Genevieve Sullivan. What a show we gave them.

The lead see-sawed back and forth several times with the Monte Vista coach alternating players as often as he could get one on his feet. I remember Mark Fahrion as being the only one able to run with us. Monte Vista finally pulled it out, 34-31, when Gavin and I fouled out in the final quarter.

Buying a Car Big Event for a Couple of Country Boys

Thurston Bittick, brother of Eythel Davis, had saved the fabulous sum of $300 from a year's labors with Sam Birdsey in maintenance of the West Willow Creek mines roads. This event occurred at the time the Department of Interior shelved the Wagon Wheel Gap Dam project and reassigned a survey crew that had been engaged in the final plotting. It also occurred at the same time that I had 50 weighty dollars stretching the seams of my pockets.

Thurston wanted a car. I wanted Thurston to have a car and so did two valley girls who liked to attend dances and movies with out-of-town boys.

Bitticks ran the Navajo Lodge-service station complex where, as luck would have it, we met the Gap Dam survey crew packing to leave in a black Ford sedan with a small flathead V-8 engine that was 25 horsepower short of the regular V-8. The owner was named John Cass; he emphasized the name John and said he didn't carry a nickname. His two partners whispered that he liked to be called Jack, nonetheless.

Thurston wanted to buy his car in Denver. Ford and Eythel were living there at the time, which meant room and board would be free, plus brother-in-law Ford would help him get the most car for his money. John Cass and crew were traveling to Denver and would make room for us, reducing expenses for all. We were off, suitcases were tied on bumpers and surveying equipment graced the top of the little black Ford, making a dust trail down the Rio Grande Canyon.

Our first hint of trouble came at Villa Grove, where a headwind slowed us to a 30 mph pace, which we barely maintained to Poncha Pass. There the little engine built up steam and refused to pull five passengers. Not only did we have to walk over Poncha Pass, but we had to push the car for a hundred yards more before it gained momentum enough to become self-propelled. From there we either pushed it or walked behind it over every grade approaching six percent to the great metropolis of Denver, where we paid our share of expenses and parted company with the survey crew; also where, for the first time, we had nerve enough to use John's nickname in our farewell, "Thanks for the ride, Jack Cass."

Denver, even at that time, was of enormous proportions to a couple of hicks. Ford and Eythel drove us around the first night to see the glitter and immensity of the capital city of Colorado. The next day we decided to walk the length of Broadway and shop for the limousine that would carry us home from the rows of used-car lots that seemed to stretch for miles. It was a warm day by any standards, hot by our thermostats, and after four hours of tramping sidewalks and macadam, our feet were killing us in plain work shoes. Thurston looked at me and gasped, "To hell with it." We had passed a fruit stand a couple of blocks back and a stretch of gutter carrying water from lawn runoff. We walked back, bought a small watermelon, plopped ourselves on the edge of the sidewalk where we removed our shoes, put our feet in the gutter water and scattered melon rind and seeds both ways.

Thurston didn't buy his car that day. After sucking the last of the watermelon juice from the oval slabs, we boarded a trolley at ten cents a fare and followed the lead of the other passengers who requested transfers to other trolleys to reach their destinations. At 6 p.m. that evening our trolley was being housed for the night when the conductor took note of us in the rear seat. "Where the hell are you fellows going?" he asked. We didn't have any idea and we said so, explaining how we had been riding for hours on the first two dimes. He laughed and said if we would wait until he checked out, he would call Ford to come pick us up.

Only dire need leads me to brave traffic of Denver in this age, but I never see Broadway that I don't remember two country boys zipping down the thoroughfare in a Willys sedan like they owned the town. It wasn't a convertible and it wasn't chromed, but Thurston couldn't have been prouder in a Cadillac and the antenna sported Saturday night trophies just as well.