Oral History Program Ivy Letha Deming‐Bonelli Interviewed by Ellen Pace 7th, 8th, & 9th August 1983 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ivy Letha Deming-Bonelli Interviewed by Ellen Pace 7th, 8th, & 9th August 1983 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Bonelli, Ivy Deming, an oral history by Ellen Pace, 7th, 8th & 9th August 1983, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ivy Letha Deming-Bonelli. The interview was conducted on the dates of August 7th, August 8th, and August 9th of 1983 by Ellen Pace in 2337 Pinto Lane, Las Vegas, Nevada. The interviewee discusses her life growing up in Arizona as well as her personal family history and the family history of her husband, Frank Bonelli. (August 7, 1983) EP: I am interviewing Ivy Letha Deming Bonelli and I am her daughter, Ellen Bonelli Pace. Mother, for this Deming family history, I thought you might start by telling me what you remember about your Grandpa Deming. It was Caleb, wasn't it? LB: Yes. His name was Caleb Gordon Deming. He was born in New York and, at the age of sixteen, he was living in Missouri. The family had moved there after the Civil— just at the close of the Civil War. Grandpa was born on July 25, 1849. He always referred to himself jokingly as the gold his parents found. He was not an extremely tall man. He was about 5’ 10”, I think, possibly 5' 11", and slightly built. He had blue eyes and I always knew him as wearing a moustache. At one time he had worn a long, full beard but when I knew him it had been shaven, and he left only the moustache. One of the things I remember was the time he came home from a journey from Phoenix. Always he rode his bicycle to the country store which was about a mile from us, left it there, took the stage and went on the journey to Phoenix. When he returned, the bicycle was waiting and he rode it home. I could see him as he turned the corner a short distance 1 from home, and probable a quarter of a mile. I would run to meet him, then he would peddle me home, carrying me in the basket that was on the front of the bike. This time I made the run up there and when the man stopped it was not my grandfather. This man did not have a moustache. And he insisted that he was and he picked me up and put me in the basket, but I worried all the way home because I had been taught not to ride with strangers and he certainly was a stranger. Later I learned that the barber had made an error and had cut off one side of the moustache a little bit, so they had just shaved it off, but it was a very difficult time for me to adjust to that new man. I think I must have been barely five at the time. EP: Was he living with you at that time? LB: Yes, we were all living on the place together. EP: Oh, on the Deming ranch. LB: He had a room built separate from our house a little distance away so he could always study or read or whatever, and when he didn't feel as well as usual, a place to retire to. His private room was an extension of the same building that housed the grainery where grain was stored until it was used or sold. We always grew wheat and barley on the place, and alfalfa. Alfalfa seed was usually sold right after harvest but the other grains were sometimes held for better markets. Alfalfa you could depend on being the same price the year round. Grandpa was not well, ever. He was 62 years old when I was born. He was living there with my parents, and at that time, I believe it was just before Dad's marriage, he built this place for himself separate from the home so she could have the house. The house was not a large house. There was a parlor, there was a 2 master bedroom, there was a very long, capacious room where we had the dining table and sort of a family room situation, and beyond that was the kitchen. On either side were sleeping quarters. On one side to the east was a screened porch that had canvas shutters that were down when it was cold, where the girls slept; and on the opposite side was a similar construction for the boy's bedroom. It was not as large as ours, probably because there were more girls. EP Who would have been living there with you at that time? LB: Well, there were my mother and dad and my grandpa Deming; there were myself and my two brothers and my baby sister, Dorothy; there were also two aunts, Ada and Ethel who were seven and nine years older than I. After Grandmother's death, Ethel came to live with us and Ada decided that she would not live with Aunt Ruby but came up and joined us. And we had another girl there who was the age of Ada. She was Grace Bassett. Her mother had deserted the family and had gone to Kansas City and she was left in a home with a father and a large number of brothers. I think there were nine brothers. So Mother invited her to our home to live with us, so we had a pretty good household at that particular time. At other times, there were other people who came for a while. We not only had the two aunts but also the two uncles who were two and four years older than I. Leo was the baby of the family. He was supposed to stay with Uncle Len. Farrell was just two years older than he and he was supposed to live with Uncle Joe, but when there was any difficulty in the household, they always came to our house and Dad and Mother took them in whoever they happened to be. EP: Now, Ethel, Ada, Leonard and Farrell were your mother's brothers and sisters? 3 LB: Yes, Aunt Ruby was the oldest girl in that family. There was a girl, Mary, who died at about age three and then there was my mother, Uncle Joe and then Uncle Len, and then there was a gap of about seven years and then Uncle Frank came in there. Another gap of a number of years, I think five or six, and then there was Ada, Farrell and Leo, in that order. Uncle Frank died during the war. He was in the Portland, Oregon, shipbuilding industry. He was rejected as a soldier because he had one eye. At age twelve he had taken a nail and was removing the powder from dynamite caps to construct some sort of invention he had in mind. He had done several successfully but this one, there was a spark and the explosion threw copper in his eye. It was no longer with him and so he always, he usually, wore a glass eye unless he wanted to frighten us and then he would look at us with that fierce, gaping socket. EP: Not much pride in appearance. LB: Well, he was a boy of fifteen, I guess, when this occurred, and he brought with him a case of fourteen different, colored eyes. He was teasing us by having the eye out and we asked him to put it in, so he turned his back and when he turned back he had this bright purple eye. Now his own eye was brown, but he had all these different colors. There was one of every color that you could think of. There was one that was bright red that was horrible. EP: Were they actually glass eyes? LB: Yes. EP: You said that he was rejected from the war. Which war was that? 4 LB: World War I. He was not allowed to fight so he went into shipbuilding. When I was eight, he was ill and because of the situation—he had the flu—my mother went to Oregon to take care of him. Grandmother had died the year before and so Mother had gone up there to nurse him. Unless a relative could come in and do the nursing there was no one to nurse, and this is why she had gone. She was gone quite some time. EP: Several months? LB: No, I'd say several weeks, probably six or seven weeks. It was quite a while to me. He was at Portland, Oregon, in the shipping yards when he fell ill and the people sent word to Mother to tend him, but he died of pneumonia on top of influenza. He died at that time. The Spanish Influenza they called it, but Mother didn't fall ill or anything. But back to Grandpa Deming. Grandpa Deming was married, I think, at age 22 and he was 22 when the accident occurred. His wife had wanted a special piece of fieldstone for her back doorstep and they had gone out over the farm and had found the very piece she wanted. So one day Grandpa hitched up the team and went out, he had no one to help him, he was all by himself but he wanted to get that stone in as a birthday gift to my grandmother. He went out with the team, he drove up so the wagon was at the right position, and then he started to load it by lifting it up to the end of the wagon, it was a big flatbed, then lifting again to flip it over on the wagon. He got it up to the position when it was just ready to turn when he discovered that it was too heavy a job for him, and he couldn't get it back down because there was no way to without being crushed under it. So he gave that extra effort that it took to flip it over and in doing so damaged the central nervous system, the spinal cord near the neck. He felt something snap and 5 the next thing he knew my grandmother was there trying to revive him. He had fainted and had been lying there for quite a long time before she went out to hunt for him. She found him there with this stone on the wagon and he collapsed at the rear of the wagon. She was able to get him up to the wagon and take him home and put him to bed, but after that time he always suffered from palsy. His hands shook and if he had been ill or overtired his feet would shake and he couldn't sit down properly. I recall always if I saw him fill a cup, it would be half full because otherwise it would slosh over. Grandpa was a very proud person. He disliked very much being unable to control himself and I remember often he would use most any device to hide his shaking hands. He had a habit of putting the right hand inside the front of his coat when the hand was shaking more than usual. EP: Was he able to work? Was he able to run the farm? LB: No, he was unable to do any hard menial labor of any kind. He could feed the chickens, he could close the coops, and then he could set the hens, things like that. I recall we usually had about 500 hens on the place and that was one reason for the grainery, too. We had the grain that he grew stored there for chicken feed as well as for horses and cows, and neighbors who met catastrophe for some reason or another, or strangers who came through who were hungry. We always had an extra supply of grain for whatever use needed to be fulfilled. But Grandpa was able to take care of himself and when I was ill a great deal as a child, he often was a great source of pleasure for me because he would tell me stories, he would teach me things and I loved to learn. He would go to great lengths to let me learn the truth. He always had that emphasis on the 6 truth and he would teach me how to find things in books, how to understand how a book was made, and things like this. Of course, this came a little later when I was, oh, probably six and a half and seven, because then had started to school. But I recall him telling me stories always. I was inquisitive as to family background and asked lots of times for him to tell me things and he would always oblige, he would take that time to do it. EP: Do you remember any stories he told you? LB: Oh, yes, I remember the one about the tornado that carried the horse away. Then I went excitedly telling that in the house and my dad added a few items so that I have a pretty good story of that. Also, I recall him telling the story of himself at sixteen being captured by what he called "Greycoats," these were the Confederate soldiers who had not yet returned home. They stayed around the vicinity for quite some time trying to forage enough to make their way home, and this being, Kansas being a free state, they weren't exactly welcome at the farms, and they sometimes weren't very well-mannered. His captors were two burly individuals who were very coarse and profane. He came out of a household where this was absolutely "no-no" and he was quite unprepared for that kind of situation. He had been going across through the woodlot to visit a friend whose farm was adjacent to the Deming place. And it was about at the division of the two properties that these two men pounced upon him and took him captive. They tied him to a tree. They took ropes and tied his hands together behind this sizeable tree so that there was a pull, a tension on the arms all the time and they had to go pretty straight around there behind him to go around the tree. They also tied his feet and then tied the rope around 7 the tree. His feet were together and then the knot was behind the tree and he didn't have much hope of ever getting loose and he was feeling pretty discouraged. The second day, another Confederate soldier joined the group, but this was a younger man, a much more refined individual who had a family of his own and a very compassionate person, because these two individuals who had captured him went out foraging and they found some liquor somewhere in a house and stole it and brought it back, and they were quite excited about the fact that they had this drink and the third man refused to have any, said no thank you to having any himself and suggested they could have his share. And so they consumed all they had and then fell asleep. While they were sleeping this man freed my grandfather and he also left. They were there asleep, and drunk, and we don't know what happened to them. But Grandfather had a terrific aversion to anything grey. When I was about seven he was buying himself a new suit and I wanted him to buy a grey suit that was absolutely beautiful. But he would not buy it, saying he would never wear anything grey, and when I inquired as to why, he told me this story. EP: You told me before about his story of his father's experience in the Civil War. What did he say about Elias, his father? LB: Elias, my great grandfather, was residing in New York State and in a small community. He was the only man in that area who was not conscripted as a soldier. They did not take him because he had an eye problem which permitted him to see only about ten feet, and as he explained to some of the ladies who were so highly incensed because he did not go to war along with their husbands, he would not be much of an asset as a 8 guard when he could see only ten feet, nor would he be much use on a battlefield. So he was left to farm and help to feed the forces. This he did. He raised grain and hogs and cattle. He manufactured cheese and made smoked hams and things like this and he harvested a bumper crop of wheat. Then he took this wagon of his and his two horses, and somebody else let him have two more—I think it was two different people— and he hitched up this team of four horses to this big load of foodstuff and started the long trek to the battlefields out on the Missouri edge of the frontier. As he traveled he had many experiences of hardship trying to get through. There was no definite highway and things changed rapidly in the war torn areas. He finally arrived—it took him a long time—I think that it was about three months it took him to get there with the load but everything was intact when he got there. He expected to leave the food and return home with his wagon to bring more supplies as soon as they were available, but when he got there the army took the food that he had brought, they took the wagon and they took all four horses, his and the ones that the neighbors had supplied. He was quite upset about that because here he was going back without the borrowed team and he wondered at what he would be able to do to give the people satisfaction for these missing horses. Another thing, he had no way to travel except on his own two feet and not being able to see very far was quite a handicap when it came to traveling particularly by foot, and he had many, many adventures on the way home. The trip home was really very difficult, but finally he was able to find someone who was going in the general direction of his home who offered him a ride in return for his assistance with the handling of the horses they had. So he accepted gratefully and continued his journey and finally arrived at home. He was late getting there, it was well into the winter 9 and very cold. In fact, most of the trip had been through the wintertime. This was one reason it was such a hardship. He was a little late, though, with his spring planting because of the way he had to travel to get home. He did plant and he did harvest but it was not the bumper crop he had the year before. Nor did he have a team and wagon so he could take supplies west. He had tremendous difficulty in that he had the resentment of all the women whose husbands were gone, his wife was ostracized for the same reason, for she was the only one in the vicinity who had a husband at home and what they considered a normal household. After the war was finished, I believe he helped to get someone else on the road to take things, supplies, out there. I think the army, perhaps, was involved with this second trip. Anyway, he emptied his larder, his grainery, of food to send to the troops. He also sent quite a bit of clothing that his wife had made, it was woven by hand, in other words it was homespun material but it would be very serviceable. He then finally acquired a team, he acquired a wagon, and after the war was over, after peace was declared, he set out on the journey to Missouri. He had decided that he would go out there and settle. He got there, as I said before, the rebels did not leave immediately. They really had no place to go, many of them, and they didn't want to go home in defeat, lots of reasons why they stayed. EP: So this is where they were when the boy was captured. They had moved to Missouri? LB: Yes. Now, they did not homestead on that land but bought property. They settled on this farm. My great grandfather had made friends with a fellow who had a place there and I am not sure but what he was the one who wanted Grandpa to settle on that particular spot and sold him the land. I'm not clear on this, so we won't discuss it. 10 EP: There probably will be some land records that I could explore. LB: Or you might check with Virginia. She may have this already. Elias stayed there, I guess, permanently until his death. My grandfather had married at about 21 or 22, and he married a young lady whose parents lived across the river in Kansas. They lived in Linn County near Prescott. She seemed to be a very fine young lady with flashing dark eyes and black hair and fair skin. She had been living in Kansas for quite some time. Now, they were married and Grandfather was injured, and he made arrangements with neighbors to do the heavy farm work on a share basis and they remained there. They had a daughter, Minnie Belle, another daughter, Lulu Nell was her name, and seven years later my father was born. He was not born in Missouri. That was where the home was, but Frances Jane Hartley Deming had gone across the river to visit her parents in Kansas and they were. . . I think they spent the Christmas holidays there and the river was in flood and she could not get home, but I'm not positive about that. Anyway, on the 28th of February she was still in Kansas and my father was born a Kansan rather than a Missourian. He always claimed to be from Missouri. He said: "You have to show me," and this, of course, is the motto of Missouri. He was born there and soon after his birth the farm in Missouri was traded for one in Kansas that was close by her mother's place. It was rather poor farmland. There was a strip of it where people couldn't seem to make much grow, but later they discovered coal on that farm and it was only six feet down and very easy to extract, and so Grandpa had a coal mine. There were quite a number of stories about that coal mine. EP: That our grandpa told you? 11 LB: That my grandpa told me and things that my father told me, also. EP: What were some of the things they told you about the mine? LB: It started out as a very shallow mine, you would just dig down a little way and here was the coal vein, but after a while it dipped down and it was maybe thirty feet under the surface. It kept going deeper. But when my dad was eight years old he would go down in the mornings at 4:00 o'clock through the cold to light the fires at the mine, get things going so that when the men arrived at sunrise, things would be ready to work. He was eight years of age. EP: He had to do this before he went to school? LB: Yes, this had to be done every morning, and besides that he had other chores, other things he had to do. EP: Now he was already, his mother had died when he was four, so he was already a little deprived, wasn't he? LB: Yes, Well, another sister was born two years after my father's birth, and since she was just two years younger than he, they were always very close and Dad always felt the obligation of taking care of Jean. EP: Mary Frances Jane, Aunt Jean, it was as one of you told me. I have in one of the interviews a story about them going to school and being sent home in the blizzard. LB: Yes. Then when Jean was two years old there was another baby being born and my grandmother decided she must refinish the rocking chair that she would use when the baby was tiny, and so she used turpentine to remove the varnish from that chair and 12 she used turpentine to wash her hands as she cleaned them of the finishing material, and the doctor said that that was what killed her. The turpentine. EP: I also have a record saying that Caleb's second wife, Ida, died because they had used turpentine on her skin. LB: Yes, turpentine was a very popular medication at that time and people did not realize that it had some side effects. EP: It was toxic enough to kill her. That is too bad. She died and in the record it showed the baby died. LB: Nine days later the baby died. When Dad was eight, Grandpa was remarried to Ida Perry. EP: Your dad was working, helping with the mine already then? LB: Yes, well, I think up until he remarried they had a man staying there at the house who would do all these jobs, but then there were some revisions in living conditions and this chore was assigned to Dad. Grandma Perry thought he was plenty big enough, competent enough to stand it. EP: Did the mother-in-law, did Sarah Perry, live right there in Kansas and moved to Arlington when they did? LB: She moved right with them. EP: Did she live with the family? Or just supervised them closely? 13 LB: She supervised them closely. They owned their place that was not too far from the Deming place in Kansas, and when the storm occurred that you speak of, Grandpa had gone to Prescott to attend to some business. Now that was a day's trip by horse and wagon, and then he had to have a day there in the town to transact his business and then a day to return, so he was gone for three days. They got up this particular morning and my dad told his stepmother that it was going to storm and he didn't want to go to school that day, but she thought he just didn't want to go to school and she insisted, so he and his little six-year-old sister went on to school. EP: Yes. Perhaps we could talk about . . . LB: They were taken in a sleigh with the teacher, I believe, and when they got there, by ten o'clock the storm clouds had gathered so closely that it was eminent, the storm, and my dad told the teacher that they should go home, that there was going to be a bad storm, but she couldn't believe him, he was only eight years old, what would he know about the weather? Of course, you know that she was a very young lady who had never taught before and didn't know the area. It was her first job. But there was a big boy, he was about six feet tall, in the school and he went out when my dad suggested it, he went out and took a look and he came back and he said: "Well, you can do as you please but I'm going home." He hitched up his sleigh and loaded it with the children who went in his direction and they left. Well, the teacher was delivered and then they always came back for her so there was no sleigh for her, but somebody else made room for her in their sleigh, and took her away. It left these two children, six and eight years old, locked out of the schoolhouse and no way to get the two miles home excepting to walk. Now, they 14 started out and they went as fast as a six-year-old could make it, but they were still a half-mile from home when the storm hit, when it became bad. It was very cold, of course, the snow was already four feet deep and everybody used only sleighs to travel. Jean laid down and she said she was sleepy and refused to get up and go any farther, and Dad explained to her that she couldn't lie down, that she would freeze, but she was too sleepy to do anything about it, and so he picked her up and carried her on his back the half mile through a tearing blizzard to get her home. When they got there the house was locked because Ida had become frightened at the storm, had hitched up her horse and gone to her mother's house. EP: Dorothy said she had gone over to Elias Deming's house. LB: No, Elias Deming's place was across the river. It had been sold. Where she went was to her mother's house, the Perry place, and she was nowhere around. Well, he got them into the barn. There were two cows in stalls in there and he put them into the same stall and got them bedded down, took the horse blankets he could find for covers, and then he put his sister, because she was completely asleep, put her in between the cows and he got in there, too, after he got her revived. He gave her warm milk from the cows and he had some, too. That was all they had to eat. Even the feed for the stock was not available. It was stored in such a manner that he had to go out to get it. And it was very dark and very cold, stormy. EP: How long were they there? 15 LB: They were there overnight and through most of the next day. When my grandfather got home he found them there. Now she was over at her mother's and they had not come to tend the stock or do anything. EP: The blizzard was too severe? What did she think had happened to the kids? LB: This I can't say. But my dad told me this part of it, and Grandpa told me about the blizzard, said it was a bad one. EP: Did he have a good relationship with this young stepmother of his? LB: Well. . . EP: Or did he talk about her at all? LB: He always spoke only softly and sweetly about her, or about anybody else. He never spoke ill of anybody. EP: Except, perhaps, about his step-grandmother. LB: Oh, you are talking about my dad. Oh. EP: Your dad. LB: Dad didn't speak ill of people but you could sure tell what he thought. (Laughter.) He was extremely expressive. EP: Okay. I am confusing us a little. What were your feelings about this story of your dad as a small child? LB: Well, this story also was a reflection of family relationships. And the fact . . . that Caleb was under the influence very strongly of his mother-in-law. 16 EP: It seemed that Ida had a baby but lost it when they were first married? LB: I do not know how long they were married before the first baby arrived but I think it was three or four years. EP: Oh, and it was stillborn. LB: It was stillborn. EP: Was it named or anything? I don't find it on my records. LB: I found the birth record. You know, I can't tell you about that, Virginia can tell you some things about that because I sent her the records that I got out of Phoenix. EP: Okay. I'll check again. She didn't remember having a record. They lived there until Normie, your dad, was fourteen, in Kansas. Let's finish talking about Caleb. He had the palsy problem and then because of the severity of the Kansas winters and that problem, he developed rheumatism or something, didn't he? LB: He had arthritis. EP: He had arthritis? LB: Um huh, I think they called it rheumatism in those days regardless of what it was. EP: Now, had his father, Elias, died before they left Kansas? LB: I think Elias had died before they made that swap of property and came to Kansas. But you see, I need to look at family records to clarify this thinking, this was something I never cared to know about, you see. EP: I see. Then, Caleb, because of his health, sold the coal mine and the farm? 17 LB: He sold the coal mine. It was a highly producing coal mine at that time as they had to bring the coal up only about thirty feet to the surface, and so he was able to get a good price for it, and then they moved. He had to move on a stretcher, he was bedridden, and the doctor had said he would not survive another year of this cold and so they purchased this place in Arlington. EP: Once again they purchased? LB: It was a 160-acre farm but only forty acres had been cleared and had been farmed. There was also a house, and soon after Grandpa got there they added two rooms at the front facing the road. One was the master bedroom and the other was the parlor. He was in bed for almost a year after they arrived in Arlington. He was unable to do any kind of work. There were animals on the place and chickens and these were Dad's chores and also taking care of the plot of ground that was being farmed, this was his job, too. He was fourteen at this time and a large boy for his age, large hands and long arms, and he was very capable and he could work beside a man. In fact, almost immediately when they arrived, floods on the river had damaged the ditch that brought the water to the farms of the vicinity and most of the fourteen-mile stretch had to be rebuilt, and Dad was given a team and a scraper and sent on the job along with men of the area to do his share, or Grandpa's share, of the construction. I had people tell me after, when I was in college, I was doing a research paper on that area, I had people who had worked beside my father at that time, and they told me what an excellent workman he was even at age fourteen years. One gentleman who was a Dane, he said: 18 "Why, doggonit, Normie could work right alongside any man and do his full share." He really thought highly of my father and was always a good friend of ours. EP: What was his name? Do you remember? LB: His name was Laurids Anderson. He was from Denmark. He came to this country when he was 28 years old and a younger brother who was fourteen, his name was Andries, they came together, and Andries married my father's cousin, Aunt Jessie, and was really a bona fide member of the family in that respect. Grandpa, when he became better in health, began preaching again as he had in Kansas. He had been a member of the Church of God Out of Ohio, this was the way it was designated. Sometimes this church was known as the First Day Adventists because their beliefs are so very closely related to those of the Seventh Day Adventists. However, they do not use Saturday as their Sabbath, but Sunday as most Protestants do, and they do not give up eating meat as the Seventh Day Adventists do. My grandfather was instructed to eat meat because it was felt that would be an excellent way to better health. He seems to have gone along with Seventh Day Adventist thinking for a bit and had dropped meat from his died for a while, but when I knew him he always had a small portion of meat at least once a day. As he got stronger, sometimes he went out to supervise what my father was doing on the farm. He didn't actually do any of the work himself unless it was driving a team and riding. He could sometimes and in some instances do this, but mostly his work was around the farm yard. He fed the chickens and he gathered the eggs and sorted them and crated them for sale. He did other tasks that he felt he could handle physically. When he became overtired he always stopped even though he might not be through. 19 He would give himself that edge in order to stay well. Anytime he became too tired he became ill. He was holding meetings in the valley. He always preached without any pay of any kind. This was a part of the thinking of that groups they didn't pay a minister. The minister earned his own way and he shared his gift of the ministry with anyone who would participate. People would come to him on spiritual matters, asking questions and letting him help them come to decisions on what should be done as a Christian. He would help anyone who came from anyplace. Often people came from Phoenix or from other far places who wanted to talk with him on some personal matter. He was loved by the people who knew him and was highly respected and honored by his son, Normal. He (Norman) tried to be a dutiful son and until he was sixteen I guess there was no really difficult problem between the two. But at that time, he was extremely interested in music. He was not permitted to go into the parlor and play the organ. That belonged to Ida. He loved to play it and whenever everybody was gone he would open the room which was always kept under lock and key and go in and play the organ to his heart's content. When it came time for the adults to be home, he would carefully close the door and go out the window and then slam the window so they would not know he had been in there. He would lock it from the inside. He felt a little bit guilty about being deceitful but he felt the music was worth it. There was a community custom of holding a dance every Saturday night and most everybody in the valley would gather at the home of one of the group and the band was made up of local talent. There was a gentleman who played the violin, a fiddler, there was a banjo player, a guitar player, and I don't know what role the other one had. It could have been drums, it could have been something else, at any rate, he was most intrigued by the violin. He just loved the music that came 20 from that instrument and he watched very closely while it was played. He didn't dance because Grandma Perry decided that dancing was not proper, that it was sinful, and until Willy Perry, her son, started going to the dances, my father did not dance, but he decided when he saw Willy hanging around the outskirts that he was going to dance, too. However, his main interest was with the fiddler. He continued to watch and one evening the fiddler went out of the room, probably to get a drink of water or something, and Dad picked up the violin he laid down and he began playing one of the pieces that was popular in the group, and the other fellows picked up their instruments and began to play with him. When the fiddler returned to the room, he started in, he saw the fiddle in my dad's hands, and he kind of moved back into the shadows and let him finish his piece of music before he came on in. He came in, Dad was ready to apologize when he saw him approaching, and he said: "Hey boy, I'm sure glad to see you playing that thing. Now I'll have somebody to spell me once in a while." Shortly after that he suddenly found this violin of his unsatisfactory and he got himself a brand new one. Dad didn't think it sounded as good as the old one, but the fellow told him he had two fiddles and nobody had a use for two fiddles. Wouldn't he like to buy that fiddle from him? So he and Dad made a deal and Dad bought that fiddle for five dollars. So he would take it, hide it in the grainery, and when he went down into the south sixty where the land was not yet completely cleared, whenever he was working down there, he'd have the violin with him and he would practice under a couple of big cottonwood trees that were there. He enjoyed it tremendously. But one time, Sarah, that was Grandma Perry, did not take the usual route to visit the Demings. Instead, she came down on the road that passed the south sixty and she heard the violin. She stopped her horse, climbed out of the 21 buggy and peeked through the salt cedars that grew along the ditch to be sure of what she heard, and sure enough, it was Normie fiddling away and the fiddle was an instrument of the devil and should not be used, touched, played. She was sure he was "on a wide road straight to hell," and she went on up to the house. Normie, of course, did not know that he had been seen or heard, but when he got home that evening he did. She was gone but his dad asked if he had been fiddling, if he had a fiddle, and he said yes and showed it to him and Grandpa said that he could not have a fiddle and would have to get rid of it, and Dad refused. He was a young man now of sixteen. When he went to get his violin the next time, it had been broken into many pieces and could not be repaired, and he was so angry that he left home. (August 8, 1983 Part I) EP: Mama, you were going to tell me a little more about your school days in Arlington. LB: My first teacher was redheaded and freckle faced, and the most beautiful young woman that ever lived, I was sure. I adored her and we had many happy hours together. She lived up toward the store. She lived with Montgomery’s, and she would drive to school in a horse and buggy, and she would stop at our place as she came by and I would ride to school with her. This was my first year of school. I had a marvelous time. It was so wonderful to be able to learn all these things that were in the books and to begin to read and to be able to make it out myself. It was a tremendous joy. I went through the charts that we were given, and we were expected to be through with those. Around Thanksgiving. Because I went with the teacher, I was at school a half-hour early every day and I would spend my time looking at the charts, so I had them very well 22 memorized long before it was time to have completed them and was allowed to go on into the primers and eventually into some other books. I don't believe I was allowed to go into those second grade books, but I did, and when I got to them in school everything in them was familiar but not old. I found that I could read almost every word in the books and so I had no difficulty with my first grade, my first year. In fact, I had three boys in my class and they didn't learn nearly so fast as I did in the reading department and before long I was teaching them how to read. One boy I didn't get to teach because he couldn't be downgraded by having the girl in the class help him, so he struggled with it himself and he got it, too. He was not a dunderhead. The other two boys were very happy to let me help them and teach them. I recently met one of those boys at an Old-Timer's Reunion and he reminded me that I was the one who taught him to read. We had an excellent visit. I hadn't seen him for probably fifty years. It was just downright fun to get to know him. EP: Now, you remarked to me that you had learned to read about the time the war broke out. LB: Yes, that was my year, my first year at school: 1916 was when I started and then by April, when war was declared and we were entered, I had gone to the store and the Post Office to pick up the mail for the family. I think I may have gone up with Grandpa when he was leaving and then walked home carrying the mail. But when I got this newspaper out of the Post Office there was a huge banner headline. It took half of the page and there were only three letters, and I looked and had this terrible, cold feeling. It 23 said "WAR" and I knew that we were in the war because I had heard what was being said around the table when I was not supposed to be present or listening. EP: Did they discuss the war a lot? LB: It was discussed a great deal because of the possibility that we would be going into it. This was the way it looked, and so I had heard quite a bit. EP: What was the sentiment in that area? Did they want to join the war or did they want to avoid it? LB: No, they didn't think that we belonged in that war that it was in the other hemisphere, that we were not to go there. I think they all adhered rather closely to the doctrine that we stay in our continent. EP: Isolationist. LB: Well, this had been stated by President Monroe many years before, and it was a popular feeling in our area. However, they didn't think we should sit still for destruction of our people and so there was a little pro and con when they talked. When I picked up this paper and saw the word "WAR," I began running toward home. I wanted to take the news. And then I found myself very tired, running. It was a little bit difficult because I had an armload of stuff. I sat down under a very small tree to catch my breath and I began deciphering the article that went with the word "WAR." The whole front page was devoted to this particular subject and I had read a large portion of it and felt very well informed when I got home. I was out of breath again, and panted a bit, and then told 24 them there was a war. And I was asked how I knew about the war, who had told me, and I said: "Well, I read it in the paper," and I had a sixteen-year-old aunt living with us, and she was by that time. . . EP: She didn't think you were able to read? Do you remember anything more about the war, did you have people from Arlington who went into the war? LB: Yes, the war. I believe they went into the Naval Branch, the ones that I knew. I can't recall, offhand. I know there were some brown Army suits visible. Whether they were Arlington people--there were lots of people who came recruiting, and sometimes they would bring a lot of young men who were known in the valley to help lure the other boys into it, but there were not a large number in that small community. EP: The young fathers did not go? LB: No, there was not a draft situation. But that is about all I remember of the war. EP: Now, you remembered another situation, the influenza epidemic. LB: Yes, that was something that really came close to home. There were relatives in Phoenix who suffered severely from the disease. It was called Spanish Influenza because of the large numbers of deaths in Spain at that time, and the fact that they lay in the streets without burial for periods of time was thought to be partly responsible for the tremendous amount of illness that occurred. How much of this was fact and how much was supposition I just don't have any idea. I only remember the things I had heard about the disease and about how terrible it was. 25 EP: Wasn't this about 1918? LB: Nineteen eighteen was the year that was so bad, and that summer there had been just a dreadful situation around Phoenix. It was still not known exactly how the disease travelled, how it was transmitted, so the people in our community made the decision that we would stay in our own family units. We would stay on our own farms and the only contacts would be very formal and brief, and if anyone had any indication of illness of any kind they would separate themselves from any other people, even in their own homes. This was the way it was handled. They closed the school after one week in school, this decision was reached, and so we all went home. We stayed with our folks and just enjoyed living that year. We had lessons but they were just whatever we wanted to learn. I understand there were some who didn't bother with this kind of thing, but the idea when they closed the school was that the families would teach their own children. I was very interested in almost anything, and so we did a lot of different things, and Dad was such fun. He would help us on anything scientific that we wanted to try, and we did all sorts of scientific experiments, to prove that these things were true and that Ben Franklin knew what he was doing. (Laughter.) It was lots of fun. And I had some small books that were about famous people, and we read those. Most of them I could read without any problem, but there were a few that were written at a higher level, and I would have to work very hard sounding out my words, and then when I came back sometimes the results were quite laughable. I brought the house down several times. Your question? EP: I wondered, were there incidents of flu in Arlington? 26 LB: There was no flu in the valley at all, but we didn't even take newspapers into our homes. There would be one posted at the Post Office on the wall. Actually, there would be two so you could see both sides, and I remember that they stretched clear across one wall. All of the things that the merchant was selling that had been displayed on this wall were taken down and stacked on the other side and this wall was devoted to the newspapers that were put up at a height that was easy to read, and there would be the front of the page and the back of the page, side by side. EP: Do you remember much about other national events that occurred? LB: Well, I remember when the war was on, Dad having to separate his wheat and be sure that the government got the section they wanted and the amount they wanted. EP: Oh, so they took quite a bit more? LB: We always had plenty, and we had plenty so that we could share, but we didn't have a surplus. EP: Was there rationing during the First World War? LB: Well, I don't know how prevalent that was or what it entailed, but I know that we grew wheat that was needed and their wheat was carefully stacked at one side of the barn and ours was on the opposite side. I remember we had maize growing on the farm for the first time. This was so that we would have maize to feed the chickens rather than wheat. We were allowed to use only so much wheat for the livestock, so Dad had some barley, he had some maize, he had other grains that we could use. 27 EP: Do you remember them coming to get it with a government truck? LB: Dad delivered it. He took it up to the store and it was put on the stage and carried to the railroad depot, and that I guess was in Buckeye, I'm not sure. We had lots of dairy products. We had some good cows, not very many, but to provide our own needs, and there was always a surplus for other people who came to pick it up. I think that was not sold but given. And we had lots of chickens always. My grandfather usually took care of the chickens. We had 500 hens. They were White Leghorns and these were a new breed that we had not had previously, but they were excellent layers. They were terrible when you wanted to have a fryer because they did not have too much meat on their bones. They were strictly for laying eggs, but, of course, as they aged they were killed and replaced by new chickens and then were used for the meat. But we didn't get much meat from them. EP: So this was the origin of your mother's marvelous chicken and dumplings? (Laughter) LB: Perhaps. EP: She could take a very tough rooster and make fantastic chicken and dumplings. LB: Well, if you cook them slowly and long enough, you can cook any chicken. They are not like an owl, you know, the longer you cook the owl the tougher he gets. This is one of the scientific experiments we did that year. We had read this in a book and my brother wanted to find out if it was so. He couldn't believe that. He was sure my mother could cook it so it was good, but, of course, we weren't going to be permitted to eat it, but we 28 would do the cooking and see, and we cooked that blamed owl for a week. Every time the fire was built, the owl was boiled and the drumstick got smaller and smaller, pulling not away from the bone but up on the bone so it was just a little hard piece of meat that you could not put a fork in. It was the toughest stuff that you could imagine, so I believe firmly that that is the truth. EP: I didn't know that an owl was edible to begin with. LB: Well, I think that they are not because of this. . . EP: Quality. LB: Yes, but we had read that. EP: Do you remember the end of the war? LB: Oh, yes. They rejoiced that it was over and our boys were coming home. I remember the songs of the era and how exciting it was to listen to the pep talks the recruiters put out. These were usually held at the school, as were all important meetings—but this was in 1917 rather than 1918—and then when the illness started and the segregation occurred, it was awfully hard for me to miss seeing Rosie that year. They did not allow the Indians to come in. They always camped right across the canal from our place but they were not there that year. We had an influx of gypsies one time. My dad was at the forge out in the shop and he was welding a tire for a wagon, a great big metal circle, but it had not, he had not bent it yet. He was making a new one, I believe, and he was working there at the forge and I was helping him because I was allowed to turn the 29 blower to operate the valves that kept the fire going in the forge. That was such fun to be working with Dad because you learned so many wonderful things when you talked and worked with him. I was there when I saw this car stop out by my palm tree, which was approximately a block from the house, about 500 feet, I think. The people began piling out of that car. There were so many of them I was amazed. I stopped Dad at his work at the bench to look and when he saw what was happening he was ready for action, and he called to the people to get back into their car, not to come on his property, and they ignored him completely. They had scattered and they were coming in from all different angles. Some of them got into the ditch and tried to creep under the fence, but Dad had a barbed wire down at the bottom to catch debris that came into the ditch sometimes, and they didn't count on that, and this one child—he was probably about ten, judging by his size—was very profane in his reaction when he got caught in that barbed wire. But there were twelve children we counted as they got back into the car. They were scattered all over everywhere and coming in around behind the house and things like that, and so Dad came from his forge and he had these tongs that were holding a piece of white-hot metal, and he walked over to a man who had approached the door of our house and was reaching to open it rather than knock. Dad came up behind him and was carrying this hot metal, and the fellow turned around and saw that as a threat to himself. He didn't wait for words or anything. He took off, and at his fright it seemed everybody was frightened. Kids came out of our henhouse dropping eggs by the dozen, and there was one fellow who had gone around somehow and gotten in the grainery and was trying to drag off a 100 pounds of grain, but he left it when the fellow ran. 30 EP: They were very openly, in front of anyone, taking what they wanted? LB: Oh, yes, that's right. This was sort of customary but usually they were not so brazen. I suppose they had a need and felt they had a right, I don't know. EP: Were they just migrants? LB: Yes, they were gypsies like the gypsies of Europe that went through and plundered. EP: I wonder where they lived ordinarily. LB: They just made camps and stayed until the people drove them out, and then they would make another camp somewhere else, but by this time they were driving cars. Originally, they had been in wagons. EP: Now, the Indians weren't this way at all, were they? The Papago’s? LB: No, they were very reliable. Of course, if you left anything out they thought it was fairly theirs, but if you kept your things in order and put away they never bothered any of our things. Of course, my dad had a lot of influence on them. He had become known as the "Medicine Maker," is what they called him, and they would come to him for medication. They would not go to a doctor, they just did not trust them at all. I remember one Indian walking for 23 miles to get my dad to set his arm. He had broken his arm, and, of course, he was in bad shape by that time. It was hot. He spent a few days at our house, slept out in the grainery. Dad took care of him, Mother fed him, and when he was able, he went on back to his people. 31 EP: How large a group were they? I know they lived in a tribe and then a clan, and this was an extended family. LB: Well, it was that type of group that we had that came by and camped across the canal from us. EP: The family type. LB: Yes. EP: How many people? LB: Oh, probably thirty or thirty-five. The first time they showed up at our place was the day I was born. I think I gave you that information. And then I don't know whether it was immediately after, yes, it must have been because we were just there another year. Dad invited them to take a place directly across the canal from the house that was flat and very suitable for a nice camp. He gave instructions that it had to be clean and they agreed, and they did, they kept it very clean. EP: This was on the Deming property? LB: It was Deming property but it was across the canal. It was a section that we did not use at that time excepting for them. EP: They were allowed even after you no longer had that, to camp? 32 LB: Well, nobody disturbed them, they cane on back and Grandpa knew. I think he was trying to get Dad, waiting for Dad to come on home. But when I was just past a year old, he took a job with the railroad as an electrician. I told you about that, also. EP: I think you told Mary some. Tell me a little more about it. LB: Well, he had this job as an electrician. Electricity was a new idea. He was working for the railroad, and there were not many safety measures, and those that they knew, people disregarded them so much. They didn't realize the force or the dangers of electricity and they didn't have the built-in safeguards that we have now. EP: I knew he quit after a year because his friends were killed. LB: I think probably it was about that length of time. He went to work. The same day he started, a friend of his started at the job. There were three men who worked together on this same situation: Dad, his friend and this other man who became their friend because he was with them. At the end of a year, those two men were dead, and each time the electrocution occurred because of no fault of the victim but of somebody else who acted without knowledge. Dad decided he had better, with three children, pick something that was safer for himself. I think Mother had a lot of influence on that, too, because she was very concerned. So he went to Winslow and moved the family to Arlington. They had gone to Arlington for a Christmas visit, and right after that we moved down there and we stayed at my Grandmother's for a time. EP: Your mother's mother. 33 LB: Yes. And then my grandfather and Dad got together on an agreement: half of the farm was to be Dad's. Dad would work it and half of everything was supposed to be his as owner, but Grandfather was making deals here without proper knowledge of the new state laws that had been instituted, laws of community property, and having been married to Ida, when she died the property had never been divided. At that time there were only 40 acres—40 acres cleared when they moved there. Dad had been working and clearing some, but there was not a great deal of the 160 acres cleared. So nothing had been done, it had remained one unit and it seemed that EP: Now that interests me. I realize that with community property, when she died, then the property went in, her half of it, went into trust for her children, is that right? LB: There was no action taken of any kind. EP: But I mean. . . LB: But when the property was sold it had to be divided. EP: The fact that she only had the one child, then his other children were accepted from that inheritance? LB: No, they had no inheritance from her. EP: So actually, half of it was hers and that became her son's? LB: Yes. EP: And the other half, then, went to Caleb's heirs? 34 LB: Well, he was alive, you see. EP: Yes, but if he were to die, would that be true? LB: I think that Ralph would have a portion of would be his, also. He would be his heir, too. EP: Oh, yes, but if he were to die while his wife were living, then. LB: Then his half would be divided between Ralph and the... but only if the property is sold, you see, at that time. EP: Then it stays in trust with the other parent until it is dispersed? LB: Yes. (August 8, 1983 Part II) EB: You were telling us about national and local events that went on when you were a child. Do you remember any of the Presidents? LB: I remember Woodrow Wilson. I remember his election and the way people were excited about him because he was a man of learning and intelligence. They felt he would make good judgments. Most everyone in our area was for him. Then we went into the war and he was not quite so popular. They really didn't like the idea of war. However, it became a popular thing before too long. I think, like we do, they supported the person who was in office and tried to make the best of the situation. 35 EB: Do you remember about the peace talks? Was that talked about in your town, by your parents? LB: Oh, yes. The peace was a time of rejoicing, everybody was delighted and happy that the war was ended, but, of course, there was always the aftermath and I heard several comments concerning that. When they went to the peace table it was felt that our President Wilson did not hold his own with the Europeans. The English took over. But as I read history later, I think that was only to be expected: they had always engineered peace treaties to fit in where they wanted them. The colloquialism often used: he was "bamboozled" into accepting English thinking on so many things, and we did not come out too well according to popular thought at the time. However, life went on much the same at our place. EB: Was your community supportive of the League of Nations? LB: My grandfather thought that would be a great idea if it could be made to work, but he saw most of the fallacies that were prominent in this particular group and I heard him discuss it with people many times, so he actually saw quite clearly the political ramifications of that situation. The next President that I noticed particularly was Calvin Coolidge and his lack of vocal expression. He was always answering that he did not choose to discuss things. He was silent on many things that we felt should be discussed by the President. Then afterward we had Mr. Hoover. I was old enough to be concerned with him. And the big crash of 1929 is something that's very clear in my mind. EB: How did they feel about Hoover? 36 LB: Well, the giveaway programs he instituted for the nations in Europe were not really approved, I think, by most of the area, at least not at our house. At that time I was nineteen, you see. EB: Your community was suffering from the Depression by then, too? LB: Well, we didn't suffer too much. You see, by the time it reached Arizona it was a little later than it had started in the Midwest. The exodus of the people from the drought area into our community without any added economic aid made quite a problem, in a sense. And then when the Depression really hit in Phoenix, it was along about 1932, I think, at least that is when I know about it. Mother was ill, she was in the hospital, and practically all the cash we could come by went in that direction, and to feed very frugally, because we were used to living on the farm and having practically everything we needed, and here we had to purchase everything. We did have a very tight economy and I was not free to take any employment because I was working over at the hospital where Mother was, and learning how to take care of her. We did make, through the doctor, an agreement with the hospital. I would work and it would cover half of her hospital costs. And I want to remark here, also, that the cost in a ward at that time was $8.00 a day. So I was ostensibly paid $4.00 and then the other $4.00 had to come out of the cash fund. Work was practically nonexistent. People just did not have money to pay if you worked for them. The Andersons had moved to Phoenix. They were living out on Lateral 16, or maybe 14. They were farming at the time. We were in a residence just two miles from them and if I went down and crossed over the tracks, railroad tracks, I came to their house. I would go each day, walk down there, and get milk to take home to the children. 37 I also had access to the figs on the fig tree, garden produce, and anything that I could manage to get home, but there was no transportation excepting by foot. Jack was usually working somewhere for practically nothing, and would bring home all that he earned. Gordon went, I think he went to Buckeye and took a job on a farm and was there. He sent money home. The other girls were quite young. EB: What was your dad doing? Was that the time when he was working for WPA? LB: No, that came a little later. That came before we left. That came, I guess it was in August, because we wanted Virginia in school. She had already missed half a year. She was twelve, going to be thirteen in October, and should have been in high school. She had had one semester of high school in Buckeye traveling by bus, but that was the year she was ill and missed a half year. And to get her back into school she had to provide a uniform. She could go to Phoenix Union High School and she had to have books and things of this nature, and she could take care of herself but only if the family were on WPA and she could then come under the National Youth Administration and could support herself in school. EB: She could work. LB: Yes, that's right. She worked in the office as a typist for one of the teachers and was soon one of the major typists in the office, I believe. Get that with her. EB: How long was your mother in the hospital? 38 LB: She was there three months and had to return a time or two, because insulin was a brand-new idea and it was very unstable and you just could not depend on its strength. And, of course, now that I am diabetic I have more understanding about the situation and how difficult it is to reach a balance. She had a very rough time, I am sure, those first months. EB: Hers was extremely severe. LB: She was in a diabetic coma when they took her to Phoenix and when the doctor diagnosed her, it was really questionable as to whether or not she would make it for several days. EB: When did she begin to have trouble with her eyes? I know she was blind for several years. That was the cataracts, wasn't it? LB: Well, they developed, you know, with diabetes. Or at least that is my understanding. She had had a stroke, this was much later, however. You see, she had this severe diabetic condition for 27 years. During that time she was on a 1000-calory diet or less. She never exceeded that, and that in itself is a pretty debilitating situation, just going on that kind of restriction. EB: She had shots a couple of times a day, didn't she? LB: Every time she ate she had to have a shot before she ate. One time she laughingly said she felt like a pincushion. Now, they wanted me to give her the shots and I practiced with oranges—I did all the things that everybody suggested—but every shot I gave was 39 harder on me than the one before. The idea of sticking needles in my mother was something I couldn't adjust to. I know that probably it was quite hard for her, too, but in a very short time she had taken over giving herself the shots. I never complained or said anything, but I never had a poker face, either. I know she just knew how I was feeling. She took over this horrible task herself and she gave herself the shots, but as I say, there were a couple or three times she had to go back into the hospital and get herself reevaluated and get the insulin changed or something of that kind. But by that time we had moved back to Arlington, and she would go from there back to Phoenix. EB: When they moved back you went with them? LB: Yes, I had been home and then I had taken a job in Phoenix. I had gone home from that job to visit and found Mother ill. I had been in college, you see, and when I ended up in the infirmary and they diagnosed me as having nutritional anemia and they felt that I would be so much better off at home. And it was true that I was extremely ill, though I wasn't any sicker than I had been, but they had discovered me by that time. So I had been home and then I had taken a job in Phoenix. I had gone home from that job to visit and found Mother ill. I didn't go back to my job. I just called them and told them I had to take care of my mother that she was ill and couldn't get along without me. I was sorry to give up that job, too, because it was a nice one. I was acting as a governess to a small child. She was three years old, she was not speaking. She did not have a word in her vocabulary when I went there, and so I worked with her and I had her talking in a very short time. She had a grandmother who was rather a flighty type who was very insecure and she just couldn't do anything for a child. Her mother was burdened with allergies-40 she was allergic to horses. Her husband rode, and he always insisted that his wife ride with him, and she was allergic to horses! They didn't understand allergies at that time and they treated it as just one of the things that happened to her, you know, didn't relate it to the riding at all, and so she was ill a great deal of the time, not immediately but a few hours after being on the horse. She would be swollen and unable to see a lot of the time, she would be swollen so badly. The child had one person after another tending her and when I got there I loved children and she was a darling baby but extremely young for her age, but I began treating her like a three-year-old and pretty soon she was a three- year-old. I hated to leave her at that point, but I went on home and was with mother. As we adjusted and got ourselves in a routine it became easier on her, but always it was difficult. It required that she eat differently from the family because we could not afford the kinds of things that were required in her diet a lot of the time, and this was hardest on her. Sometimes she would eat separately because she would not be able to see all of this on their plates, but we got along famously and as soon as we could we had a garden going again and this helped out a lot, and always our chickens that provided protein. EB: Now, how long was it? Was it 1933 when you went to teach? LB: I don't know. EB: I have that written down. LB: Good. I haven't thought of this for too long. EB: But you went from home, then, to one of those jobs? 41 LB: I was visiting up in Kingman, visiting with my aunt, when I got this letter about my friend in New Mexico who was ill. Now, in New Mexico you did not have to have a certification as you did in Arizona. You could teach straight out of high school. You didn't have to have…you had to pass an examination, and that was about it. It was much the way it was when Mother taught in Arizona. I got this message that my friend was ill and going to lose her place with the school if she couldn't fulfill the obligation and if she could get someone to teach for her until she could get back on her feet this would be all right and would hold her place for her. And so she wanted to know if I would come and do this for her, and I went as quickly as possible and went into the schoolroom. It was entirely Mexican excepting for one child. There was one white child in that school. Those were the most courteous, gentle children I ever taught. They were controlled very closely by their parents and they felt that teacher should be honored and respected and obeyed. EB: Were they Spanish or Mexican? LB: They were New Mexico Mexican. EB: Not even bilingual, were they? LB: Yes, they spoke English as well as I. EB: Oh, I see. I thought it was a language school. LB: They were a very special quality of Mexican, not the ones you found around the mines, or places like that. These were people with land of their own. They felt their position and they felt their obligation, and the parents were all very fine people. I really liked them. The one white child was a girl. She also was very well mannered. I had no discipline 42 problems of any kind and could spend my time teaching. I felt I had done a good job while I was there; in fact, they invited me to stay, but, again, I needed to get back home. Mother needed me. EB: You went back home? Then you went to Ethel's, your aunt's? LB: Well, you see, that was where I was when I went to New Mexico. Then I returned. I went back to Arlington for a time, then I went up to visit her again and this was when I really saw the tremendous attraction of this young man from' Kingman. EB: Had you met him the first time? LB: I met him the first time. In fact, he was the one who took me over to my aunt's house in Kingman the first time. Jess Hedgepath had driven me out to his place and then he asked Frank to bring me on over to Ethel's place. EB: Oh, I had thought Barney Hance introduced you. LB: No. EB: He had a station at that time? LB: Yes, he had a service station and a garage. EB: Do you remember what it looked like? LB: I sure do. Don't you? EB: No, not at all. 43 LB: It had that little house out back that was built as a replica of the station that was used as a henhouse. EB: All I remember is seeing the remains of it a few years later with the windmill. LB: It was not a windmill. Well, I guess it had a windmill on it, but it was a tank tower, and the tank was up high, and he piped the water down from Dripping Springs at that time. But it was not finished. It never was. EB: So you mean he never had running water? LB: No, he hauled the water down in tanks, two hundred gallon tanks, and it was a very expensive road. He had built this road and in some places he was the only person who could drive across them. EB: I believe it. He didn't need to have a road. LB: Very interesting. EB: Tell me about the station. LB: There was a huge room where he had the general store, the things that he felt were important in that vicinity. Anybody in that vicinity who would ask him to get them something, he would, and put in on the shelf until they came for it. Sometimes it would be up there for some months before they got back, but he always kept a few cans of different kinds of groceries for people who came by who needed supplies. He had gasoline and oil, he had the garage, which was the main object, the other things just 44 came in as a complimentary service to those people who came by and found it hard to get into town. He had a daily connection with town by the stage that came through and the mailman who delivered the mail. The mailman drove the stage. He also delivered the mail. It was a rather interesting thing. He would sometimes stop on the highway when he wouldn't have anything to leave, and he would call and want to know what Frank needed from town. He would have his pad out, he would write it down, and the next time he would come by and deliver it. Also, he would pick up Frank's laundry and take it in to town and have it done and bring it back. EB: Do you remember who he was? LB: Neddy Robinson was his name. A genial individual who just adored Frank. He was older, and he really admired Frank and his abilities. EB: Was there anybody who didn't adore him? LB: I don't believe so. I never heard of them. EB: What was he like when-you met him? Was he heavy? LB: No, he was very slim. EB: Did he look like Jamie in build? LB: Perhaps. He was 5'10", his hair was reddish blond. His hair didn't show much red, but when he grew a beard it was really red with just a few reflections of other colors. He called himself a "brindle." EB: He didn't have a heavy beard, though, did he? 45 LB: Yes, he did if he grew it, but I hated his beard. I liked him clean-shaven, he was so good-looking. He had no reason to cover it up with a beard. EB: He had very white skin, didn't he? LB: Very fair skin, but it was usually red because he insisted on going out in the sun, and so he was usually red-faced, but if he had stayed indoors he would have been very fair. EB: But I can remember he never really tanned. LB: That's right. He was a blond. EB: He was just usually sunburned. LB: He was very light on his feet. He was a runner and he practically ran all the time when he was on foot. He walked very rapidly, he never walked slowly. He'd want to know if I wanted to go for a stroll in the moonlight. Well, I knew it was not a stroll but a marathon. And the only time I recall him ever going slowly was the night when we met the snake. It was pitch dark but he wanted to walk up to someplace and look at something, so he built a little fire so that we could see it. Then we were walking back down the highway and we were walking slowly, it was very dark. I had this sense of problem and I insisted he stop and he struck a match and here was this rattlesnake coiled right in front of us. Another step and we would have been on it. The snake had not rattled, and this was always a puzzle to us, because they always warned people. EB: There were a lot of snakes there, where he lived? LB: Well, we were out a number of miles. Six miles, I think, to the nearest neighbor. 46 EB: Did you live in the station, ever? LB: Yes. I lived there for three months. EB: Oh, really? Just after you were married? EB: Now, let's go back. You went back to Kingman because he was there? Or you went back to Ethel's and then you started to date him? LB: I had been to New Mexico and when I came back he was really out to court me. The first thing he did was invite me to go up for ice cream on the Summit, where Snelly had her ice cream parlor. EB: This was at Searchlight? LB: No, this was at Goldroad's Hill. EB: Oh, up on top of the hill. They were the Snellings? LB: The Snells. S-n-e-l-l-s, who had a service station right on the pinnacle of the pass that led down on the other side to Goldroads and on to Oatman. And she was running an ice cream parlor up there, and her husband ran the service station, that and did a little bit of prospecting, I think. They were a genial couple, older, and Frank was just the world to them. They thought he was the greatest. When he brought me up there, he went out to see Mr. Snell who was out-of- doors, and she immediately—she was an English lady and they had come here from England--and she moved over and sat at the table with me, and she wanted to know if I knew what a fine man Frank was. And she did the bestselling job she possibly could every time I ever went in there. She was trying to encourage him to marry me and me to marry him. A real matchmaker. 47 EB: So how long did you go with him, then? LB: Very briefly. I returned the 26th of April and we were married the 15th of July, so you see, it was a very brief courtship. EB: No wonder you didn't have anything to say when I met and married Ron between April and September. LB: No, I couldn't honestly protest. I was 25 when I married him and I was 26 on my birthday. I also had my application in to the Spinster's Club, which was a national organization, and to qualify you had to be 25. EB: Oh? LB: I was waiting for the information to arrive at that time, but decided to become Mrs. Frank Bonelli rather than a spinster. My husband thought that was a very interesting thing that I should decide to be a spinster. I told him, well, I had decided against a family, I was going to just pursue a career, and I enumerated a number of things I had in mind, but he immediately began to try to change my mind. When we were married it was midsummer, and he asked where we should go on a honeymoon. I told him I wanted to go to Prescott, Arizona. I wanted to go on a camping trip and he was delighted at the idea because he liked that sort of thing, too. So we went up on a scenic tour and we spent two weeks camping, camped in the woods by ourselves, and quite an idyllic situation. On the final day, though, as we were thinking about breaking camp, clouds gathered overhead and looked very threatening, and looking at the lay of the land, I insisted we get packed and start moving out as quickly as possible. We had just made 48 it, almost. I think we were probably 500 feet from the highway, when the storm broke and it was really a terror. It just came in sheets of water. And then suddenly it was no longer water, it was hail. Hailstones the size of golf balls. We got onto the highway all right, but we had to pull over to the side and wait a little bit. We had a convertible Imperial Chrysler and the top was down, but he hurriedly put it up. We should have left it down because it was absolutely shredded by the hailstones. And we, the ribs of the top were still there and the covering floated in ribbons as we drove. As we drove along, a hailstone landed in the bowl of his pipe and loosened a front tooth and put out the pipe. I was wearing a "picture hat," they called them at that particular time, a wide-brimmed, white hat, and that collapsed down around my face. I was glad to have it on because it protected me somewhat from the beating hailstones, but I didn't have a hat when I was through. EB: Was that your wedding hat? EB: Describe your wedding costume for us. LB: I had a silk-linen suit. It was one my mother made for me. She was a marvelous seamstress and I could never buy anything to fit me. She made this for me and it was very lovely. We had chosen a white wedding dress but I didn't look well in it and so we decided to go this other direction. And it was a jacket and dress, and then I had the white hat, white accessories to go with it. EB: I thought it was a blue with one of those wide collars that made a sleeve. LB: It was turquoise blue. 49 EB: With a full skirt. LB: Yes, and with a kind of "V" cutout in back and then this nice jacket that was so comfortable. EB: And then you had on high heels? LB: No, I had on sandals with a good heel, but it was a white sandal. And a picture hat and a purse that matched my shoes, my sandals. EB: You had your hair marcelled? LB: Not for my wedding. EB: Not for your wedding? LB: No, marcels were out long before that. Marcel was what I did when I graduated from beauty school. I was able to do hairdressing and marcelling was the most popular. EB: When did you graduate from beauty school? LB: Didn't I tell you about that? EB: No. LB: I was nineteen. I had decided that I was ill so often I shouldn't try to have a group of children dependent on me because I knew how disturbing it was to many children to have to change teachers and have substitutes. So I decided against taking a school and I was looking for something, that I could do at my own convenience, and I had a job 50 lined up at a beauty shop by the time I had graduated from beauty school to do hairdressing, and I was to be privileged to come in whenever I felt up to it. They were very busy and they could use me. I found I didn't like that kind of work, not because of the beauty end of things but because of the way the ladies gossiped and the kinds of things that went on there. And then I became allergic to some of the materials that were used there. In those days you didn't have allergies. They didn't exist. There was no such thing. EB: What was your training in those days? What did they have you learn? LB: We did manicuring and hairdressing and skin care. Now they go for a lot of body wraps and things like that. There was nothing like that then. EB: They taught you to give permanents? LB: The permanents were machine permanents and I never gave permanents because they were too tricky at that particular time. EB: You learned to cut hair? LB: Yes, I cut hair and I marcelled it. EB: How long a period of training did you have? LB: Nine months. Some people had to go a lot longer. They had to repeat the courses if they did not achieve a certain standard. EB: This was when you were nineteen when you finished this? LB: Yes, I was nineteen when I did this. 51 EB: I sort of diverted us, so go on with the story about your wedding. LB: Well, we were married at my husband's mother's home in Kingman. And present were his two sons by a previous marriage. They were thirteen and fifteen. There were the three sons of his older brother, Bill, and Bill's wife, Mary. Also, my sister, Margie, who was my youngest sister; my mother and Frank's mother; my Aunt Ethel and her husband, Barney. The minister who performed the ceremony was the minister from the church across the street. His name was LeGrand and he was a great big fellow, and rather surprising as a minister because of his booming voice and his general manner. We had our wedding ceremony and then afterward there was a repast for all of us, and immediately following that, we left on our honeymoon. The first night we spent at Hyde Park, a country area several miles from Kingman. It was up where it was cool and we picked a secluded place to make a camp. We were sleeping soundly the next morning (we had made our bed so that the area would be shaded by some cedar trees) and when I awoke, I opened my eyes and I had the feeling of someone watching. And I opened my eyes, I looked, and we were surrounded by a group of Indian men. They were looking down at us, they were quite close. I didn't move or anything, I just looked at them, and then I told Frank he had better wake up, and surprisingly, he woke immediately. He opened his eyes, he looked around, he used a few Hualapai words and they disappeared. He had told them who he was and that they were intruding. Of course, I didn't understand the language. He had to explain this to me. And so we didn't get up immediately, we were discussing our plans for the day, and a cowboy came up on a horse. And Frank got rid of him and we decided it was time to break camp. 52 EB: Too crowded. LB: We had planned to have our breakfast over a camp fire with Dutch oven biscuits and all the rest of it, but we changed our plans very quickly and we got in our car and -we drove until we found a restaurant. Then we drove on. We went up to Montazuma's Castle, we went to Oak Creek Canyon, and we found a stream right in the middle of a great, flat area. It was about four feet of water, about four feet deep, and just as clear and cold as it could be, and we spent most of the day playing around in that water. It was so wonderful. Then in time to go where we had planned to camp the second night, I suppose it was about five o'clock that afternoon when we left there, and until it was dusk, and we had arrived at Sedonia (Arizona) and we stopped there. We had a motel room, but early the next morning we left and went on down toward Prescott. We went into the woods quite a distance off the highway, took a little-travelled road that branched off. We didn't really know the area too well, but we went down and down, and some of it was rather precipitous and bumpy. There were lots of beautiful pine trees and a lot of other trees that had to be identified later. We finally found an open space that didn't have anybody camping anywhere around it and this was where we made our camp. We were there for two weeks and we really had a very enjoyable time there, taking hikes and finding trees, and we even gathered some pinion nuts. We had plenty of provisions and I learned that he was a pretty good camp cook and he learned that I could burn biscuits along with the best of them. I wasn't much on Dutch oven cooking at that moment, but I learned, and before we were through with those two weeks I was pretty good. My main reason for wanting to go into that vicinity for our camping trip, our 53 honeymoon, was because my grandfather was in Prescott in a pioneer's home there. I had not seen him for some time and I did want to see him and wanted him to meet my husband, so we headed for the pioneer's home on the 24th of July. That was the day that we left camp and started for, well, to make our way home at our own pace. We never pushed ourselves for time excepting when we started to break camp and found the storm coming. Now that has been recorded, right? EB: Yes. LB: We arrived at the pioneer's home looking like two drowned chickens--we were in bad shape—and the people there were so wonderful to us. They were just so cute, the nurses and the people there in service. And the people who lived there were just absolutely enthralled with the fact that a honeymoon couple would come to visit their home. And Grandpa, of course, was the star of the show. He was quite feeble by that time. He was 88 years old. His birthday was the next day, and that's why we were heading into Prescott. We planned to have a hotel in Prescott, but we found there was a convention in Prescott and there were no rooms available anywhere, but this didn't dismay anyone at the pioneer's home. They insisted that we stay and they put us up in the infirmary. They gave us two hospital beds. It was just really a lark, the whole visit there. And when the birthday celebration came about, it was held at noontime on the 25th of July, which was his birthday, and they served a huge cake that was a great ship. They called it "the Ship of State" and the candles were varied sizes to make the smokestack and things like that. They had the full 88 candles on this and promised us that next year when we came there would be 89 and they would have another ship. But 54 this was all cake. I don't know how long it must have taken to bake that thing. They said they baked it and froze it and then put it together at the last minute. It was colored. It was a masterpiece and Grandpa was so excited about it, it was just fun to watch him. They gave him the knife and told him he was to cut the cake, but as I noted before, he had palsy and he was so excited that he absolutely couldn't even hold the knife. So the lady who was in charge, I think she was the head cook, came over and held his hand holding the knife, and helped him cut it. It was passed around, and we thought that they would be having cake quite often for dessert. After we left there, we went on, I think we went down to Chino Valley and stayed one night. He (Frank) had friends who lived in that vicinity and he wanted to look them up. We didn't look them up until after we had made camp because we were afraid we would be asked to stay with them. We didn't want to impose that, we just wanted to have our own place. And we found the cutest little place against the hill that was covered by trees, very small trees, they were scrub oak, mostly, I think, and Rocky Mountain junipers we call cedars. We had our camp about halfway up this little hill against one of the cedars. Then, after we had pitched camp we went out looking for his friends, but we didn't find just his friends but a lot of other people who were having a big party, and so we crashed the party. And again we were rather a novel sight. .We had dressed pretty well before leaving Prescott, but we had been making that camp and I didn't feel quite the way I should have been for a party, but we had a delightful time and all the people we met were so friendly. My husband made friends, collected friends just like bees collect honey, he just loved people and they loved him, and we had a marvelous time. The next day, then, we detoured. We went off down by Hillside, went down to see someone else he knew. But 55 this time we were not so fortunate. They were not at home. There had been an illness. They were elderly people that he had known and he didn't find them, but we left them a letter and later we received a wedding letter and a wedding present from them. They mailed it to us. Much later I met the people and they were lovely people. I know why he wanted to see them. We went on down through Hillside and down a very poor road and onto Highway 93 that led into Kingman and made our way home that way. We got there fairly early and I thought we should report in to his mother to let her know that we were returned safely, but he didn't think we should do that. He thought we should get on out to our own place, so we went out to the Fig Springs service station. And we got things in order, and there is where we spent the first three months of our marriage. EB: Then your honeymoon was longer than two weeks. LB: Oh, yes. It was more than three weeks by the time we got back and got organized, but officially it was two weeks. As soon as we got back, Frank's two boys and Bill's three boys came. They were Richard whom they called "Judy," and "Jack" who was really named John. Judy was thirteen and Jack was fifteen. Bill's boys were Bob, age seven; Benjamin, called "Bennie," age thirteen; and William, called "Billy," who was age fifteen. The boys just had a marvelous time together and they had a marvelous time with Frank. They always looked forward to visiting him. We had met briefly before our marriage and then we really got acquainted with the boys during this period of time. We made a trip up to the giant fig tree which was about four miles up against .the hill near Dripping Springs, and another brother of Frank's was gardening up there. And this huge fig tree was supposed to shade three acres of ground, and it had three main trunks coming out 56 of the earth about twelve feet apart. It was a twelve-foot triangle. The roots of that tree were much farther down below, but they slanted out at an elevation that made it very easy to pick a lot of figs, but you had to have ladders to get some of them. The boys went up there and they brought back one fig for me that weighed three-fourths of a pound. I was very interested in the size of it and complemented them on their thoughtfulness in bringing it to me, never dreaming that a fig that size would be good to eat. Usually anything like that is not very good, but that fig was absolute perfection. I ate all of it I could eat and then made jam of the rest of it and I still had a full cup jar of fig jam, it was just a huge fruit. They also brought back some other things from Len's (Frank's brother) garden, whatever else there was that was fresh. There were corn, cucumbers and squash, a lot of different things, and so I got in and cooked dinner. As I say, I had learned to use the Dutch oven by that time, and I had Dutch oven biscuits for them and they just thought that was wonderful. We had lots of fun together. There was a guitar and Frank played it a little bit, not very much, but he was strumming it for the boys and there was a song they were singing that was very cute about the Arizona stars. I never learned the thing. I wish I knew it, but they sang that for us and we sang some songs in unison and they asked me to sing for them and I said all I knew were church hymns, and so then they wanted me to tell them about church because it seems none of them attended church. I was not LDS at that time. In fact, no specific religion. I had not joined a church, but had attended very many of them. And so I sang some Baptist songs and some Methodist songs and a Presbyterian song, and there was one I learned later was a Nazarene song, one the Nazarenes sing. And it was a lot of fun we had together and after about two and one-half weeks, Bill and Mary came out and 57 picked the boys up and took them back to California. It was time for Frank's boys to go back to Illinois to their mother. Now, where would you like to go from there? EB: We started on another tape to describe the station and you told me that it had a large kind of general store. And then how many pumps did it have? LB: There were two gasoline pumps out front. EB: Were they electric pumps? LB: Oh, no, they were pumps you pumped by hand, though he had electricity. EB: How does that work? Like a water pump? LB: You move it back and forth. EB: To pump it out? LB: To pump the gasoline. EB: Oh, for heaven's sakes. LB: And when you get your pump full, then you put it into the gas tank. EB: And how much does the pump hold? LB: Ten gallons. EB: You pump the pump full and then you put the nozzle into the gas tank? LB: That's the way those were. Now, our gas pumps were not like that, but that's the way his were. 58 EB: How many did he have? LB: He had two. EB: Two pumps. And how much was gas? Do you remember? LB: Oh, yes, it was twenty-three cents a gallon. That included the tax. EB: That was hauled from Kingman? LB: Yes, it was delivered out of Kingman, brought into Kingman on cars on the railroad and distributed from there. They had large holding tanks there. EB: Do you remember what the company was? LB: Texaco. EB: And how far was Kingman from the station? LB: Nineteen miles. EB: And Kingman was the closest town to it? LB: Well, yes, if you went the other way you came to Oatman which was closer but it didn't have the facilities that Kingman had and that was a place we visited or Frank worked sometimes, but we didn't do any business over there very much. He did mechanical work, you know. He did mining compressors and things of that nature for the mines around, and cars that were brought to him. EB: He had a shop there. 59 LB: He had a garage. People came from long distances to have him work on their cars. One time a flatbed truck drove up and there was a very good-looking car on it. It was a great big Cadillac and it had been sent out from Arkansas for Frank to fix. Somebody who loved their car and wouldn't let anybody else work on it. EB: What were your living facilities like at the station? LB: Well, he had not planned to get married, I think. The kitchen was unfinished. He had a wood stove in there, and he had…well, it was rather a rough kitchen, the kind that maybe cowboys would use. And we got some rugs and put down on the floor and there was a section beyond that where we had a great, big safe. That was all he had in it when I came, but it soon filled up with this and that. Then the sleeping quarters. Then there was a downstairs bedroom and then immediately above that another bedroom. You went up there entering through a trapdoor on a ladder that you climbed up, that's where he had his bedroom. He was a little bit hesitant about asking me to climb up in the loft like that, but was an ideal place to sleep because you got such a nice breeze, and I enjoyed it very much. We moved up there and slept the rest of the summer up there in the cool. When winter came, we moved into Kingman after the first snow. I was not used to snow. I had been down in the valley for many years. When I was three, we lived at Winslow and there was snow there, but that was the only time I had been around snow, and I was so excited and thrilled about the snowstorm that was blowing as we drove into Kingman on the way to celebrate Thanksgiving that Frank made great stories out of that. In fact, I had him stop at one place so I could make a snowball out of 60 the snow where the snow had collected against the rock. He thought that was so funny. He had seen a little bit more snow than I, not very much, but a little. EB: Then you moved to Kingman for the winter and you lived at his mother's? LB: Yes. They were building the ranch at the time. Bill was trying to reclaim the Bonelli holdings that his family had lost in the 30's and they were building fences, and they were building me a home. The house was a very nice little house with a bedroom, a bath, and a living room. A utility room I made into a sewing room. Actually, that was supposed to be another bedroom but I made it into a sewing room and utility room because I needed that kind of thing. Then there was a large, screened porch. There was a kitchen, of course. Then, in back there was a large, screened porch that went the length of the house, and in front as you went out of the living room, there was another porch just like it. It reminded me of the Deming structure because of the two screened areas on the sides. EB: That is all I remember about the house. The screened porches. LB: Well, the living room was a good-sized one. Sometimes I had the dining table in the kitchen, but I didn't like that so I put it in the living room. There was room for it and it was more convenient that way. And when I made pies, I needed the room, and it seemed as if cowboys liked pie better than any other food, especially lemon meringue. I'd bake them by the dozen, because if I baked one I might as well make plenty and they were always' so enthusiastic when pies showed up. EB: You do make good lemon pie. 61 LB: I was invited to come up and eat with them anytime I didn't want to cook. I often took advantage—I would go up and they would have steaks and potatoes and very good camp cooking. EB: Now, where was their camp? LB: Well, they had it up at the barn. There was a tack room and a kitchen, a well-furnished kitchen right next to the tack room, and there was room for a nice, big table. And that's where they usually were. Sometimes they would decide to do a camp out, cooking, and they'd use Dutch ovens. EB: And how far from the main house was this barn? LB: Oh, I'd say 100 feet took us into the first gate. There was a holding corral there that was quite clean, seldom used, and then you went on another 100 yards, I guess, before you came to the barn and the used corral. It was far enough away that there was no odor, no flies or anything like that from the barn. And they kept things very clean, anyway. So we had behind this area that I spoke of, we had the great storage barn, and that was forty feet high and had some galvanized, corrugated metal on the sides and on the roof. Hay was stored in there for the stock and the chickens had free rein. They would roam in the corrals and in the barn and usually their nests were hidden in the bales of hay. EB: I remember hunting eggs. LB: Do you remember the time Mary slipped on the top stack? EB: Yes. She sat in a bucket of eggs. 62 LB: Yes, she sat in this great bucket of eggs. There were about four dozen eggs in that bucket. The look on her face was a classic. But this was where I moved when you were nineteen months old. Up until that time I had been with Grandmother Bonelli, at her home in Kingman. EB: Did my dad have to stay out there most of the time at the ranch? LB: Well, he was moving around. He was buying cattle, he was buying horses, he was buying equipment. EB: Stocking the ranch. LB: And he made trips to Phoenix, Los Angeles and other places to get what he needed. He went to Chandler (Arizona) to buy some horses and he found a quarter horse that he just loved and he called the horse "Chandler." And then, of course, he had FHP, the other one that I rode. Oh, that was a lovely horse. He was so fun. EB: Describe Chandler and FHP. I remember them. LB: Well, Chandler had big, bunchy muscles, and you would turn him and he could turn without moving out of his tracks. He would just switch around there so fast. EB: He was mean, wasn't he? LB: Well, nobody rode him but Frank because he wouldn't let anyone else mount him. It was amazing: Frank could whistle and that horse would come as far as the whistle would sound. FHP was entirely different. He was a long-muscled horse, a racing type, and he 63 could run like the wind and it was just as easy as any horse I ever rode. He was as easy as my horse Stranger and much larger, and I did adore riding that horse. He was just really wonderful. He was called "FHP" because he had those initials on his hip. That was the brand, the combination of brands that lined up on his hip. EB: And he got both of those horses at the same time. LB: Yes, one for him and one for me. EB: Then they were just barely beginning the ranch again after your marriage? LB: Yes, and the fences had to be built and a tank tower was built forty feet high and tanks put up on it. They would hold, I think, 2,000 gallons of water. Maybe it's bigger, I'm not sure. And there was also a wind charger built to furnish electricity for lights on the ranch. These two, the water tower and the wind charger…were lookout points for me. If I wanted to see where people were, I'd climb up on one or the other with a field glass and I could locate almost anybody. We had another house built right away. This was set, oh, about 75 feet away. They were set at angles. Mine was set with a west side and an east side. We faced north, and Bill's, then, was at an angle from it and did not run truly with the compass. EB: What was the purpose of that? LB: Well, it was just a matter of arrangement to fit in with the other buildings and the circular yard that Frank fenced for you children to play in so I wouldn't have to worry about where you wandered. We had our garden in there and kept some of the wildlife out of it, 64 but not all of it. And when we collected the land terrapins, the turtles, we put them in that plot because they would stay in there. We had, oh, probably a dozen of them at one time, but every once in a while Frank would take them back where he had…he would mark each one underneath with where he had found it with the range and the plot about where it was, and then 'When he decided to take them back he would go out there and take them home. EB: He did like turtles. I remember that. LB: He liked all wildlife. We caught some cottontails, he caught some cottontails one time, and he brought them home for you children, and they were turned loose in the garden out front. This was one of the things you children enjoyed so much because you gentled those rabbits until you could walk up and pick them up any time and pet them. And the quail that were there, they came and we fed them and they stayed and they multiplied. We put up no hunting signs, and by the time we left there, there were at least 400 quail just right around the house. Within three months after we were gone, so were they. People went out and slaughtered them. Of course, they weren't afraid of people and so they weren't any sport. It was just slaughter. I felt sad at deserting them, like that. EB: Were you able to go on any of the buying trips with Frank? LB: No, I wasn't because I had small babies. You see, you were nineteen months old when I moved out there, and then Mary came. EB: While you were staying with his mother, then, you were already pregnant? 65 LB: I was when I went there and I stayed with her because I thought I shouldn't be out riding and that sort of thing. Though I don't believe I took that too seriously. One time about two months before you were born, I was out at Fig Springs with Frank and Jess Hedgepath came by and said he had a horse and he needed somebody to ride it in, thinking Frank would provide him with a cowboy, but I immediately volunteered. They both batted their eyes but they let me go ahead and do this ride--it was only eighteen miles. And I had a marvelous ride. It was a nice horse. When I got to Kingman, Grandma almost fainted. She thought that was the worst thing. I hadn't realized that it wasn't done. Horseback riding had always been such a joy and there was no problem as far as I was concerned. I was quite all right. I think because I was so active, probably, was the reason I could do things that other people couldn't. EB: So, when I was nineteen months old you moved... LB: Out to the ranch. And then before Mary was born, I came in about. . . EB: So you actually lived there at her house for a couple of years. LB: No, it was just about a year and a half, a little bit more than it, I guess, yes it was, I was there three months before you were born. EB: I didn't realize you had to stay there that long. LB: And then I was there until you were nineteen months old. EB: And that's how long it took to get the house done? 66 LB: Well, it wasn't done, but they kept promising me: "Well, the next time I come in it will be finished," but ranches have emergencies and other things come first and all that sort of thing. I knew all this, but I decided there was a time that I was going out next time they came in regardless. We had lived at the station, and if I could function under those circumstances, I could certainly get along in a little house that was all finished as far as the roof and walls and lining. It was not painted inside, that was one of the things, and the light fixtures had not arrived yet from California. Just little things that I didn't think too important. So, when he came in the next time I wanted to know if they had all of those things done and he said "No, the light fixtures hadn't arrived yet and nobody had had time to paint," and I told him that was all right. While he was upstairs doing his books and getting things organized, I pulled the big trunk out on the porch. Then I carried the stuff out and put in it. I got the baby's crib out on the porch and I brought the mattress and the other things that I put in it. I brought everything out that way. We had a couch that I took apart. I took the frame out first, then I brought the foundation springs, and then I brought the cushions, and I even got it on the truck. It was not difficult because of the way that it was structured. And when he came down to go, he was surprised to find me ready. I was sitting in the truck with you. When he came down the stairs and out the kitchen door, I was sitting in the truck holding the baby. I told him to load the trunk and other materials that I had stacked on the porch, and he did exactly as he was told, and we headed for home. We stopped at the store to buy some extra fruit and vegetables before we left. Shorty Hafley was just running his stand--he had a big truck that he set up where he later built the store and he'd drive into town with a load of fruit and vegetables, and they were so superior to anything we could get anywhere else that 67 when I saw them I asked we stop and we laid in a big stock of fresh fruits and vegetables to take home with us. When we got out there, I had a kerosene refrigerator, I had a kerosene stove, I had a table and chairs—no, I didn't have, I didn't have the table and chairs yet—but we had our bedroom furniture. We didn't have our living room furniture. I put that couch in there that I had and I set the big trunk in the end of the living room by the kitchen door and I put a pretty tablecloth on that, and that's where we had our table to eat from for a few days. But they began to get those orders through to California right away and it wasn't long before we had our furniture. The oil stove had a very poor oven. In fact, nothing baked well in it except macaroni that you wanted crisp, and it wasn't long until I had a Flamo gas stove, an O'Keefe and Merritt stove, it was a marvelous thing. I always loved that stove. EB: An O'Keefe and what? LB: O'Keefe and Merritt, a fine stove, a Flamo gas. EB: And what's "Flamo?" LB: Well, it is a bottled gas that you use, and we'd get it in fifty-gallon tanks and it would last for two or three months. EB: Is it as safe as…is it safer than butane? LB: Same thing, just a different kind. And it was not until then that I could bake pies for cowboys or anybody else, because the other stove was not good enough. EB: Now, you said you had a kerosene refrigerator. How did it work? 68 LB: Well, you light the thing down underneath, and you have a tank on the back that provides the kerosene. You had to keep it filled in summer. It froze about as well as your electrical refrigerator. Later we had a gas-operated refrigerator, because we had the Flamo there, too, and we let this go up to the cowboys at the barn. EB: I can't imagine how it worked. LB: Well, it worked fine. It provided the heat that circulated the gas to cool everything. It was not Freon but something else, and I am inclined to think that thing had ammonia in it because Frank had to replace the gas in it one time at the barn and I know he had to get ammonia. We had running water, of course. They piped the water down four miles from Indian Springs and it was marvelous water, very soft and very tasty. It was really nice. We always had our tank full and then we had the horse trough, the gardens, and all those things where we used water, but we had a surplus of water. We installed showers for the cowboys and he (Frank) insisted they take them. One fellow was grumbling he had worked on a lot of cattle ranches and that was the first time he'd ever had to take a bath, but he was converted right away to the practice of bathing. At first we didn't have chickens and I wanted to know why we couldn't and he said if I wanted to take care of them I could have them. And so I bought the chickens, the eggs, and the incubator and hatched a batch of chickens, and in about three weeks we had another batch. Pretty soon we had a good supply of chickens around and we often had fried chicken. These were the chickens that weren't up at the house, they were all down behind the barn, but there was a little chicken that broke its wing, and, of course, we splinted its wing and brought it home. And then pretty soon another chicken was in need 69 of firsthand care and it came home, and so we had them out in the circular garden along with the terrapins. EB: And cottontails. LB: And quail. EB: Did you produce anything for the house in the way of garden? LB: And I was teaching you little girls, when Mary was just walking, to plant your own gardens. You had received gardening tools for Christmas gifts. Once I went into the house to get ready to go to town and couldn't find my wristwatch. Finally, in desperation I appealed to you girls and you didn't know where it was, but I asked the baby "Mary, where is my wrist watch?" She said: "I planted it." She had learned that if you planted something you got more of the thing you planted and she wanted a wristwatch. EB: How old was she? LB: She was not two, just a little, tiny thing. EB: The thing I remembered about Mary is a day of general panic when she climbed the windmill. She always climbed. LB: She loved to climb, you could see farther. EB: Tell me about the time she climbed for the gun and the time she climbed the windmill. LB: To help me with my baby tending I had set mirrors in my house so I could look in my mirror over the kitchen sink and see any part of the house. This was possible if I turned 70 one mirror as I went into the kitchen, it would tell me, I would know where the children were at that time. And if I turned this mirror, I would get the house all the way through. Mary was in the bedroom taking a nap and I was busy in the kitchen, and I stopped to hang the wash. We hung our washing out-of-doors and I had gone back into the kitchen and was peeling potatoes. I looked in the mirror to check on the baby and she was not on the bed, so I began checking to see where she was and saw where she had pulled the little dresser, wicker storage thing that I had for you girls, and it pulled out and it just literally made a stairway up when you did this, and then beyond that was a shelf that you could climb onto and stand on and reach. I found her in that position. She had climbed up and was reaching for the gun, it was a 45-Colt automatic, and I knew it was loaded, that it had bullets, and if she tripped that safety I knew we were in real trouble. And so I dashed for the closet and I got there as she had it up in her hand and was looking down the barrel. I said: "Give it to me, Mary," and she handed it to me. She hadn't tripped the safety but I was very frightened and we did not keep that wicker stand in the closet any longer! EB: Now, those are the wicker ones that fold out into three sections? LB: You pull one and every other shelf moves out. EB: So it is a stairway up. LB: A step here and here. EB: It's amazing that it didn't fall over. LB: No, it was a very stable one. 71 EB: Tell us about the time she went out and Daddy had her. LB: Oh, I know what you mean. He decided that I had had rather a time with you children. I am not sure why because I always enjoyed it so much, but he felt it was time that he helped me with the children. So I let him take the two of you out-of-doors, and you were out at his shop with him while he was doing something or other. I was in the house. I think I was mending something that he wanted done-- that might have been the whole story right there. Anyhow, I was thinking maybe I had better check on the children. I could hear you, you were singing, but I couldn't hear Mary. You were out by the shop and you were looking at a book, sitting in the shade. I knew if you were looking at a book Mary wasn't around because you would be afraid that she would tear the book. So I stepped out on the porch and I did it just at the right time. Frank had been poisoning ants. He used the solid cyanide gas poison and he had a teaspoon in the can and it was sitting on the fender of a car. Someone had driven in and he had stopped to talk with them. He had put the spoon back into the can and turned his back on the baby and was talking to this person. I saw her as she raised her hand to take the spoon and I ran the fifteen or twenty feet it was out to that car— and the door slammed after I got there--and I grabbed her hand just before the spoon went into her mouth, laden with cyanide, which would have been instant death as far as the baby was concerned. When I arrived and grabbed the baby, Frank turned around, he saw the whole situation, and oh, you should have seen the look on his face, absolutely unbelieving that he could do a thing like that. Ho was very judgmental about taking good care of us, about that sort of thing, 72 but it was just that this person came in with a question that diverted him. That just was a lesson to him about how quickly EB: No, I don't remember that. I remember she always climbed things, and I remember one time he was out in the yard and had us and he was talking to someone and she climbed the ladder to the windmill. LB: Well, the windmill was up by the barn. EB: Some time she had climbed way up...maybe I'm mistaken. LB: No, she climbed the tank tower a time or two. That was forty feet up. She wasn't walking very well the first time and she climbed all the way up and was sitting with her legs dangling over the edge. EB: Yes, I remember Bob Guess, and I was there, and I remember him scooping me up and saying something to me about. . . LB: "You don't do things like that." EB: Yes, something like that. LB: Well, he was very aware of children. He had five daughters of his own and he took care of them. His wife seldom took care of the children, he did. He owned a cattle ranch in New Mexico and because of financial reverses lost the place and came looking for a job and hired on our ranch. He worked out there for a number of years. He was a very fine person. I really liked him. 73 EB: Now, this is sort of a diversion, but I don't want to forget to ask this. His name was Bob Guess because he didn't know his name? LB: Because he was a foundling, they did not know who he was and somebody asked him who he was, and he said: "Guess," and so from then on he was "Bob Guess." He was just a little, tiny boy when he did this. EB: Who raised him? Do you know? LB: People. Just some people. He was with this one couple and something happened. I think the man was killed on a horse, and then he went to somebody else, but by the time ho was thirteen, I believe, he was on his own riding for a living. EB: He was very kind and gentle and sweet, with that kind of a background? And he wasn't at all rough. LB: He was really a well-mannered person and very kind and he had high values. He was with an elderly couple—he didn't live with them but had contact with them—and they, I think, were responsible for his value system. And it was their farm that he inherited on their deaths and he was able to parlay that into a cattle ranch. He didn't keep the original farm but traded it. EB: He lost it during the Depression? LB: Yes, I think that probably was the story. Anyway, he lost it. EB And worked for you. 74 LB: And moved. EB: Did he ever get another ranch? LB: No, he just worked for other people. EB: Tell me about some of Daddy's friends, the ones you liked. LB: Well, everybody was Daddy's friend and a majority of them I liked. There were some that were his..his… EB: Cronies. LB: Yes, that I would have liked to change, but I never complained about that. If he liked them, and they liked him, that was all right with me but I chose the ones I would associate with. His favorite doctor was Dr. White, but he didn't want me to go to Dr. White because he didn't think he was modern enough, so he selected Dr. Dick as my doctor and we visited lots with them. They came out to the ranch quite a bit. EB: He was the one who was supposed to deliver me and he didn't get there on time. LB: Yes, I think he never lived that down, nor did he believe me when I explained the situation until Mary arrived and from then on he knew I was telling the truth. EB: Just tell us briefly about that. LB: About your birth? EB: Yes, and Mary's. 75 LB: Oh, my. Daddy arose very early that morning to go out to Hackberry to meet a train that was delivering twenty young two-year-old bulls that he would drive cross-country to the ranch, and Hackberry was to the east and north and the ranch was to the north and west and he had probably forty miles to drive them cross-country. The train, of course, was arriving on time so he had to be there to receive them. I arose and prepared his breakfast and at five o'clock he left and I went back to bed. I hadn't been in bed very long after he left when I awoke suddenly. I went into the bathroom and I was a little puzzled about the situation. No one had ever mentioned to me, and I had been asking all the questions I could dream up because I should be very proper. I thought at my age I should know more than I did. I had asked that doctor so many questions that he sometimes looked up as I asked toward the heavens as though he maybe were uttering a silent prayer. And this was not lost on me, but I still needed my questions answered. But I had never asked the proper questions. When I began having pains fifteen minutes apart I was supposed to have someone take me to the hospital because he would not deliver a baby outside the hospital. Well, I began to question myself: "What happened when you started with them two minutes apart?" and I decided the answer was to hurry. Well, Grandmother had been sleeping upstairs because she did not want me climbing the stairs, and Joseph slept on the porch up there, too, just outside her bedroom in case she needed something. She was in Lennie's bedroom up there, you know where that was. So I headed for the stairs as soon as I figured out what my course of action should be, and I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and had rather a compelling pain right then. I waited until that had subsided and I went up the stairs and at the top I had another. Then I went into the bedroom. I had sent my little dog, Tag, up to waken her but we had 76 been teaching him not to get on the beds because we did not want him to do that after the baby arrived. And so he had gone in and had done everything he could to waken her. He had howled, he had barked, he had pulled the covers, but he couldn't waken her. I could hear her snoring, and that's when I went on up the stairs. Well, I touched her on the ear. This was a signal which she had asked us to use because she was hard of hearing, she just didn't hear any sound. When I touched her she was awake and I told her we had to hurry, and for her to get ready. But she had to have herself together first, so I handed her her glasses, and then I handed her her teeth, and then I handed her combs to pin up her hair, and then I found her ear trumpet, because she couldn't understand a word. That was a thing about six feet long. It had a great big megaphone thing at one end and it fit in your ear at the other, and if you shouted rather loudly into that, she would hear some of what you said. So she finally was ready to go out and get Dody. (Joseph, her son.) Well, I had had about three severe pains in that period, and she went out and got Dody and then he had the thing of finding where he left his shoes, but I didn't go out to help him, I just waited. He also was hard of hearing. It took him a little time and it was a little hard to clarify things, but I told him to go get the doctor and he got that message and he took off running--he didn't bother with his car because the doctor was one block up above us. He got up there, and he pounded on the doctor's door and told him how necessary it was that he come immediately, and the doctor said: "You get home and you tell that girl to get to the hospital right now and I'll meet her there," but I was ready to deliver the baby by the time he got back to the house. We, of course, were not prepared to have that baby at home, but I took one of the unsterilized sheets out of the drawer and grabbed a bundle of newspapers that were there for the 77 fire, and I put a blanket on top of them and the sheet on top of that and that was the preparation for your birthing. EB: And Grandma was in attendance? LB: Grandma was there but she was not in attendance. She was wringing her hands. She had had nine children but she had never seen one born. She was absolutely- frantic and she didn't know what to do, and she was sort of moaning, and she was walking back and forth and wringing her hands. And there was no stopping you. EB: Was Dody back before that? LB: He had gone back to the doctor again. I had said: "You go back and tell that doctor I cannot go anyplace; my baby is being born right now. “And so Dody made another race up the hill and the doctor was not going to come to the house, and so he grabbed him by the shoulder and told him he was coming, and I understand he was a little Western in his speech. But he did come. EB: The doctor came. LB: But by that time you were already delivered, but I didn't know what to do from that point. I had never experienced anything of this kind and I just didn't know the process, how to take care of things, so I was awfully glad to see him, even late as he was. EB: And Grandma was terrified. LB: It really was a help to me, you know. 78 EB: I've known doctors, though, who were just about that brave, so don't worry about it. LB: Oh, it really was a comedy of errors. Nothing, absolutely nothing I'd asked helped me one iota. EB: You hadn't learned a thing? LB: I had learned all the wrong things. EB: They don't seem to volunteer the information you need, do they? What about Mary, was her arrival so abrupt? LB: It took an hour and sixteen minutes from the time I awoke until you were there EB: Me? LB: You. It took an hour and twenty minutes from the time I awoke for Mary to be delivered. EB: Gosh, I wish I'd asked you questions and learned your system. (Laughter.) LB: Well, I always hoped you girls would be a lot more like me than you were. EB: That's a lot better than 36 hours. LB: Yes, I agree. Well, George was longest in delivery. He was two hours and 35 minutes. That was enough. But I was resistant to having him. He was premature. Well, the poor doctor, I really felt for him but there wasn't a thing I could do for him. EB: How long before Dad got back home? 79 LB: I think he came in that day. He drove the animals across country, turned them over to the cowboys, and came right back to town. EB: A couple of days, though, that far across the desert. LB: No, it was done that day and in the evening he delivered them out there. He had a couple of cowboys up there to meet him, and they took them quite quickly across the ranch. EB: Did you have a name chosen for a boy? LB: Oh, yes, I had names for boys and girls. It was rather an undecided thing. I had things to suggest, but your Daddy decided that I should name you and so I did. I named you "Ellen" for Grandmother Bonelli as her name was "Effie Ellen." I named you "Marie" for my mother. Her name was "Julia Marie." I thought it a lovely combination and so you were blessed with that name. Mary, when she was born, it was Frank's turn to name the baby and he named her "Mary Letha." Now, "Mary" is another form of "Marie," or "Marie" is another form of "Mary," and then the "Letha," was for me. "Mary" was for Virginia and for your Aunt Mary Bonelli, the two of them. .And Virginia came and stayed with us for two weeks after your birth, and as soon as Mother left, she came and stayed for two more weeks. EB: Oh, your mother came after my birth. 80 LB: My mother. As soon as Dody got the doctor there he got in his car and drove out to Barney's place and got my mother to come in. She was the one who cleaned up the baby and everything. Nothing had been done until she got there. EB: The doctor didn't do it? LB: No, he was busy with me and the baby was in a receiving blanket waiting when my mother. EB: Boy that was a quick trip. LB: It was only nineteen miles out, twenty, I guess. EB: I never have known Uncle Dody to be that obedient. LB: He was afraid he might have to take care of me if he didn't do it, I believe. That's a very unjust decision, but… EB: How long did your mother stay when she came? LB: She stayed…well, in those days they kept you in bed for ten days and I almost stayed in bed. I was up and down but still very quiet. Mother stayed ten days and maybe an extra one. Anyway, Virginia came in when she went back and she was a very welcome visitor I'll tell you. EB: Did your mother ever stay out at the ranch? 81 LB: No, she never did. She visited but not overnight. She always went before the day was done. EB: What about your dad? Did he ever come out? LB: Yes, he came out and spent a week one time and your father enjoyed him very much. They really got acquainted. This was not too long before we left the ranch. They really got acquainted that visit and your dad came in and said to me: "Well, why didn't you tell me the kind of a guy your dad was?" EB: I would assume that Dad would like him from what I have heard about the two of them. LB: He did, he liked him very much once he knew him, but he was very jealous of my family because I loved them so dearly and nothing he could say could change it, and this disturbed him. It made him feel insecure, I believe. And he was a very intense individual as you know. He would make up his mind and he would say something and if you didn't deny it vehemently and set him straight right that minute, it was the truth from then on as far as he was concerned. This was something I didn't realize when I was first married to him. I thought anybody would know better than that. EB: And so you would just ignore it. LB: That's right. And I would refuse to fight, you know. You start answering back, why pretty soon it is a fight. So it built up a lot of false ideas in his mind, because he would say…he would absolutely, sincerely believe the foolish things he said if you didn't deny them. It was crazy but that's the way it was. 82 EB: Did he sing? LB: No. He thought he didn't, anyway. Except once when he went out on that rock in the moonlight and sang "Red River Valley." EB: I remember him being superstitious. Quite superstitious about things. LB: Not really superstitious, but he pretended superstition. This was quite an excuse with him to do the things the way he wanted to. EB: No, I think he really was, as far as cats went, at least. LB: Ahhh. He didn't believe any of that stuff. It just gave him leeway. EB: Oh. LB: The roadrunner, running across the road in front of you, was supposed to give you a flat tire, so we couldn't go very far. We'd have to turn around and go another direction. EB: Oh, gave him a chance to leave the road and get a flat tire. LB: All kinds of things, you know, that he pretended to believe. But it did make people excited and interested to find out why he was doing those crazy things he did. EB: I remember he loved for you to read. LB: Yes, he loved for me to read a lot. EB: And that he read a lot. LB: Well, he would never read anything that wasn't instructive. He didn't feel that he should waste his time, but he could listen to me read forever, read that kind of stuff to him. 83 EB: I know he picked stories that you read. But when he read it was the dictionary, the encyclopedia, or a mechanics manual. LB: Yes, and he could read. When he decided to go into the refrigeration business he told me that if he just had a certain book he could fix the refrigeration at the Central Market in Boulder City (Nevada). So I had the chance to go over to Las Vegas with Violet Tract and I went into the bookstore and I found the very book he wanted and I took it back and he used that thing and he fixed every machine in the store. They had only one refrigerator that was still working, and they, of course, had to use that for the meat, and the vegetables weren't faring too well. And he fixed the three vegetable refrigerators and display cases and he fixed the three in the meat market, and then there was one that they had for frozen produce that he told DeWitt should be replaced because of the fact that they couldn't get the parts that he had to have. DeWitt tried to get a new one and he couldn't get one. Things were so hard to get--you know, it was war years when the war first started and things were being confiscated for the armed services. Well, he went to work, then, and machined the parts he needed, made them himself, fixed the machine. EB: This was the Second World War? LB: Yes. We ought to clarify for the interview that this was World War II and we lived, in Boulder City. We had moved to Boulder City and he was working for DeWitt Tract. And you were five and Mary was three. EB: Yes, and we will talk about that some more a little later, but would you go back to the ranch period? Did dad manage the ranch? 84 LB: Yes, he was the ranch manager. EB: Did he still break horses? LB: Yes, but not so spectacularly as he had when he was younger. Of course, in those days it was a piece of showmanship and now it was a matter of training the horses to do what he wanted. And there is a big difference, then, in your approach. But, of course, if you have horses running on an open range until they are three years old, you have a different story, in breaking them. These horses were purchased horses. They didn't grow up on the ranch. His father had mares that were just ordinary mares on the ranch and he bought a thoroughbred stud and imported him, and he was the father or the sire, of all those horses. EB: You are talking about the earlier period, when his father had the ranch. LB: So the horses grew up on the range and then when they were about three years old they were brought into the corral and broken, but this gave quite a different aspect to breaking a horse. These others, the ones your dad had on the second time around on the Bonelli ranch, were purchased and the horses had already been broken for the most part. And the colts that were born on the ranch were familiar with handling from the very beginning and by the time they were two or three and ready to be ridden, they knew everything they should know, and it was a different situation. EB: What kind of cattle did he raise? 85 LB: We had Hereford and then he imported, sometimes he brought in the purebred Herefords, the bulls, as the twenty I spoke of the morning you were born. Sometimes he would bring in Brahman bulls because he found the animals having trouble with their hooves up in the Marble Wash country, that kind of area, and he would have to bring them down in the valley. And so he began breeding of the Brahman bulls that made a better, stronger stock. And they also were very meaty, but they looked still like Herefords. They had white faces and had the Hereford look, but I never saw one that had the Brahman hump, though the Brahman bulls were used. EB: Crossbreeding just made a stronger animal. LB: Just a stronger animal. Also, he brought in…oh, Mexico stock. Those were just anything. They were all colors and kinds. One time, a cow arrived who was a good milk cow. I could tell to look at her that she was going to be a good milk cow, so I insisted that they put her in the pasture and try milking her. She gave lots of milk, and she gave good milk, so we had fresh milk at the ranch house from then on. We had been using that canned milk all the time. EB: I remember having bottles of canned milk. LB: I could never stand to taste the stuff unless it were cooked in something, so I was delighted when. . . EB: So you didn't have fresh milk when we were little? 86 LB: Well, Mary was a baby when we got Geraldine. She was a good cow and we certainly enjoyed the milk. When they brought Mexico cattle in, they would ship them in when the range looked good, when we had high grass and range feed. There was lots of Fillery. There were about seven kinds of wild grasses, and it would grow knee-high, and just about that time they would bring our thousands of Mexico steers and they would be fattened on our range and they would be sent, then, to market. They made more money on those Mexico steers than they did on the breeding of high-grade cattle. But if we had our own stock on the ranch in a good year, they could be butchered and they would be such beautiful meat, as if they had been corn fed. They had been eating Fillery instead, but they had the marbleized meat and every indication that they were good beef. And those were such good cattle. EB: Where did they take them to sell them? LB: They took them to Kingman to the railroad and shipped them and they were sold various places. Sometimes they were shipped to California because if they didn't have to be fattened, you see, they were fat as they left the ranch and very often they would go down to Los Angeles or somewhere else in California. EB: How many men did he employ out there? LB: Usually we had six cowboys riding for us. Not always, but most of the time. EB: And they had a cook in addition to that? 87 LB: Well, Benny Garrett we usually would count as one of them. He was our cook but he was also a cowboy at heart. And he was older, this was how he happened to get the job of cooking. Frank didn't feel he should impose on a fellow of that age. EB: How old was he? LB: I don't know, but he did look like a dried prune. It was true, but that didn't mean anything either, living in the sun and outdoors always. EB: Do you remember the ones that usually worked for them? LB: Well, no. I remember Benny Garrett and Bob Guess and the West boys and Henry Duncan, and then there were other people that came and went. And we lost a cowboy, then we would find another one. It was very easy to replace anybody that needed replacing. Now Henry Duncan was a retarded fellow, but Frank knew his parents and he sort of felt an obligation to keep the kid working. He was eighteen when he came to work for us and so lazy and slow. I did not understand retardation, did not recognize it, in fact, because I had never been around it, so I probably was a little harder on him than I would have been a little later. Do you remember our flowers? Well, when about the third year out there on the ranch I found we were still getting those anemic, little poppies and practically nothing else in the way of flowers, I decided it should be cured. I went into Kingman carrying a bunch of eggs to sell. I sold them and I had two dollars left from when I had done my shopping and I went up to the Rose Garden, the greenhouse in Kingman, and asked Peggy Cook if she had any poppy seeds. And she said: "Yes," and I said: "I want all this will buy," and so she brought out a bag, a great big bag of poppy 88 seeds for me and I laid down my two dollars. She said: "What in the world are you going to do with all those poppies?" so I told her what I was planning. I was going to go around the ranch and where ever there was a low place that it looked likely that flowers would grow and seed the valley with some decent flowers. Well, she was intrigued by the idea. She went back through her greenhouse and she finally ended up giving me a large, brown paper bag full of flower seeds. She even cleaned out the cases where she had packaged seeds to sell. She gave me everything but some compound poppy seeds. They were a new thing and they had instead of the usual four petals, either eight or twelve petals. Those were put in last on the top of the sack went merrily home. My babies had received gardening tools for Christmas, and I would get in my car, we would drive around, and we'd drive around where ever I thought we could do some planting. I'd stop the car, we would get out, and the little girls would rake as I sowed poppy seed. We planted all the seed we had been given. The compound poppies I decided to plant in a well marked place so I could observe what happened to them later and see whether they grew. I went down by Shep's store which was six miles from my house, and there, out back, perhaps a quarter of a mile, there was a nice place for us to plant. There was absolutely nothing growing there although the ground looked as if it were pretty good. And you little girls raked away and I sowed the seeds and we did see them bloom once. In the next spring there were poppies in that vicinity and we saw the compound poppies. There were lots of them that grew and blossomed. Then we had to leave the ranch because of the war and the fact the ranch was being sold. It was divided into three portions and sold three different ways, so it wasn't the entity it had been before. We, in the meantime, went into Kingman and then from there went to Boulder City. My brother89 in-law, Leonard Bonelli, had employment with Central Market in Boulder City. DeWitt Tract was owner and he had very excellent ideas of the profit sharing idea. He was rather new to the community or to the area. Leonard was working on salary but on a bonus basis. If they made a certain amount, why then what DeWitt did was just pay himself a salary, too, and then anything in excess of that after all expenses were paid he would divide among the people who worked for, him. So Christmas and birthdays and times like that, you had yourself a nice, healthy bonus. Christmas bonuses were five hundred dollars for the fellows who worked as managers of the departments, and then beyond that the money was divided among the other workers. Frank, being maintenance manager, received a five hundred dollar bonus. EB: I thought he was a butcher there, too. LB: Well, he was a meat cutter at first, but it was about two months, I guess, he worked there until he was taking care of all the equipment. They could not get repairmen because the people who could do this kind of thing were gone (into war jobs). And so Len suggested that DeWitt ask Frank what he thought about something, and Frank looked at it and said: "Boss, if you want, I'll fix it for you," and that was when he graduated to maintenance manager. He could fix most anything. EB: How large a store was it? I didn't realize it was that big. LB: There were probably twenty or thirty employees, I don't know, but it was a good-sized market. They had a meat department, a vegetable department, and a grocery department. 90 EB: But not dry goods. LB: No, there were three areas. EB: Foods. Now, when you left the ranch. Would you like to tell me why? LB: Well, everything had to be done in triplicate from the beginning because ranches were scrutinized closely by the government. And we had CC camps in there, CC boys roaming all over our place for a number of years, and now the government didn't want just three copies, they had to have six copies. Everything copied six times to satisfy the government, of the different reports we had to make and send in. And we got all kinds of directives from the government as to how to operate our ranch. And when they sent a letter---which I still have someplace instructing us to save our steers for breeding purposes--- Frank couldn't stand it another minute. EB: I had thought you left the ranch because Bill had legal difficulties and it had to be sold. LB: This was true, that's what precipitated it, but Frank was quitting anyway. He was not going to stay there and put up with the paperwork. And so when Bill had decided to sell, it was no loss to us. We were planning to make a move. That is, your father was. I hadn't quite counted on it yet because Bill could talk Frank into anything, and if he wanted him to stay I was quite sure we would. But Bill was having problems in California and he was "defending the family name," and he didn't want "a blot on the escutcheon," he said, and of course, his friends didn't have the property or the money to put up the defense and he did, so he was the one who did most of it. 91 EB: Bill? LB: Yes. It cost him $190,000.00, I think, before he was through with it. That first trial. EB: And what was that first trial about? LB: Well, he was accused of all kinds of malfeasance in office. He was head of the Board of Equalization in California, and he and five other men, there were six of them, who were facing these charges, there was supposed to be bribery and all kinds of stuff. They had a very long, drawn-out trial with very ugly publicity. But they had a fellow whom Bill did not like, but he said he knew he was fair, so when they suggested that this man be placed in charge as Judge, Bill said: "Okay. “Judge Parker was his name, and he was, he was a fair person. Well, things were all set up. They had a District Attorney who was really out to get Bill for some reason, a personal vendetta, and he used all kinds of methods trying to trick or find some kind of charges that would stick. He ended up filing 23 different suits. There were 23 counts on which he was being tried, and then there was the problem of having a defense against each one, proving it to be untrue, which Bill did. In the end he was exonerated. Judge Parker said it was completely without basis that this man had been charged and tried, and he told the Los Angeles Examiner paper that they were obligated to give Bill the same headlines, the same news coverage, in regards to space in the paper when he was exonerated as they had given him when he was 'charged. EB: So, did they? 92 LB: Yes, they did. But they certainly used yellow journalism in the exoneration statements, and so the Judge reprimanded them for this and made them print it the way it was--but that was over on page three, I think. EB: My Dad decided, then, to leave the ranch. I had thought that it was a move that was forced by this legal suit, but it was not? LB: No, it was not. What he did was sell so that he would have money to pursue the defense. EB: Did Daddy have any ownership in the ranch? LB: We were promised when we went out there that we would have ten percent of everything, and then when Bill was in these dire straits, this was forgotten and set aside, and I made no argument about it because there was a great need. Bill was out to clear the family name and keep things as they should be, and so I wanted him to have that opportunity. EB: So you went to (Boulder City), and this was about 1942, wasn't it? LB: Yes, it was December, 1941 when the war started, and it was the next year that we left the ranch. EB: So those were war years. So, was it difficult to find housing? Impossible, wasn't it? LB: Well, it was impossible the first six months to find a house, and then we were able to buy a house because of DeWitt Tract and his knowledge of the people and all. A lady died and her husband was going back home where ever it was lie came from, and we 93 bought his property there in Boulder City. It was one of the old company houses that had been redone. Those Sixth Company houses were the houses that were originally built for the people who came to work for the six companies that built the dam, and that's where they got their name. But it was a nice little house and quite adequate and well located. It was one block from the church, and one block from the Central Market, and a block from the park, and two blocks from the school where you started school there in the fall. And we had lots of fun there. It was really nice and we enjoyed our stay in Boulder City. Of course, my two youngest children were born there, too. George was born prematurely and that was a concern of mine. I was very concerned when I discovered he was going to arrive that day and it was a reluctant delivery, and so it took me a little longer than it had previously when I had my babies. EB: How premature was he? LB: He was six months and twenty days in gestation, which made him very premature. EB: How much did he weigh? LB: He weighed four pounds and four and one-half ounces, I believe the record in Boulder City says. And I stayed in the hospital for ten days with him and I was put on an electric milking machine because he could not nurse. He was fed by gravity flow from a bottle nipple that dripped milk into his mouth, and occasionally he would swallow. But when he was born it was a sad scene because he was early and there was no incubator in Boulder City. They had to send to Las Vegas for one. It was six hours before it arrived and during that time he suffered somewhat from anoxia because he needed the oxygen. 94 When it came, there was nobody there who actually knew how to operate it properly and they gave him too much oxygen and he turned kind of dark from that. EB: I thought that would blind them. LB: Well, it has been suggested that this may be a portion of what is wrong with his eyes. You know he is right now almost totally blind. EB: But this was later in his life. Of course, he did have poor sight as a child. LB: Well, he has always had very poor eyesight, and for a while it seemed to affect his hearing just a little bit, but then he outgrew that and he was considered normal in his audio tests. EB: How long was he in the incubator? LB: He was in the incubator three weeks. They told me as soon as he could learn to suck, then I could bring him home, so I spent hours encouraging this and the day that he started nursing normally he was brought home. Then I was able to take care of him myself. I felt a lot safer about him when I got him home. EB: I would, too. LB: The hospital, I suppose, was a good place in the beginning, but I surely didn't want him to stay there long. I got home, you little girls were so delighted to have him. I was so delighted to be off that milking machine. Boy, that was a torture thing, but the doctor told me it was essential that he have my feedings in the beginning, and so he had them. 95 EB: Who was your doctor? LB: Dr. Don McCornack in Boulder City, and his brother E. A. McCornack. And his brother's wife, Mrs. E. A. McCornack, was the one who administered the chloroform when I was having him. Now, with you and Mary I never had any kind of anesthetic. They started to give me ether before Mary was born and I told them to get that stuff away and let me have my baby, because it seemed to me it was going to put me to sleep, and it would have, I'm sure. The nurse was not going to obey me and the doctor said: "Do as she says," so Mary was born in just a jiffy after that. She was so bright and well and everything, and I do believe that anesthetic for a newborn is a bad thing. If you can avoid it, you should. And I think I would have been ahead if I hadn't had anything with George. But Mrs. McCornack was a genius when it came to administering chloroform. She knew just how much to keep you where you ought to be. I couldn't feel pain but I could feel and know everything else. I really feel great thanks in her respect. She was a marvelous woman. EB: Dr. McCornack was a good doctor, too, wasn't he? LB: Yes. He was very good and very understanding and very caring. This, of course, to me, was wonderful. EB: Now, in those days they encouraged the mother to nurse the baby, didn't they? LB: No, there were lots of bottle babies. It depended on your doctor. As far as I was concerned, there was never a question except for you. You weren't getting enough food, so I was trying to find a supplement for you but I couldn't find one. 96 EB: Didn't they have supplements in those days? LB: Yes, they had SMA and they had Horlick's malted milk, and they had all kinds of things that they fed babies. Even Eagle Brand. EB: Oh, dear. LB: Yes. Oh, dear. But I started out nursing you and I could find nothing that would agree with you excepting my own milk. So I nursed you until you were two weeks past your first birthday and all the rest of it. But you were a very brilliant little girl and I told you: "No, no, you don't bite," you were so darling. You got teeth when you were about seven months old that is teeth that matched top and bottom, and that was when it got rough. But you would obey me when I would tell you no, and you'd not bite again. I was so intrigued with your obedience and quick responses that I would take most anything. EB: Now, when you moved to Boulder City, what was the town like? Was it small? LB: Yes, it was small. They had the beautiful park there. EB: And Boulder City was the town that was started to house the people that built Boulder Dam, which later was officially named "Hoover Dam." LB: Yes, and then it became a government town and was planned with the parks and the streets. EB: It was a beautiful town, it still is 97 LB: Very clean and there was no gambling or slot machines or anything of that kind in Boulder City, nor liquor. They did not sell liquor in Boulder City at that time. EB: Do you know how large a community it was when we were living there? LB: I do not remember. I could probably find out. EB: Or how large the school was that we attended? LB: Well, in your kindergarten class there were thirty children. And in your first grade there were nearly that many. I think there were 27. You were in kindergarten, first, second, and third grade in Boulder City and then we moved back to Kingman and you went into Mrs. Marshall's fourth grade. You loved her, I think, much more than the other teachers you had had in Boulder City. She was a very sweet person and very considerate and very fair, and this fairness, I think, endeared her to you. You were a newcomer and she helped settle you into the group. Mary went into second grade and she was in Mrs. Faye's class. Mrs. Faye was a different temperament. She was very partial, very inconsiderate of the children who didn't fall on her favored list, and Mary felt rather strongly about that. She was always trying to soften things for some of the children who weren't as favored as she. Your dad liked Mrs. Faye. He went to visit her and he thought she was grand because she understood the "importance of the Bonelli group." EB: Mrs. Faye was the one who painted the picture for our wedding gift? LB: Yes. 98 EB: Let's go back to Boulder City a minute. How long was it that Daddy worked for DeWitt Tract before he started his own business? LB: He worked for DeWitt when we first went to Boulder City. He worked first as a meat cutter for a very brief time. Then as the war escalated and people were drafted and taken into new situations, the people who were really excellent in their fields were no longer with us and your dad had lots of room to show his "excellencies," That's, what he called them. EB: Then he took care of the machinery. LB: Yes, and it wasn't any time until he was just called to do so much that he could hardly handle the jobs that were offered him. EB: Oh, jobs for other people? LB: Yes, and he continued in the store, but he'd get things going in the store and he'd ask DeWitt if he could help Mrs. So and So because she was without cooling, or without refrigeration, or whatever it was, and DeWitt always gave an okay. EB: Why did he then, if he had that big a clientele in Boulder City, why did he go back to Kingman to start his refrigeration business? LB: Well, they had need of someone, too. And when the war was over there would be a lot of people coming home and they would need room when they got there. This was his thinking. And Kingman had not had a good refrigeration person, and I think mainly it was to go home and be by his mother, because we visited very often. We went down 99 numerous times to visit her and she was a person who needed family close. She was rather an isolationist where other people were concerned, and it was only family that were really important to her. In many respects, she was like Aunt Jesse: her own were the important ones. And you girls were her only granddaughters, and you were the only girls in the family because her two daughters by that time were gone. Well, Clara was there. EB: No, Clara was in Europe and in Los Angeles. LB: Yes. EB: She was never home until after Dad died. LB: So she didn't have anyone close and you girls were so very important to her. I think those were the main lodestones that took him back. EB: She had only Uncle Dody there, didn't she? LB: Yes, he was the only one there while we were gone. EB: So how long did Dad commute before we moved over? LB: Two years. That was because of George and the necessity of keeping him near the doctor. At first he was just building up his business in Kingman, then after George's illness, we had to keep him very close to the doctor there. EB: Well, he actually only worked for DeWitt for about three years. 100 LB: I think there was probably a total of four or five years and he continued to work for DeWitt when he was also in Kingman establishing his shop. If there were any reason he needed to work for DeWitt, he did. In fact, he helped DeWitt anytime. EB: Yes, I remember several trips back. LB: And when we were established in Kingman he made several trips back. EB: I can remember a couple, even when I was in fifth grade. LB: Anything that challenged him, Frank couldn't leave it until he had it fixed. EB: We moved to Kingman that summer after third grade? LB: We moved to Kingman when Jan was four months old. EB: Four months old. And her birth date was March 4, 1946. Then we moved to Kingman, and tell us about that. Tell us about how he chose that house. I think that describes Daddy as well as anything. LB: Actually, when we went down he was hoping to buy the Watt Thompson house. EB: Where was that? LB: It was below the tracks, right on the railroad tracks! EB: Oh, yuck. 101 LB: There was a fence, but George could scale any kind of fence a little later, so that didn't make any difference. But there were the railroad tracks and the railroad cars just clattering through night and day. EB: Why would he want to buy that? LB: Because it belonged to his friend Watt Thompson. Watt was dead and he wanted to keep that as a landmark place. The house was inconvenient: it was built by an English bachelor who had no regard for the people who worked for him. And it would be very difficult to live in and it was right on the railroad tracks, and a dangerous place for children. You girls would have to cross the tracks every time you went to school or home again. You'd have to pass through town. In fact, you passed three bars on Main Street that were very close there where you would have to travel. EB: I thought we had only considered that house that Mr. George bought on over toward Hilltop. It was adobe, and then the one that we bought. And I thought that he had bought that because of the fact that it was clear out in the desert. He liked the isolation. LB: Well, when he chose this, it was because Henry Duncan, you know, who had worked for us on the ranch, his wife owned this house. She and Henry were separated but she was going to go back to where she came from and she was going to sell this house for that reason. Also, it had belonged to Stanley Wakefield and Elizabeth Cook, Earl Cook's wife when they were married. It was a large, single room that had been divided so there were just the two rooms in the beginning. But all of the materials that went into building that original building were soaked thoroughly in creosote, which would preserve the 102 timbers. In fact, they are quite solid now and they are never infested by termites because they cannot live in that kind of timber. So, though it now is approaching 100 years old, it is still quite sound. EB: I didn't realize it was that old. LB: That is the original portion, you know, the bedroom/ kitchen portion. EB: It does seem to be in as good a shape structurally as it was when we bought it. LB: But then, the part that May Duncan had added was not soaked in creosote and you'll find that that segment is not going to stand up too well. Of course, it has been there, what, forty years now? EB: It looks pretty good. Then Daddy, did he do anything immediately, begin to build the front? LB: No. He got his business established, got the shop done, and got things going downtown. Then he started on his shop out from the house there. That was the building May had poured the foundation for and was going to build a permanent residence there. The one we were in, she had thought of using as storage or something like that. Then when she and Henry broke up, she decided to leave. A lot of work in the house she had done, and she was not a carpenter. She also was not a decorator, but that has always given me the excuse that I could do better than that and I've been able to hammer and saw and do as I please. EB: You are a good carpenter. Do you mind telling what that house cost when you bought it? 103 LB: The house and the land, which was 100 feet x 144 feet, was a total of $3,300.00. EB: That was back in 1946. LB: Yes. There was a stone porch out front, there was this original portion that I have described, and there was a lean-to bedroom in the back. Now, when we went there, some changes were made right away, but not great changes until after the completion of the Davis Dam, and then your dad was working down there installing a deep freeze unit in the city of Davis and he found a great pile of timbers and things that were discarded after the cement was poured in the dam, and brought these huge timbers home. He added a length on his truck so he could haul some of it, and he brought timbers that were thirty feet in length. He was going to build a house, you know, down front. We had architectural plans laid out. It was going to be built with a three-story situation. What was low in the front yard, there would be a natural basement because it was just the right depth. Then there would be the main floor, and then there would be a tower that he wanted by himself. He didn't plan a full floor up there, just the tower, the hideaway. And we had those plans, we had great steel girders, some of them sixty feet long. EB: What happened to them? LB: I sold them, so much a pound. We had showers that we has purchased that were complete with plumbing fixtures and tile floor and the sides that would go up to make the stall. We had all kinds of things. If he found something that pleased him that he thought he'd like to incorporate in our home, he brought it home. 104 EB: That's what that pile of stuff was. LB: That was what all that junk was down front- that was the beginning of our new house. But I said that looked to me like a long project and I would like a little more room in the house we had, so then he immediately began building the big room that we called "Little America." He also planned to move the bathroom from where it was and move it over on the north side there. He got that started, he got the living room almost finished excepting for the interior, that is he had the outside up and he had the insulation in. Now, he used the cork from refrigeration units that he had gathered up and had salvaged. EB: Wasn't that a fire hazard? LB: Oh, no, it is a very slow burning material. And the way he wired things he didn't have any problem of electrical fire, anyway. He always placed his electrical wires four inches apart, because then there was no possibility of crossover and arcing at that distance with the voltage you have in your house. So it was completely free of fire hazard if you were careful of your appliances and of your fixtures in the wall. EB: Tell us about his schedule. I used to be fascinated by the way he lived, being a nocturnal person myself. LB: You could not get that man out of bed before ten o'clock in the morning. When we lived on the ranch, he would often request that I get him up at extraordinary hours and I would honestly try, but there was no way I could really get him out of bed before ten. 105 That was just a natural time for him. Fortunately, we had men working on the place and he would tell me in the evening what his big plans were for the early morning hours. I'd say: "Why do you have to get up so early?" and he would tell me, so then in the early morning I would pass my news on to the cowboys and they would take my instructions and away they would go. And he would continue to sleep until ten. But getting him into bed was another problem. When he was excited or interested about something, it was almost impossible for him to sleep and he would stay up until the wee hours working at some new idea he had. He was an extremely inventive person and was challenged by a seemingly insolvable problem and he would spend hours and hours reading or just sitting, thinking about something. Suddenly, he would be galvanized into action, he would get out to the shop and start pounding. And he was always inventing some new something or other that would do the job that had to be done. He patented a thing or two, but usually he just gave them away. He liked the challenge of new or creative work, and this was why he liked to build. He liked working with metal better than he liked working with wood. EB: I remember with wood that it was supposed to last eternally. For instance, the fence he started to build out front using those huge nails. LB: Well, he never used a small nail if a big one would go there. In fact, in building that shop, he had railroad ties as support beams along the sides and he used twelve-inch spikes from the railroad to put the thing together. EB: Those were the ones I remember. 106 LB: He put the thing together! I hired someone to tear it down, you know, it was so unfinished at his death. They worked for three days--they contracted to do it— they worked for three days out there trying to tear it down and they hadn't even gotten one corner undone, and the fellow came in looking defeated. He said: "Look, I'll donate the work I've done if you will excuse me from this contract. “And so we decided that we'd better just go ahead and put a roof on it. And then, eventually someone came along and put siding on it for me. EB: I remember the cars he remodeled. You know, he would change the bodies and whatever. LB: On the ranch we had a car he called his "Doodlebug" because he could drive it anyplace. We had a Chrysler Imperial frame, a Star radiator because they were huge, and did a good cooling job. He had parts of six cars, different cars that he admired. The part of each car that was most durable, that was the part that he used in making his "Doodlebug." And we could go, start off anywhere, we didn't need a road. We just went across country to wherever he wanted to go and this is the way our roads came into being, him driving across… EB: At the ranch. LB: Then applying to the county to put this in as a road. And proving that it was a used road, there were his tracks. EB: You spoke about his mother. I remember she was absolutely crazy about him but he would tease her. He would talk her into going with him for a ride, and she was always 107 ambivalent because she loved to be around him but she was scared to death of his driving. He would always drive her right to the edge of a precipice or something, just sit there, jut her little jaw and never say a word, but when would be terrified and he would be chuckling. LB: Well, he had one speed and that was EB: Full throttle. LB: Floorboard. EB: I know. He drove like a maniac. LB: And the car we drove went about eighty miles an hour. EB: Oh, dear. LB: And so when we started down to the dam, often we took her with us down to Davis Dam, and I often took the small children with me—you girls were at school and he'd be back before you were out of school--but as we went around the curves there in Secret Pass, I tell you, she was terrified. EB: He was quite a driver. Arizona roads, so many of them are so mountainous, too. Where is that road that just hangs right on the edge of the mountain? To Goldroad or something? LB: Well, the Goldroad Hill was pretty bad in the beginning, but they widened it. EB: Very narrow and just rough and right around the edge. LB: It was straight down for quite some distance in many places. 108 EB: There was a very rapid incline there. LB: Yes, there was more than a six percent grade in some places, and a six percent grade is all that is allowable in Arizona on a public highway. But they corrected that by lengthening the road a little bit. EB: Go back. I always think of Daddy on the ranch. I wonder if you could talk a little more about him out there, and his life style. LB: We had a delightful time on the ranch. It was idyllic as far as I was concerned. I had my two little girls and my nice little house could decide what I wanted to do and was quite undisturbed in whatever I chose for my day. We did lots of walking to investigate the various places close to the ranch house. There were some very pretty spots that we could visit traveling afoot. And you loved to walk from the very beginning. Before Mary was born we often would walk five miles in a day. This was measured by the car odometer. The distances were accurate, and very often it totaled more than five miles a day that we would walk, you and I. After Mary was born, our travels were curtailed to some degree. Your daddy was always sleeping until ten o'clock. Often he thought he wanted to get up earlier, but if I woke him he'd turn over and go back to sleep. But at ten o'clock he was up and ready to go. He wanted a good breakfast: he usually had two eggs, a good-sized steak, coffee and hot biscuits, and sometimes lemon pie. That was breakfast, but then, of course, he didn't usually eat again until all hours of the evening. He was set for the day if he had a good breakfast. He would saddle up his horse and ride. Sometimes he rode many miles in a day and sometimes he would meet a friend when he was no more than a few miles from home and they would spend the day just 109 visiting. And when he got home I would know what he had been doing that day. When he left, I thought I knew, but when he got, home, I knew. He enjoyed people so very much, and if he had a cowboy he didn't like, the cowboy didn't stay. And sometimes it might be the color of the fellow's eyes that determined whether or not he got to stay. He would not hire anybody with green eyes. One fellow he hired after dark, and this was when I made this discovery. He was firing the fellow a couple of days later and I wanted to know why, and he said: "Well, the guy's got green eyes, and I won't have anybody with green eyes working for me," and maybe that is the superstition you refer to. He had a tremendous circle of friends. They extended in a 500-mile radius in all directions. People would come in, oh, twenty years after our marriage and Frank had died, people would stop to find Frank Bonelli. They had known him twenty years ago and they just had to see him. And then they would regale me with stories of the time that they knew him and always it was hilarious and entertaining. There was one man came and he stayed in the neighborhood, he took a room at the hotel, because he wanted to tell me about Frank. And he would come every day and spend four or five hours telling me about things he and Frank had done together. He was named McNulty, and he had meant to get back to see Frank and hadn't heard of his death. Frank was a very important person in his life. He had been at the University with Frank. He was the one who had told me about the exploits at the University and the way they left in the middle of the night to escape retribution. EB: What had they done? 110 LB: Well, there was a fraternity that wanted Frank to join but they wouldn't have Don McNulty in the group and so Frank refused to join. So the fellows set out to convert him to the idea of joining them and some of the things they did he could not approve and finally he and Don crashed one of their parties, and then the things that ensued resulted in almost total destruction of the fraternity house. I think this was the deciding factor in their departure. Anyway, they decided they didn't like college anyway and they headed for home. And they rode cross-country so that nobody could find them or pick them up or anything of that kind. They didn't know whether they were pursued or not. When they got to Kingman, Frank's father had been notified by wire that these things had transpired, that there was a great cost involved. These two fellows had to work for quite a while to pay off the damages. EB: Did he tell you how much it cost them? LB: No, but he told me they worked for quite a while. But he was a fun person, he told things in such a humorous way, I really enjoyed him. EB: This is totally out of context for the tape, perhaps, but what were some of the things he told you? LB: Well, he told me about going to classes. And evidently he didn't find academics as easy as Frank did, but he certainly was not going to let Frank out do him in any field. So he would wait until Frank got his studying done and then he'd steal Frank's notes and copy them. Sometimes he wouldn't be through in time for class so he'd just keep Frank's notes and turn them in on the bottom of his. Frank was always worrying about losing all 111 of his notes and not getting his papers in, things like that. Of course, they were in because Don turned them in but this was one of the things he told in such a manner that it was hilarious. He told about specific incidents of that nature. EB: What was Daddy studying, do you know? LB: Well, he was studying everything about animal husbandry and agriculture that he could get his hands on. There was something about inventions included. It sounded like a very broad and interesting curriculum. EB: He wasn't taking general courses, then. LB: No, everything he had to take was ignored, and he was taking those things he wanted to take. EB: How nice. I wish I'd done that. LB: Many of them presupposed study in that field, but he blithely ignored that and was a little bit over his head, maybe, in some things, but he never ever admitted it. EB: How long was he in college? LB: Oh, not very long. Not even a semester. EB: Oh, I thought he had a year. LB: Well, he went back I believe for a little bit and then the war interfered. EB: He wasn't drafted. 112 LB: No, he was not drafted. He volunteered into the Air Corp. He volunteered when Uncle Bill did, but had an accident breaking a bronco at the ranch, got a huge splinter in his leg. It was fourteen inches long and about two inches wide at the top of the thing and it went down into a point. It was off a corral fence. The horse bucked him into it and he got that thing, run in from the hip downward. EB: They had to surgically remove it? LB: Yes. Someone was going to try to take it out at the ranch and Grandpa decided that was not sensible. And so they made a stretcher and two cowboys carried the stretcher between them to Kingman to the doctor. EB: Between horses? LB: And if the horses did not stay the right distance apart, it became extremely painful for Frank, so they cut branches from trees and fastened them under the necks of the horses, and then they fastened them to the tails of the horses to keep the right distance between them. They had to work quite a while to get those horses to cooperate, but once they got it they brought him into town. But Don was the one who told me about this harnessing they did for the horses. Frank had never told me about the stretcher, either. EB: Had they worked together at the ranch or something and gone to school together? LB: Oh yes, Don had been a classmate in Kingman, though he was not there to graduate. They met again at college, you see. He had been somewhere else. EB: Was Daddy not eighteen then, when he was in college? 113 LB: I think he was seventeen when he went into college. He was a year ahead in school. Eighteen was when he was going into the service and got hurt. EB: I know he regretted never graduating. When I was in fourth grade, I wanted to stay home one day and he told me I should go whenever I had the chance, that when he was growing up he very rarely ever finished a school year or began a school year with his class because of the ranch schedule and that he was not only allowed but obligated to go to the ranch and work with the cowboys at a very young age. LB: You see, round-up came in early May and that was when he was pulled out to help with the round-up and he didn't get back into school for the closing of school, so he missed at least three weeks of school every year, sometimes more, if school was held later. EB: Then he would miss again in the fall. LB: Well, in beginning the year they were getting everything ready for the winter for the cattle, you see, and they had to visit the spring to see that everything was in order. It was just checking up on the ranch and he was one of the fixers, he could just fix anything, and so he had to go with his dad and take care of things. Bill, of course, was always. He had something that was pressing in town…he did not have this schedule. EB: Didn't Bill spend that much time on the ranch, then? LB: Well, he spent time on the ranch but it was at his own discretion. He didn't stay with his dad in the fall and he didn't go with him to the round-up. 114 EB: To finish the story about Dad's leg, about the splinter. How long was he incapacitated by that? LB: Well, not very long I presume. They got it out and he was bandaged up good and riding another bronco long before it was well. But Bill, then, had gone into the Air Force and the two of them had joined together and daddy then couldn't go. Your dad had to stay home. EB: Then he joined again, didn't he? LB: Well, as soon as the leg was truly healed and he could get through all the red tape, he was allowed to go. But he lacked a half-day of having been in long enough to draw a pension from the government, for being an Air Force man. I discovered this when he died and people were trying to establish things for me. The lawyer investigated this. EB: A half-day? LB: A half-day. I think it was interpreted in hours and he lacked that much of meeting the qualifications. EB: Did he go into basic training? LB: Yes, he was in the service for what? Twenty-one days, something like that, then the Armistice was declared and he was not too pleased, though he was glad the fighting was over. He never made it and he wanted to be a VFW, but I guess he wouldn't have enjoyed any privileges that he didn't enjoy, anyway, because he spent an awful lot of 115 time down there. He had so many cronies that he liked to talk to. He was always very popular with all groups. EB: What else did Don McNulty say about him? LB: Don McNulty. Well, he described Frank as a youth. He seemed to be someone who absolutely took over the show when it came to running or riding. Every year on the 4th of July they did a bunch of races that were part of the celebration. EB: In Kingman. LB: Yes, and Frank would win the foot races and he would win the horse races. Of course, the Bonelli horses were famous for their speed because of their horse, wasn't his name "Remington?" EB: Yes. LB: And his progeny were famous for their speed. He seemed to transmit that very well in his genes. He was a good addition to the ranch. When the ranch was taken over, the horses were not included in any contract at all. Grandpa would never allow anything to jeopardize his ownership of those horses. There were other things such as the home that were not ever included. When he gave notes, these were not ever given as security. The local banker held a promissory note—that is the only kind George ever signed--and he was determined to obtain the Bonelli interests. Of course, George with his ranch and with his jewelry store, his general store, his market out at Chloride, had he, had the banker been able to take those things intact it would have been a lot of 116 property for him and his bank. But there were twelve people including the banker who had promissory notes on George. That meant they were payable on demand. Any one or even half of them George could have handled easily, but with all of them demanded at the same minute, he was lost. He could not do anything and so the ranch, the market in Chloride, the cattle, all left, they were all taken, but when Don McNulty and Frank found out about what was going on, they went to the ranch and they. . . I don't know if Frank participated in the actual stationing of those horses, but he knew about it, he sort of supervised it. His Dad didn't know about it. These boys just took it on themselves. And they drove the horses up to the top of Mt. Tipton. They knew it would take months for the horses to work themselves down from there because it was virgin pasture up there in that area and the horses liked it and it was nice and cool. And so they got those horses up there and then one of their cronies hung around the vicinity all the time. He was always riding out that way for some reason or another. The real reason was to see that if any of those horses made his way down he was put back up on the hill. And, I think, twice they found a horse that had come down. The banker was extremely irate that he didn't get those horses in the big move to take the Bonelli property, but they were not included in any of the contracts. EB: He would have taken them anyway? LB: Well, legally he couldn't have but he would have done it and gotten rid of them in a hurry and they would have been lost in the whole fiasco. EB: How old was Dad when this occurred? 117 LB: I don't know. I don't remember what year it was. I think Frank was quite young when this occurred. I never paid any attention. EB: Then did Don have any more stories about his college life? LB: Yes, he told about one professor of whom they disapproved. The professor didn't really know what he was talking about, I guess he was a young fellow and he was trying to give some information on cattle and it was quite erroneous, and, of course, our cowboy friends knew that and so they made a fool of the poor guy and he ended up just walking off and leaving the University. They drove him out. EB: How sad. LB: But they said somebody like that shouldn't be allowed to teach. EB: He was uninformed? LB: No, he didn't know anything. EB: That was practical experience versus academic theory. LB: Well, and he didn't even quote the books correctly. He said something one day and Frank got up and read from the book, the text, a segment that put that at rest. EB: He was quite an individualist and quite sure of himself, or? Explain his personality. LB: Well, on something like this… EB: He always seemed shy to me. 118 LB: Yes, in social gatherings he had this appearance, but actually I don't think he was so much. It was just his way of presenting himself. EB: He has a grandson, my son, that I think is a lot the way he was. Of course, I knew Dad when he was older, but James is nocturnal, he will stay up and work until two or three in the morning. He will come home after sixteen-hour days and go out to work on his vehicle in the quiet for another three or four hours in the middle of the night. And he loves horses. He can walk up to any horse and gentle it. He is very inventive. His room is wired--his bed is wired for sound, and dimmer switches, and stereo, and moving parts. And he is that way--he says he is shy, but he is just a little reticent in a large group. LB: They could both hold their own anytime they wanted to, right? EB: Yes. He just has a certain aura about him, somewhat of a loner but very gregarious at the same time. LB: Well, now, Frank always made the person he was talking to feel very special, not by flattery or anything like that, but by the way he approached it, I think it was this quality that endeared him to so many people. You know, lots of people are talking to you but actually building up themselves. He never took that sort of approach. EB: He never talked about himself, really. LB: No, and he was always so interested in what they were saying. This was an important part of his character. 119 EB: I thought his appearance was an important part, too. He focused those blue eyes on you and you knew you had his attention. LB: I think he had the deepest, most beautiful blue eyes I ever saw. EB: He really did. LB: They were just the color of the deepest part of the azure sky just before a storm. You know, it gets darker and bluer in between the clouds. That's the way his eyes were; they just matched that color perfectly. He had, we have described him physically in some degree, but he had tremendous muscles, he was extremely strong as a boy. Now when he was eighteen. . . I guess he was 21, maybe. I can't remember right now, but he rode into town with a group of cowboys. There was a big metal engine sitting right in the middle of the street out in front of the saloon. And he said: "Well, what is that thing doing out here in the street? Somebody is going to come along and get killed. “So he climbed off his horse, he picked up this thing, said it was heavy, and carried it over and set it on the curb by the lamppost. His friends who told me this story said the engine was stamped 750 pounds on the base of it. In those days, all the engines were stamped with the weight. EB: What was it doing there? LB: Well, they were having a contest. The saloonkeeper was doing this for publicity. And he had several men move it out into the street and set it there, and then he offered a reward to the fellow who could lift it, not carry it off the street, but lift it. Of course, it was dark and the saloon was closed when Frank moved it. 120 EB: I thought it was that he promised a prize to the man who with his horse could drag it. LB: That might be it. EB: Uncle Dody or someone told us that story. LB: It was quite a thing, anyway, it was to publicize his place. It never occurred to him that one man could lift it and carry it off the street. EB: I remember just before he died when he had been in bed with pneumonia and they brought a refrigerator to the house, a commercial unit for him to work on, and there were four guys out there trying to get it off the truck and couldn't get it off. He got upset at the situation and got out of bed and went out and lifted it off—he and one other of the men. And he had been in bed with pneumonia. LB: Now top your story. He had been suffering a six-week illness, he had pneumonia, and he received this phone call and Mr. Harmon just had to have a motor that-Frank had repaired, that he wanted right then and wanted Frank to bring it down. Instead of saying, "I can't do it," he asked me to come along with him and drive, but in the meantime he had loaded this thing himself onto his truck. When he got there he didn't have men to take it off the truck and take it downstairs. You had twelve steps twelve inches high that was the lift on those. You went just zoom down in that basement. And Frank picked up this motor and carried it downstairs. There, was not room on the stairs for two people. He carried it down himself and set it down on the rubber base that it sat on, and it was 350 pounds stamped on that thing. EB: He was very, very strong. 121 LB: Yes, but that was not something he should have done at that time. He could never admit that he had really been sick, and I think he diminished the extent of his own illness, this was the problem. And Ralph didn't know, I think he thought I was just a worrying wife, he did not know how ill Frank had been, though I had told him exactly, and later he was very penitent, you know, after Frank's death. He just really felt bad. But that didn't help Frank much. EB: Was he penitent enough to pay his bill? LB: Yes, he paid his bill. He paid everything. And also he helped me collect from some other people who wouldn't have paid, I think. He was very nice to us. I was very upset about that but I don't think it really had any part in Frank's death. EB: He was terminally ill. LB: You see, there were hundreds of those cancers throughout his abdominal cavity about the size of small hen’s eggs, about the size of a bantam egg. They had eaten the lining of the intestinal tract. There was not a six inch segment of his entire intestinal tract. There was a space that was clear—you could look into the intestine and all that was left was the outer membrane. Dr. French, when he performed surgery, planned to take intestine and build another stomach because the stomach was destroyed by his cancer, too. Then when they opened him and they found out there was nothing left to build with, they decided not to cut the cancer out but to leave it and sew him up and let him have the time that he could halved. McCornack came out of the operating room, told me that I must come in with him, had me scrub and put on mask and gown very quickly. He 122 wanted me to see the situation. And here was this huge cancer, it was very solid material, it was the material of the stomach wall that had grown on top of the stomach. It looked like the seed burr of a Texas moon lily, that's a Jimson weed, you know how they are pronged, and it had all those prongs. And those were the things that were so deceptive in the way he felt, you know. When he lifted something heavy, that, would shift the cancer over so the prongs would hit up against the heart and interfere with it. That's why Frank thought he had heart trouble. And it was not until after the pneumonia weakened all of the muscular tissue around this area that anybody suspected cancer. I am sure Dr. Findley did, and Dr. Brazier did, too. When they made that last, final examination I think Dr. Findley you see, called Dr. Brazie in and both of them examined him and told him he was to get immediately to Boulder City to a good hospital. And so I drove him up, and he went into the doctor's office and they immediately sent him over to the Rose De Lima Hospital. Dr. French performed the surgery. They decided it couldn't be bothered. They just sewed him up. EB: What was the technical name for the type of cancer he had? LB: They just called it "stomach cancer." They didn't enlarge on it as far as I was concerned. EB: But it had invaded his intestines and even up into his lungs, hadn't it? LB: No, it had not disturbed, the fluid in the lungs was because of the illness. EB: Leading to heart failure? 123 LB: Yes. Caused by the cancer but not cancerous. It was only in the abdominal cavity. It was something we could not handle. And then the doctor told me I had to, I must tell Frank the situation. He said: "Do you think he would want to know?" and I said: "He sure would." Then he said: "You'd better tell him right away," and I said: "Doctor, I think that's your job." He didn't want to, it really bothered him to tell Frank, but I really felt that that was one thing he should do. EB: Was Dr. French someone you had known before? LB: Only briefly. He was in the office visiting with Dr. McCornack and I knew him as a person but never as a doctor. He specialized in cancer and surgery. EB: And Dr. McCornack assisted him? LB: Yes. Dr. McCornack. Frank loved that man so much and trusted him. He was so kind and considerate. EB: Had you first met him with Georgie's problems, or had you known him before? LB: Frank went to him first. I don't recall, it was something, he got himself hurt somewhere working on a machine, no doubt. He went to him and he knew him and he came back and told me what a fine fellow he was. They used to meet and spend hours visiting after office hours, you know. Dr. would call Frank and say: "Soon as that store closes, come on up. I've got something I want to tell you." EB: This was when you were living in Boulder City. 124 LB: We lived in Boulder City. And so Frank would maybe send someone down to tell me he wouldn't be home for a while. He was going to visit with Doc. EB: He spent a lot of time with DeWitt, too, I remember. LB: Yes. They were in the Masonic Lodge together. They were both 32nd Degree Masons. EB: Did Daddy attend these meetings? LB: When he was in Boulder City he attended always, but in Kingman just sometimes. EB: One thing I remember about Masons was that he was being honored for 25 years or 32 years or something, anyway, they were honoring him and it was a banquet in his honor and he didn't go to the banquet. LB: Yes, that was because… EB: He got cold feet and wouldn't go. LB: No, it was mainly because of the people in charge. Somebody offended him. I don't know what it was or anything about that. EB: Oh, I thought he had just developed a case of stage fright and didn't go. LB: No. Though he didn't like that kind of socialization. EB: Talk a little about his business in Kingman, where it was located and the young kids that he worked with. 125 LB: His shop was just behind the Penney's store. It was a little solid cement building. It had been built for a storage for Penney's, but they weren't using it excepting to chuck things in that didn't amount to anything, and he talked them into renting or leasing it to him. He established his shop there. It was not very large. EB: Twenty by forty? LB: No, it was not that big. But we could go by and measure it sometime if you want to. EB: Is it still there? LB: Yes. He felt those walls would protect anybody else if he should make an error and put the wrong gases together and explode everything. Incidentally, there was an explosion, somebody in there helping and mistook one acid for another and blew a hole in the roof one time. EB: Was anyone hurt? LB: No. The guy poured those together and saw the reaction in the glass and ran, and he had just gotten around the corner of that metal door when the thing blew. It blew a pretty good-sized hole in the roof. EB: Dear me. Now was that for refrigeration or was he experimenting? LB: Yes. No, it was for refrigeration. Of course, he was always experimenting. Mother ever interfered with that. He didn't have to have a shop to do that. He was out in the yard one time and I heard this awful explosion. He had put some stuff together that was 126 supposed, according to the book, to work, but he got his proportions wrong. It didn't give proportions and he underestimated. He had to know, well he knew when he was through. He had a little bit of a burn that time. EB: I remember that burn on his arm, the burn from wrist to the elbow. LB: That was an ammonia gas burn. There was a sack of blister on there. EB: Yes, it was horrid. I went into Dr. Brazie before I married and he was talking about Daddy and about him walking across to the doctor's office and saying: "Hey, Doc, I've got a little bit of a burn here." LB: "Is there anything I can do about it?" he said. EB: "It kind of hurts. I've got a little bit of a burn here. Could you do something about this?" LB: He kept life interesting, all right. Well, the shop was equipped with a bench that was wooden topped. It was metal reinforced, the wood was four inches thick and I think they were 12 x 4's, but I'm not real sure. But, anyway, wherever there was a seam that was reinforced underneath with metal, a metal strip. He did all sorts of… I think there were railroad ties involved in the support of various. . . He always used railroad ties if he possibly could. And then he had those great tanks of various types of gases and all these chemicals off to the side. That was one reason he wanted such a secure building. The he put the great metal doors on. Those were steel and they were 3/8th of an inch thick. EB: I know Mary and I together couldn't move one. 127 LB: They were so heavy. He got those locked and it really took a man to open them. He had, of course, usually a dozen refrigeration units in there and we will have to measure how big it was. I am curious now and will have to find out. He had a truck, actually it was an International Harvester pickup, 3/4 ton, that he drove and sometimes the refrigeration units he brought in to fix were from rather far places. He went up to Peach Springs, he went up to Hackberry, of course, to help Bob Kaiser, he went to Davis Dam and Bullhead, and we went south to Wickieup. He went out to the Old Sailor's Place. Mr. Bell owned that station out there, but it was still the Old Sailor's place as far as I am concerned. EB: Where is that located? LB: Well, it is on the road between the Boulder Dam and Kingman. EB: Is that the one where Santa Claus Station is? LB: No, it is farther out this way (toward Las Vegas). We always spoke of it as the "Old Sailor's Place." EB: He was the one who charged you a nickel for a glass of water. LB: He charged a quarter. EB: A quarter! 128 LB: When your dad found out about that, he sure roasted him. The Sailor began telling him how much it cost to get that water down there, and Frank said: "Well, raise the price of your soft drinks, then. Give people a drink of water." EB: Back to our subject. Then Dad would go down to work around noon and then work half the night? LB: Well, he would go out to see people who had called. I always had a special tablet there to receive his calls. He would rip out the page and take it with him, and usually the page was full. Everybody had problems, and they all liked him to do their work. And sometimes he would work for hours and hours on something and because of the financial situation in the household he'd probably give them something when he left and never send them a bill. One little lady, after Frank's death, came and gave me a check. It was for $90.00. She said: "That man fixed my refrigerator and I have no idea what to pay him for his labor. If you will tell me, I will pay that, but he wouldn't let me pay my bill because he thought I was too poor. I am never too poor to pay my bills. “She was a cute little lady. But Frank had lots and lots of good deeds to his credit. EB: Yes, he did (August 9, 1983 Part I) EB: During the interview held with Letha in July, 1983, she traced her early years in Arlington, Arizona, for us. The interview terminated during a discussion of a flood that 129 occurred in Arlington when she was twelve. Mother, when the floodwaters receded and you found your home was full of mud, where did the family go? LB: We moved up to the Robert’s Place. We stayed up there for quite some time. The following summer, mother went to Avondale to visit our dear friend, Grandma Humphries that was Dorothy Anderson’s mother. She had taken the two younger children and the rest of us were staying with Ada and George. They had moved into the house that we vacated when the river flooded. They had been living at the headwaters of the canal and, their house was damaged in the flood. The one we had vacated was not damaged excepting to be under water and was filled with mud and it took a real cleaning job to get it habitable again, but it was still intact. Theirs had been really damaged. The roof was damaged and the floors. They decided to move down into the house we had been in. EB: What happened while your mother was visiting Grandma Humphries? LB: When summer came, mother went to visit Grandma Humphries. Dorothy was five and Virginia was two. Dorothy was sent up to the milk house to get Fred, the older son, to come to dinner. He had at times allowed her to put her hands on the crank and help him turn the crank to separate the cream. But he didn’t see her there, and when she reached for it, instead of her hand hitting the handle of the crank, her hand went beyond and into the spokes of the turning wheel. He dropped the bucket of cream that he had and grabbed her hand and began to turn her with the wheel to keep it from tearing her arm off, and he reached with his other hand and grabbed a crowbar that was there and 130 stuck it into the separator wheel and broke all of the spokes out to free her. Her arm was terribly damaged. She had innumerable breaks. There were eight fractures of her arm above the elbow, between the elbow and the shoulder. And then below the elbow, the arm was practically pulverized. The bones were just little shards and for several months worked out of the flesh to be taken out with tweezers. It was a dreadful thing. Of course, she was rushed to the hospital in Phoenix and she was there for three months before she was allowed to come home. During this time we remained at Ada’s place. This was before Rawlin was born. We, I guess were quite welcome, because as I recall, and perhaps you don’t remember exactly when you are that age, but I think we did all the housework. I remember doing all of the scrubbing; scrubbing on my hands and knees with a scrub brush and her telling me I had to go back and scour that spot some more, though it looked quite clean to me. I had reached the point where I had only one dress while I was there, and instead of making me another or doing something about it, I was just given one of her old dresses to wear when I did what we called dirty work, such as scrubbing. And one day, Aunt Grace and Uncle Billy and their family came to visit and I was wearing the one dress I had and it was just as dirty as it could be. I absolutely could not be seen in that dirty dress. That had been one of my pet aversions all my life: to be dirty, I just could not abide. I hid when they came but Aunt Grace asked to see me. Now, we had been at her house when Jack, my first brother was born and she did love me, I know that, but I could not stand to think of her seeing me dirty and I didn’t have anything else that I could put on, and so Adam came into the house and found me where I was trying to hide and told me that I had to go out and see Aunt Grace. So I went out at her insistence, actually with her pulling on my arm. I could see 131 Aunt Grace with the compassion on her face. I could also see her daughter, Katherine, who was my age, with the look of disgust on her face that anybody would be so dirty. And I was quite in sympathy with her, really, but oh, I felt terrible. This was the thing I remember most about living there. I know that when they started to go, Aunt Grace left two of Katherine’s dresses for me. We were the same age. She was a little bigger than I but the dresses were wonderful. But Katherine didn’t want to give me the dresses and she just made a big fuss about it and her father tried to get mother to take the dresses away, from me and take them with her, but this was once when she stood up against Katherine and Uncle Billy both to do what she thought was right. Well, I felt bad at having Katherine’s dresses when she didn’t want to part with them, but I was grateful to have them because I could be clean. When we were there on the Bob Robert’s place, they started building Gillespie Dam. As I have stated before my father never asked for a job, he didn’t think that was his role. He would work for people “to help them out,” or if they really wanted him, but that was the only way that he ever accepted a job. Well, they learned down there that he had some knowledge that they might use to advantage and so the man who was in charge of construction came to our house one evening. He knocked on the door and was invited in, and when dad returned from the store where he and my mother had gone, the man was waiting. He told my dad that they had boiler problems and he had some friend who had told him dad had experience with boilers. Dad said yes, he had been around them when he was working for the railroad, so the fellow wanted him to come down and see if he could help them get that thing straightened out. They had this man hired, but he obviously didn’t know the job too well and they were really in a bind. So dad went down and in a short time had the boilers 132 going and it was because something had been put in backwards and one valve was faulty, and when he got those things straightened out everything worked fine. Then he was invited to stay and supervise all of this type of work. He stayed until the dam was completed and while he was there he made some good friends among the people who were imported as experts on certain jobs, including the fellow who had tried to install the boilers. The fellow stayed and worked under my dad and when he left he was a very good boiler man. But he was always very differential to dad and he was really a nice guy. There was another man who worked there who admired my dad and employed him a great deal. He had moved from Ohio to Arizona because of the illness of his wife, she had tuberculosis, and she came too late. She was not alive very long after she got there, and so their children were grown and he was by himself. He had an old grand piano, it was one of the rectangular pianos, seven feet long and four feet wide, and had beautiful parquet legs. Those pieces in those legs were never in excess of an inch in diameter or length. They had made these huge, ornate legs, there were five, on the piano at each corner with one in the center that had the pedals for controlling your music. The piano keys were solid ivory, and it was a magnificent thing. Of course, it was out of tune by the time I saw it. The man had met me and we had visited. I had gone down with dad one day and we had spent a lot of time visiting, and I had expressed a wish to have a piano and said I wanted to learn to play one and I loved music. So he and I sang some songs together, we had a delightful time. When he was ready to leave and go back to Ohio, he told my dad that he had one thing that he would like dad to do, and dad said, “Sure, anything. “He said, “I would like you to take this piano home to your girl. I think she will really treasure it as much as I would if I kept it and I don’t have 133 Winnie with me any longer to play the piano. I think I’d be happier if I didn’t have it around.” So I was the recipient of a beautiful piano. It had a marvelous tone, and though some of the strings were a bit too old and needed replacement because you couldn’t stretch them tight enough to tune them properly, happened. My dad had a rather unique vocabulary when things didn’t go right, and usually mother would hurry the children inside or to some other vicinity so that we wouldn’t become acquainted with some of the language. But Virginia was rather a precocious little girl when it came to language. She had developed a pretty definite ability to mimic, too. One morning, dad stopped at the door and she said, “Marie, look here.” Virginia was out, she had gotten out of bed, it was summer, and evidently she had started to dress because she no longer had her nightgown on. She was wearing absolutely nothing and she was out by the front of the Ford, it was a Model T, I suppose you call it a pickup as it had a flatbed on the back, and she had the crank and she would turn the crank and she’d use a couple of words, and then she’d turn the crank again and nothing would happen, of course. She again would repeat her vocabulary. Finally she kicked the tire and she picked up a board that was lying there beside the car and she whammed the hood of the car and went into the house, using practically every word that dad might have used himself. It really was a circus but mother was faced with a problem. How to direct her out of this without making her feel wrong about it, was the problem. When dad went out to crank the car after that, he was very circumspect in his behavior. If the car didn’t start, he would stop and find out why and crank it then, but he never exposed the baby to that kind of language again. We had Virginia’s first birthday party when we were there. We set her up on the table. Now we had a little boy, a neighbor, who was four days younger than Virginia, 134 and so his brother Sam, who was my age, and I were always complaining our brother and sister with the other. When one would learn something new immediately we would rush to report it. Well, Gale was walking, Gale had teeth, Gale had long curly hair. He was just running in circles and Virginia wasn’t even standing up. I don’t know whether I told you, but she was called a “Blue Baby,” when she was born. EB: Yes, I had been told that. Dad solved that problem when he tuned the piano for me. He simply tuned it two notes below where it should be and it worked out very well. He didn’t have a piano turner’s kit but he made some tools to use to do the job. We enjoyed that piano very much. We had it there on the Bob Robert’s place for quite a long while before we left there. Dorothy was in the hospital for three months and then she was brought home because there was an epidemic of black smallpox in Phoenix and Dad was afraid to keep her in Phoenix any longer. She was pampered very thoroughly while she was in the hospital. Of course, it was necessary. She was extremely damaged emotionally by the accident. It was a dreadful thing, the bone coming through her hand and through her arm, and when her arm finally healed, because of the amount of damage done in one of the main bones down near the wrist, it was shorter on the inside than on the outside, making her hand always come toward her body and then the scars on top of her hand. She was very self-conscious about it. She always tried to hide that hand and keep it out of view and she became so expert at that lots of people would know her for ages before they would ever notice that her arm was crooked or that there was anything wrong. EB: The handicap was not at all noticeable. 135 LB: I know one woman knew her for two years and she was in that woman’s home probably every other day during that period before she said: “Dorothy, what’s the matter with your arm?” And she took hold of it and looked at it, and she said: “Look at those scars, what made those? “So Dorothy blushed and refused to talk about it and said she had to go, so the woman turned to me and she said: “What did I say wrong?” and I explained about the accident and about how self-conscious Dorothy was about being a cripple. She would do all sorts of things to make it pleasant for her and diminish the injury. While we were there and dad was working at the dam we had some very interesting and entertaining things that text missing LB: She had problems with her heart valves, they didn’t function properly and so she was slow in all of her motor development, but when it came to mental development, she was really out front. I had been reporting about how she could talk and how she could do these things. We went to visit Mrs. Richardson, that was the mother of this little boy, Gale, and she spread a quilt down on the floor and Virginia was put right in the middle of, and sat there playing with whatever was given to her, because she never tried to go anywhere or get anything on her own. She was sitting there and Mrs. Richardson had gone in the kitchen to get some sandwiches and some cookies, and as she returned, Virginia looked up at her, frowning, and she said: “Richardson, come get your kid. “Virginia was ten months old at that time. Now, Mrs. Richardson stopped and actually spilled some of the punch on her nice clean floor. She looked in consternation and she said: “Who said that?” Baby Virginia said: “I did,” and Mrs. Richardson said: “Well, what did you say? “Come get your kid,” replied Virginia. Gale had been running around and 136 around teasing her, pulling her hair, pushing at her, and things like this, and she had enough of it. She wanted to be freed of this problem. This was a sample of the kind of thing she was capable of when it came to vocabulary. On her birthday, we set her on the table with her cake with one candle and she was the entertainment for the day. She recited twenty-three nursery rhymes for us and didn’t need any prompting on any of them. She knew practically every nursery rhyme in the Mother Goose book and a few extras. I have tried to remember which nursery rhymes she used for Virginia. I haven’t done a very good job, but I think Virginia has a list that we started of the ones that I know positively were in her repertoire. I wish we had a tape recording of that because she was so cute, so sweet. Gale was there at the party and he was keeling somersaults and doing all sorts of things and he was only just a year old. But he didn’t say on word. He didn’t say “Mama,” he didn’t say “Daddy,” he didn’t say anything, but he sure did a lot of body language. We agreed that we both had very cute and very smart brother and sister. When Virginia was three, she went to mother one morning very early. She climbed in bed with mother and dad and she said: “Mama, I want you to get me a baby.” And mother said: “What kind of baby do you want? She said: “I want a baby sister. “Mother said: “well, we’ll see what we can do about that. And so Virginia came to all of us and told us that Mother was going to have a baby sister for her. So we went to mother to find out if that was the truth and mother said yes, it would probably be in April, and sure enough when April came so did our new baby. We were still on the Bob Robert’s place and I went through the field to Aunt Margaret Fitzpatrick’s and told her that mother needed her. She didn’t stop for anything, she just ran and got over there as fast as she could. They were a mile from our house through the field. You could run up 137 the ditch when it was dry, and it was a nice, easy place to travel and this happened to be one of those times when there was no water in the ditch. Then I went on down to Aunt Jesse Anderson’s which was a half-mile beyond, and told her that mother needed her now. She said: “Well, I’m sorry, I just can’t go right now. Drace hasn’t had his breakfast and the children aren’t dressed yet.” Now, her children, Perry was a year younger than I and Thelma was Gordon’s age that was three years younger. Vernon was a year younger than that, and I don’t understand why those older children couldn’t have dressed the younger ones and why Drace couldn’t have cooked his own breakfast. But then, that’s because I don’t have the Perry mentality, I guess. Anyhow, it was much later when she decided that she could leave her family and come over for a little while, but even then she could stay because she had to take care of her family. I was wishing I could think of somebody else to go to for help assist Aunt Margaret, because I knew she didn’t want to go. I had counted on riding back with Uncle Drace when he took Aunt Jesse over, but since they weren’t going I had to walk back myself. Since I had to run the mile and a half it took to get there, I was pretty tired and would have enjoyed a ride very, very much, but I made it on back and when I got back I helped get the younger children away. We all went over to Aunt Margaret’s and Aunt Dorothy Anderson picked up Virginia and took her home with her. Dorothy I think went with Ada, no, Jack and Gordon went with Ada, and Dorothy, I believe she went with Aunt Dorothy and I stayed with Estle over at Fitzpatrick’s. It was several hours before we were called home, and then we went in and saw this darling baby and she had been named Jesse Margaret for the two ladies in attendance at her birth. The doctor got there before the baby was born, although mother had been having problems for several hours before he could make it 138 down. He had Tom come all the way from Buckeye, which was 25 miles, and we were so glad that he made it. When she (Margie) was little she was such a delight, she was a darling little girl. She didn’t develop vocabulary and things like that the way Virginia had. She was like Gale, extremely active and practically gifted in anything she wanted to do, and so she learned to dance by the time she was eighteen months old. She was trying to do the Charleston, and that was so cute, and by the time she was three she was doing a good job of it. In fact, by the time we were in Wickenburg and she and Virginia one day decided they wanted some money and so they went down where the bridge crossed the river. Virginia took her guitar and she was playing the guitar, and Margaret was singing, in fact, they sang some duets in parts, and Margie danced the Charleston, and they had quite a lot of money by the time they got through with that performance. People evidently were in stitches about the pair of them. One was six, the other was three. Virginia and Margie came home so elated about this money, and dad frowned like a thundercloud and said they had to take it and give it back, that he would not have daughters of his dancing on the street for money. So they went back down there, but, of course, the crowd had disappeared and they couldn’t find anybody to take their money and finally one lady said: “You take me to your dad,” so she came home with the children and she said: “Whatever do you mean trying to give back this money? They earned every penny of it. That was the cutest thing I’ve ever saw.” I think the girls remember this show. We stayed down there for some time. I don’t know how old Margie was when we moved from there. EB: From the Bob Robert’s place? 139 LB: Yes. We moved to the Hill Ranch because Mr. Anderson, Laurids Anderson, was having problems with his farm machinery. He didn’t have anybody on the place who knew how to take care of it, so he came and asked my dad if he would take a place on the ranch with him to keep up the machinery. That was his job, but dad in very short order had the machinery all in operation and then, of course, he was doing ninety other things the way he always did, and we were there until we had to leave the valley. Mother, since the birth of Dorothy when I was six years old, had been having a series of problems. I think they had their origin in the difficulties mother had when I was born, but by the time Dorothy came along, she was having kidney stones. It always involved the endocrine system and the parathyroid was obviously involved. The doctor at this point told us that mother would not survive if we remained in the valley. He thought the water there was responsible for a lot of her problems. So dad almost immediately, within a short time, as soon as mother was able to travel at all, took a job with the highway department and was sent up to People’s Valley, which would follow the doctor’s orders to get her into the cool and to get her where there was a source of good water. EB: Where is People’s Valley? LB: This was a valley up above the Congress Junction area, up Yarnell Hill. EB: So it was up in the mountains, almost? LB: Yes, it was in the mountains up toward Prescott. It was a very beautiful valley and we were there for approximately six months, I guess. That is the family was there for six months. As soon as school started, I was sent down to Wickenburg to live with the 140 Weavers. He was the principal of the school and I helped with their baby to pay my board and room. I stayed there until the family moved back down to Wickenburg after the construction job was finished in People’s Valley. It was an idyllic situation during the summertime. We had a marvelous time there. We had two large tent houses, these were constructed of screen and canvas. You could raise the sides of canvas and have a screened room, a very nice big one. And we had two of them. We had one for cooking and eating and mother and dad had a bed in there. And then there was the other nice one which we partitioned and it had two sleeping areas there for the boys and one for the girls. We explored the country and it was all very beautiful and cool and lovely. We found all sorts of secret places. I had one in particular. It was a cave up about ten or twelve feet above the floor of the canyon and it was just hidden completely by a grapevine. I had discovered it when I decided to come down that grapevine to the, into the canyon rather than go around where we usually entered. And on the way down I found this little cave which was just an ideal spot to sit and read without disturbance. And for quite some time I was the only one who knew about it. Then jack was wondering where I disappeared to, so he slipped along Indian style and watched me. EB: Found your hideaway. Did your mother’s health improve there? LB: Mothers health did improve a great deal. One doctor later suggested that she had cleared her body of kidney stones, during that period of torture that it may have had more influence than the change of scenery. At any rate, she did improve a great deal there. We stayed there until the job was finished and then we, the family, moved down to Congress Junction to a service station and I was in Wickenburg and then in a very 141 short time they moved down to Wickenburg too. We had a large house, it was an adobe structure down by the river in a cottonwood grove and it was one of the houses I loved most in which we ever lived. It had six very large rooms and then it had something, well, perhaps a hall would be the best thing to call it but it was twelve feet wide, and you could open the doors, great oak doors, at each end and let the wind blow through the house. It was just so cool and lovely. The walls of the building were fourteen inches thick, it was adobe brick. EB: Who had built it? LB: It had been there for a long time. No one had lived in it for quite some time because they said it was filled with scorpions, and centipedes, and tarantulas. Everything they could think of was evidently in that house. So Dad closed it and fumigated it thoroughly with formaldehyde and that killed everything that was in there. Then he aired it for quite some time and we all moved in. EB: Did you rent it? LB: I can’t answer that, I really don’t know, but I think that’s probably what we did. I can’t remember any transactions of ownership. EB: I had no idea until I started interviewing all of you that the family had moved so many, many times. LB: Well, it seems like there were an awfully lot of moves, that’s true! 142 EB: At least a lot of homes, sometimes in the same area, but quite a lot of changes. LB: Sometimes to the same house. The one on the Hill Ranch we moved to from the Robert’s Place was the one that had been the Biddlecome house. Instead of leaving it down there, dad moved it up to a place where it was more accessible for his work taking care of machinery. EB: It was a frame house? LB: It was wood, a wood house and well built. It stood the move very well, without any damage. I think they used some big hayracks to move it. But it was the same house that we had lived in before. EB: Another thing I noticed is that while you had lots of people living with your family over the years, you girls, also, were quite often by circumstance forced to live somewhere else to go to school. LB: Well, yes, Virginia was later. EB: And you and Margie. Margie said she stayed with you when she was in Kindergarten, too. LB: Well, I was in college and she stayed with me. You see, mother was in Oregon to help dad. He was ill at that time. He had a carbuncle. He had a mosquito bite, again he was going up on a mining thing. 143 EB: Yes, Virginia described that. She said he was very ill. Your parents were forced to be separated quite a few times, weren’t they? LB: Well, when the, anytime fathers off prospecting and you have a house full of children, someone has to stay home and mind the shop. But he didn’t stay long periods of time like grandpa did. EB: He would be gone three months? LB: No, not usually. Now on this particular trip when I was seventeen, I was in college, he had taken the boys with him and mother had the girls and we were staying in Tempe, had a lovely place and were just living it up and then we got word that he was extremely ill and not expected to live and mother was to come immediately. He was in The Dells, Oregon. And so mother boarded the train that evening, things were organized by telephone text unclear Dorothy and Virginia, and Ethel took Margie, I think that’s the way it was. Clear that with the girls, they all know. And I had to find another place to hide. The lady who had rented to us needed to text unclear from that property so I couldn’t stay at the text unclear , and for a little time I stayed with her and helped her. She didn’t need help any more than anything, but she did this for me, and then the Faulkner’s came and invited me to come and stay with them. They said that they owed my dad and he had owed him for years, and they would love to be able to do something for my dad. EB: Did they say what he had done for them? 144 LB: Yes, he had sold them a bunch of farm machinery when we had to leave the Deming Place, and that was when I was nine and he I was seventeen. They were living two miles from the college where I was attending and there was only one handicap. They didn’t have a car so they could take me to school. But it was only two miles and so I told them it was no problem, I could walk. And so I went out there and stayed with them and they treated me so beautifully, they were just wonderful to me. They were a couple without children of their own and they seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. They said they had always wanted a daughter and they just made everything so comfortable. But he had a mowing machine and he named off a great list of things that he had, and he felt that he was deeply indebted, he was still using some of the same machinery there on this farm where he was. EB: So you were at school. LB: I attended college. So I lived out there in the country and I found that if I walked fast I could make it to school in just a little bit over twenty minutes, and usually I allowed myself a good deal more time because I liked to ally along the way and look at the birds and the butterflies and all the things I had the opportunity to see. Also, I could take another route that was extremely interesting because of the different things they had on this particular place. It was sort of a refuge for birds and things of that kind and if I walked through there, which they told me I could, I could enjoy so many lovely things I could not ordinarily see. EB: Now, were you in elementary education? 145 LB: Yes, I planned to teach one of the grades, what I landed in. While I was in school to practice teaching, I taught everything from first through ninth grade at various times supervised teaching, except for sixth grade, I didn’t ever teach that. And when I went to school, you know, when it came to sixth grade they let me stay there a week and then put me in seventh grade. That was the first time Mr. Newkirk taught at our school. He decided that… EB: You should be promoted? LB: Well, I had three boys in my class and they just weren’t really thirsting after learning. Don Ritter was excited about math and he could add and subtract and all of those things. His dad was a storekeeper. This was all he cared about. He didn’t care about the rest of the education Text unclear Sam Richardson, he was the one, you know who had the little brother and I had taught Sam how to read. He was quite content to go along at a little slower pace, didn’t want to be shoved or pushed. And Homer Scribner was the other one and he was a little guy who just really didn’t quite get it sometimes, and he was also the one who in first grade had worked and worked. He was going to read something perfectly and so he came in and told me I was to tell the teacher that he was to read this particular story. It was the little poem “Old Mother Hubbard.” So he got up to read it, had his book upside down, stood in front of us and he was reading away: “She went to the cupboard to get her poor dong a bone and when she got there a bear was in the text unclear the poor dog didn’t get none.” Text unclear him under her wing and taught him to read text unclear and he was just timid and afraid, and text unclear get it. 146 EB: Text unclear this period when you were in college. Was text unclear met this boy that you were engaged to text unclear . LB: Text unclear meet him that year, though. I met text unclear was a Mormon boy, one I thought text unclear . He was the one who got me attending LDS service and he travelled with the LDS kids, I liked them text unclear the kinds of things that I enjoyed. I loved to text unclear and they did, too. We had lots of fun. EB: What was his name? LB: His name was Eddie Greenley. He gave me a huge diamond that was very pretty, that belonged to his grandmother and she gave it to him to give to me. EB: I see. And you were going to marry, then, the next year? LB: Well, we hadn’t gotten- we had done a great deal of talking between ourselves but we had not talked with our parents yet- really gotten down to good planning. He was on a football team and in a game, a rib was broken that punctured a lung, causing pneumonia and causing incidents, eventually caused his death. EB: Sad. And I had that totally wrong. I thought he had gotten pneumonia in a snowstorm. LB: No, there is no snow down there to get pneumonia in. EB: I wondered how he managed that. I thought he must have played in Flagstaff. LB: No. He had a punctured lung and nobody expected his death, you know, it was rather unexpected. But I could never stand football after that. I just still don’t enjoy it. 147 EB: Are there other things you’d like to talk about, about college? LB: Yes, there are lots of interesting things there. Dr. Matthews, who was president of the college while I was there, was a friend of my Grandfather Deming’s. Grandpa would get stuck on some translation or something. You see, he read Greek and Hebrew and he did lots of research to find biblical differences in different translations. He would go back to the original, if possible, and try to find out text unclear the differences, you see. EB: Did he do text unclear writing? LB: Yes, he did, but that went into the Perry hands and I never saw or heard of it afterwards. EB: You ought to contact them and see if you can get it. LB: I have contacted everybody and they don’t even know anything about it. But he did have, you see he was quite a bit older, after Amelia’s death it was left with Aunt Minnie and then Amelia remarried and there was a trunk there and I think the kids raided it and some stuff doesn’t look important to kids. EB: That’s too bad. LB: Yes, it is. But I’m so sad that I hadn’t made some attempt to learn to read Hebrew and Greek and done a little studying, but of course, I was only nine and when we were separated so I probably wouldn’t have made too much headway, anyway. EB: How did he learn to read Hebrew and Greek? 148 LB: Most of his education was self-education, but he had a lot of friends like Dr. Matthews, people learning and ability. EB: I guess being ill he spent quite a bit of time in study. LB: Yes, this was all he could do a lot of the time. EB: You started to talk about Dr. Matthews. LB: I got a call from Dr. Matthews, I think it came by messenger, to visit him at his home. I went over, some of the students urged me not to, and they thought I was pretty brash to go. I still don’t think so because he had invited me. He wanted to discuss who I was to be sure I was who he thought I was. It was early in the year, so when he said he realized who I was he wanted to talk with me. He said: “I think I have some things you’d like to see,” and he invited me back for another visit. I met his wife and we visited. She was a sweet, plump, little lady. I enjoyed my visit tremendously. When I went back, he was at his desk in his study, and he asked if I would like to see some records. He said: “These records are the records of your mother.” EB: Oh yes, I think you spoke on the other tape about the tests your mother took. LB: Maybe I did. He told me these were the highest scores ever scored on these tests that she took. EB: Oh, so he had known both your mother and your grandfather. 149 LB: He knew Grandpa Deming and he knew mother through this record. And later, I think he visited our home one time, but I don’t really clearly remember that. EB: Now, did any of your family attend Tempe other than you? LB: I think not. Mother was just there for a day to take the test. EB: Did either Margie or Virginia attend college? LB: No. Margie married Paul instead of graduating from high school. And this is something she never divulges to anybody. EB: Now you’re putting it in the archives. LB: That’s all right. She earned her diploma and she has been taking college courses. EB: She did earn her diploma then? LB: Yes. But this has been since she married Newel. EB: Well, she is a very bright lady. LB: Yes, she is, but she thought she wasn’t. She had a little friend who had a difficult time with education, Louise Jago, and she never wanted to make a grade better than Louise made because it made Louise feel bad. EB: Oh. 150 LB: This was the early history of her education and I think this was where she racked up these lousy grades and then she got to feeling that those grades indicated her ability, which they did not. EB: While we are on that subject, describe Margie and Virginia for me. Tell me about your little sisters. LB: At what age? EB: Whatever age you want. LB: Well, I think I have already told you about them when they were tiny. Margie was always vivacious, bubbly, fun. She loved people and she loved the mixing. Virginia did too, but she had a different approach to things. She was always analyzing things and people, but she was loads of fun. Now, I didn’t know the girls too well after I married, I didn’t have too much contact with them, and even before that when I was busy. Well, I had Dorothy at college with me. She was thirteen and I was nineteen. It was a very interesting situation. She was having a hard time in school, mainly because she wouldn’t pay any attention to school, mainly because she wouldn’t pay attention to school and she didn’t want to bother with anything that taxed her in the least. And she wanted to have a good time, and she had lots of friends. She could gather friends just like bees gather honey. The boys flocked around her. She was really cute, good looking, she had naturally curly hair and beautiful brown eyes. And she loved to roller skate so there were a large number of kids always at the apartment to go roller skating 151 every evening after school. If she didn’t have her homework done I was there to say she couldn’t go until she finished and so she got in and learned a lot that year. EB: So she could roller skate. LB: If it paid in the coin she wanted, why she could do anything she needed to do. EB: Was her personality always like that? She was always quite determined and a little bit headstrong, wasn’t she? LB: Until she was injured, she had a happy, blithe spirit as a baby, and she was a beautiful baby, a beautiful little girl. Her hair was the color of gold. When she was five, mother was combing her hair, she was sitting in a sunbeam, and mother’s wedding ring was an 18-karat gold band, and that band was almost indistinguishable from the hair because the hair was just like gold. And she had rosy cheeks and lips and she was always petite, and everybody loved her and she loved everybody. After the injury, she was extremely nervous and high-strung, and for many years had very high periods of feeling good and then she was just in the depths. She had extremes of mood, and the doctor told me that is a natural things because of what she had been through. EB: Now, the periods when she was in the hospital, was she there alone? LB: No, mother stayed with her the whole time while she was there the first time. Now, her arm was on a pillow text unclear and no effort was made to set bones on or in it. After it had healed and when they thought she could stand the... 152 EB: Trauma of it? LB: Yes. They began breaking and setting bones. They would separate them. Some of them did not heal. Some of them did knit together and had to be separated. One they had to separate surgically because the bone had slid up side by side and then grown together. EB: It was a miraculous she kept the arm at all. LB: It was. As I told you once before, it was extremely expensive because of the traumatic times, and, of course, we did not have the kind of income that we needed at that time. And properties were disappearing because they had to be sold to pay the expenses and to support the family. And, of course, dad’s illness was part of the expense. EB: Yes. We are sort of skipping around but I am afraid we will run out of time and there were several things I wanted to ask you. When you were there at college you were nearly through, weren’t you, with your degree, and then you became ill or something? LB: Well, I got my two-year certificate for teaching but I did not feel it was fair to a classroom to contract to teach it if you knew you were going to be out three days of five. You know, I had this tremendous allergy that was causing all this problem and it had not diminished. It was very, very bad, and so I decided that I would go on for another year of study. What I was trying to do was to find a way out of my physical condition and I felt school was the best place for me, and so did the family. It was a very rough assignment, and I did not realize at the time just how rough it was because my money came through, 153 you know, nobody ever gave me the least hint how much it was costing the family in deprivation to do that. EB: I thought that you had supported yourself. LB: I did to some extent part of the time. No, as an adult I did, but at that time I did not. I was not able to. EB: So your dad was sending you the money for college but you were paying for your board and room staying with these families. LB: No, the ones I described, no, I was not. But later years, you know. I was ill so much that I couldn’t hold a job. I went into one rooming house, the lady had made a request at the college for somebody who was diligent and stable and all these things, and immediately they picked me to send over. She had a daughter who was much bigger, much heavier, much healthier, than I, and that girl didn’t turn a hand to do anything. In fact, she tried to impose anything that she could that was really her normal activity on me. I as there for a while, and finally because extremely ill, was in the infirmary, and questions were asked and I answered truthfully and they cut her off their list providing help for her, because she so abused me. EB: Now didn’t you have to drop out just before you graduated? LB: It was for a three-year certificate I was heading at that point, and it, I missed the last six weeks of the semester, but I was permitted to go back and take the tests and make them up. Now, on testing I could always do an excellent job, and my problems with 154 grades were on my lack of attendance in classes, because much of the grade depended on whether you were there to hear the lectures. Dr. Matthews gave me a key to the teacher’s library. I was not to report this to anybody because it might cause friction, so, of course, I never did, but I would go into that library and I would read books the teachers read to get their material for their lectures. (August 9, 1983 Part II) EB: This is a brief history of Frank Bonelli. His full name was Franklin Henry Bonelli and he was born September 4, 1897, in Kingman, Arizona. He was my father, and I am interviewing Letha Deming Bonelli, his wife, my mother, concerning his life. Mother, will you tell me a little bit more about Daddy's background, about his mother and father? LB: His mother was the daughter of William Allen Legg Tarr and Addie Cyrene Wyman Tarr. She was the first child, born in Collinsville, Texas, and her father was employed by the railroad, the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. He was stationmaster at the time of her birth and he was working on the railroad. The mother had gone to her parents to have the baby. She spent her life moving from place to place as his work directed them. She lived in Longmont, Colorado, she lived in Manulito, New Mexico, and eventually in Kingman, Arizona, when it was brand new. There were six houses in Kingman when her father came to Kingman as the stationmaster. She was helping her father in the railroad office. Since he was stationmaster and telegraph was a part of the job, she learned the code and took care of the telegraph a lot of the time. And it was in this position that she first met George Bonelli who later became her husband. He was a young man who had 155 cattle interests about thirty miles out of Kingman. There was a Quail Spring that he owned and he ran cattle around there as a part of his interests. He would come into town and he was always sending. Suddenly, they say, he had lots of telegrams to send. He was often sending telegrams and of course, he would visit with Effie before and after this incident, but he really came to know her then. He found out she was a Methodist, and she played the organ for the Methodist meetings which were held at the Judge's house, and so he began attending Methodist meetings, and he one day wrangled an invitation from the Judge to attend a young people's social that was to be held at his house that evening. Now there was not a cloud in the sky, but he came carrying a black umbrella because Effie, to guard herself against the sun's rays, always used a pink parasol. And when the meeting was over and he started away, he picked up an umbrella and left. Well, strangely, he did not notice this was a pink parasol rather than a black umbrella, and she, to recover her prize possession, ran after him to reclaim her property. He was very surprised when he looked down and found it was a pink parasol he had in his hand. Oh, he thought it was his umbrella. Well, he walked her back to the Judge's because he had to go back and get his umbrella. He felt himself properly introduced by this incident, but he also talked to the Judge and had a formal introduction to follow the incident on the road. Effie was a very attractive young lady with beautiful grey eyes and coal black hair. She had a skin that did tan and tend to freckle slightly and so she protected herself against the sun rays always. This was when she was sixteen that this incident occurred, and so George continued to be one of the young people of the town as often as he could make it in, and Effie grew to know him quite well, mainly through their business interests, business contacts, and then she finally allowed him to 156 take her to the various functions that the church was giving. He would stop by with his carriage that he kept in town. And it had a top with fringe around—I'm not sure it was called a surrey—but, anyway, it had a fringe on top and was a very attractive carriage, and he had a very beautiful horse. And he would stop and he would take Effie riding when they had the time and the weather permitted and she could leave the office. It was approaching the end of the year, no, I guess, let's see, it was in June when he proposed to her first, but she told him she would marry no one unless they had a proper home to take her to. No, it was in November that this occurred. She said they must have a house that was hers and she was quite specific. So George had found that she was going to leave Kingman. They were going to Manuelito, New Mexico, again, and she would be out of his range of influence, so he was looking for ways to take care of that. He obtained a man to build a house and he got all the lumber and everything that was needed and he told the man that he had to have the house completed before the first of the year (and this was the last of November). So the man brought carpenters with him and he came into town, everything arrived on the same train—the carpenter, his helpers, and all the material needed for the house, and in one month they had constructed the house, had painted it, and it was ready to move into. And so, it was quickly done. And so, before the family left in January, George had married Effie on New Year's Day and then he carried her over the threshold of her new home, which was to be her home until 1915 when it burned to the ground. They think electrical wiring was responsible for it. It had been wired when not too much was known about the control of electricity, and perhaps some of the wiring had been knawel by mice or something of that sort. It started up in the attic. It was in this house that Bill, the oldest boy, was born, 157 and then Frank followed soon after, it was under two years, and this was their home. They had a large tank tower out back of the house and a windmill to pump the water, and they had a woodshed close to the tank tower where they kept a store of firewood for the wood stoves that heated the home. In 1915, as I remarked, the house burned. By this time Frank was eighteen years old, and when the fire was burning pretty strongly, he realized that his mother's treasures were all in her trunk that she kept upstairs in the bedroom, and he decided that must be salvaged because they meant so much to his mother. And so he, without any ado, entered the burning building, mounted the stairs, and threw this huge trunk out the window, so that it was saved and Grandma did not lose the special things that meant so much to her, and she had some of them until the day she died. She was a very fine person with high standards she worshipped her family, especially the boys. She had seven of them and two daughters. She was always very family centered. Her family was the important thing, they were the important people, and she took good care of them and she had a tendency to bar other people from the home. She liked the home for the family and it was only on very special occasions or for very special people that this rule was broken, even to the very end. Frank was a muscular little fellow and full of life and interest. From the very beginning he was very self-contained and self-sufficient. Also, he was a person who cared a great deal about everyone around him. His brother Bill had a great deal of influence on his life and usually was the director of most everything. When they climbed the tank tower, this was along about the time he was ten years old and Bill was twelve, they were talking about aerodynamics and free fall, wind wall, and this sort of thing. They climbed up the tank tower to do some experimenting. They carried their grandmother's umbrella, they 158 sneaked it out very carefully because they would not be permitted to use it. And when they got up there. . . until they got up there, Bill was going to do the jumping, but when they got up there, because Frank was not so heavy, maybe he should do the jumping, so being adventurous and wanting to know the answer to the questions that had arisen, he took hold of the umbrella and jumped from the tank tower which was forty feet in the air, and landed in an unconscious heap at the bottom, though they had put some quilts and saddle blankets down there to cushion their fall in case they weren't able to parachute exactly as they wanted to. They wanted to make it float out. They had waited for a certain breeze to come to do this, but he plummeted straight down, because immediately the umbrella turned inside out and there was nothing to lift him or to break the fall. EB: Did he break any bones? LB: He broke no bones, but he was unconscious for quite a while and Bill had to go ask Grandmother to come because he couldn't bring him to. Grandmother was very upset by this and she even reprimanded Bill for his part in the thing. I think that many of the incidents in their young days were of this same caliber, they were maybe pretty dangerous and Bill planned them and he wanted to know, but Frank was the real experimenter, and he rather liked the role. He was the one who used to run to meet the supply- wagons that came into Kingman. They came around the road around White Cliffs and then down over the hill where Palo Criste School stands now. There was a road down there that came right past their home and he would try to meet the wagons at the top of the hill, then he would grab hold of the tailgate and brace his feet and let 159 them pull him all the way to the base of the hill. Usually the driver didn't know of his presence. One day he told me of, his father had fitted him with a new pair of shoes. They had steel caps on the toes and steel caps on the heels to make them wear better, and he was sure that these would last him a good long while. He got them a little big for that reason. And Frank was very proud of those new shoes. When he went up the hill, they were a little bit heavy and a little bit big, but he did meet his wagon up the hill top and he took the usual run down the hill. By the time he got home those new shoes were worn completely out. The soles were off the shoes, and so his father, the next day, had to fit him out in a new pair, but he also gave him instructions not to coast down that hill again behind that wagon in his new shoes. So the next time he made this trip he took Bill's Sunday shoes and wore them, and Bill didn't mind at all because that excused him from Sunday school. They also were worn out when they got to the bottom! Now, he told me lots of little stories about growing up as occasions arose. He would tell me, but I don't have much time line on them. He told me about running races when he was even five years old and he could beat all the children his age. And he continued to race. He was very fast. As he ran, he always traveled on his toes, and he could go faster than the wind, he thought. Well, he was out with friends, they were playing up on the hill, and the friends went one way and he went the other. Dogs ran in packs around Kingman, they were wild, they didn't belong to anybody and they foraged for food. The children had found that they were rather dangerous and so they gave them clearance when they saw them—they went the other direction, tried to get away from them. Well, Frank saw the dogs in the distance and he started toward home but the dogs saw his movement and they came howling and barking after him. He saw them running toward him and knew 160 they were directing their attention to him, so he ran as fast as he could run. He ran with every ounce of strength he had. He wanted to get home in time to escape them. He told me this was when he learned about God, that he really existed. He said: "I'd heard about it in Sunday school and I'd been told to pray but I didn't really get the message until right that minute. I was running and I felt that I was going to fall. I just couldn't go any farther, but I was still some distance from home and I knew if I fell I would be torn to bits by those dogs. There were ten of them in that pack. So I began to pray as I ran, for the Lord to give me strength to get to the gate before the dogs did, and" he said, "As I prayed, I suddenly had strength and I was able to run faster and the dogs were not gaining any more. But as I got to the gate, went through it and slammed it after me," he said, "The dogs hit the fence, and the way those huge fangs were bared, the way that the dogs growled, I know that the Lord saved me or I wouldn't be alive today. “This was his testimony of our Heavenly Father. He had not joined any church. I think he was on the Methodist rolls but that was a courtesy to Grandmother because she was a Methodist. EB: Did Grandpa attend services? LB: Sometimes, not very often. It would be some special meeting, and always he contributed to any fund that needed to be supported. Always he supported Effie in any of her work that she wanted to do, but she was not a regular attender after someone else came who could play the organ and that job was no longer hers. She was not too diligent in attendance. That was not her role. Her role was at the house with her family and the children could go or not as they pleased. She never insisted on them going to a 161 service, so they went to very few. George, of course, was LDS. He had been born in the church and reared a Mormon. He had spent some time at Brigham Young Academy and had to come home in May because of the roundup, and so he was not able to finish the year. And then he passed this same pattern on to his son. By the time Frank was ten years of age, he was going out in the spring, in May, to help with the roundup. He could be a sort of roustabout, helping the cook and mending tack and things of this sort, because he had taught himself to be very capable. A saddle had fallen into his possession because the fellow had thrown it away and he saw it as something reclaimable. And he rebuilt that saddle, covering it with rawhide and making the stirrups to fit himself. And that was his first owned saddle, and he was so proud of it because he did it himself. He said, "As I remember, it was very comfortable but nobody else wanted to borrow it." EB: He had a horse of his own? LB: He always had a horse of his own from the time he was very tiny. There was one out there in the summertime that he had gentled. The horse changed often, but it would be a young one that he would work with and it would be his for a time. When it became really full-grown and strong, why they would use it on the ranch, but he became famous at a very young age for breaking horses. The horses ran loose on the range. Usually they were not broken until they were past three years of age because then they had lots of strength and it made great horses, but it was hard on the cowboys to do the breaking because they had run free so long. The horses that Frank gentled in the summer were usually yearlings or two-year-olds, and being younger were easier to handle. But he 162 learned to ride, and ride well, very young. On the footraces, he was given some prizes as a child, but he was proudest of the silver spurs he won for horseracing when he was eighteen. They had brought in excellent riders, people who did this as a profession. They were having a celebration. They didn't expect the local boys to enter because this was a professional's race, but Frank entered and he took first place against all comers and he was very pleased with the silver spurs. They were stolen from him one time. He never could find them. He had been showing them to a group of people and never suspected anybody of this kind of behavior and so was the victim. And probably they went into the hands of a very dear friend that he couldn't possibly suspect, because all those he suspected he checked out very carefully. He was eighteen when the accident occurred. No, let's see, 1917 was the war, and so he had to be about twenty when he hurt his leg that time. EB: I have seen a picture of him in his uniform and I had thought he was eighteen, but I believe it was 1918 when the picture was taken. LB: Yes, that was true. EB: Then he was in uniform in 1918 and it was shortly after he went into the Air Force? LB: Well, the injury to his leg occurred before his army service. EB: Yes, and Bill, wasn't Bill in the Air Force for four years? LB: No, he was in for two years. EB: Oh, but he trained other pilots. . . 163 LB: Yes, but you see, it wasn't until we went into the war that he went into the service. EB: So daddy suffered this injury the year before that? LB: He was eighteen when he was hurt, and this bronco had bucked for a long, long time, and there was blood everywhere from his ears and nose and eyes and he was really taking a beating on it. And then the horse hit the fence, corral fence, and he got this huge splinter in his leg. It reached almost from his hip almost to his knee and it was two inches in diameter at the top— a huge thing—and went down to a very fine point. They removed it surgically when he got to Kingman. EB: You told me about this on an earlier tape. LB: Well, they took horses, two cowboys, and they were going to carry him in on a stretcher, but the horses would move in and out and that would be very painful to the fellow in between, so they took branches of a tree and fastened them to the manes of the horses, in front of the saddles, the necks of the horses, and this gauged distance, and they took another one, fastening them to the tails of the horses. They had quite a rough time there and took quite a while to get the horses to permit such indignity, but when they finally got them so they could handle them, they took the stretcher between them. Now the stretcher was lengthwise, one side fastened behind the handle of each saddle, and then the other side in front of the saddle and he was lying there on this stretcher. It was made of blankets and tree limbs. They carried him that way from the ranch. It was a distance of approximately thirty miles that they traveled in this manner and got him into town. It was very late. They were travelling by moonlight much of the time. He said that 164 was a real trip. One time he was having quite a bit of hardship getting his car to continue the trip and I was sympathizing with him because it was late, he was tired and he had worked many hours, but he had to get into town that night. There was a message he had to send to Bill about supplies and progress, so we continued and there was a problem with the car. When it would stop, he would fix it and we would go on. And he was so very tired and I was empathizing a bit, and he said oh, this was nothing. This was when he told me about the journey with the splinter. You were very tiny at that time. EB: He started going to the ranch even before he reached his teens? LB: Oh, yes. He was quite young, I guess. Grandmother sometimes went out to the ranch and stayed in a three room building they had out there, near Dolan Springs, I think it was. And, of course, Dolan Springs was not piped at that time so it was a good ways, miles, up from where we know as Dolan Springs. But he went lots of times when she did not go. He would go out and camp and he would help his dad in various ways, mainly acting as a roustabout with the cook and to mend things that needed fixing. And he was always known as the fixer. EB: I understood that there were seven boys and, of course, some of them were very young even when they no longer had the ranch, but I understood that Frank was the one who always spent the most time at the ranch. 165 LB: Yes, that's true. Leonard didn't like the ranch and he didn't go out unless his dad insisted on it and usually tried to absent himself when he thought that was coming up. One time he disappeared. He was up on the Indian reservation for a while. EB: He was eighteen at that time. LB: That was to avoid going to the ranch. This was why he went up there. EB: He has told us about that. He ran away and stayed until Frank came and brought him home. LB: He wanted to be an artist in the English manner. He wanted the family to take care of him and just let him rove around and pick the things he wanted to do and do them on his own time, and his dad felt that he should be a little more economy oriented. And Frank had a lot of sympathy for his brother but he had a lot of sympathy for his dad, too, and when Leonard did go up on the reservation for quite some time, I think he was up there what, six months or so? EB: Yes. LB: Living with the Indians, eating with the Indians, and feeling it was quite an idyllic life, back to nature, you know. I think he had read Thoreau about that time. Anyway, he liked it up there and I think Frank had a little problem persuading him to come home, but he did. Always he felt he ought to be subsidized by the family so that he could follow his own artistic temperament. He liked to sculpture things. As a meat cutter, he fulfilled this burning desire and he always had a case full of sausage or hamburger that was 166 sculpted into various forms or scenes. Sometimes he didn't sell the meat because he didn't want to ruin his sculptures. EB: Now, for the sake of the interview, I should say we are talking about Frank's younger brother, who was the third brother. LB: Who was the third in line? EB: And his name was Leonard. Daniel Leonard, wasn't it? LB: Daniel Leonard, but he was called "Leonard." EB: And at this present time, 1983, he is the only living member of that group of children. LB: He is still alive so far as I know, but I have had no communication from him for the last while. EB: He is still alive. LB: Is he? EB: He was born in 1899, so he . . . LB: Would be 84 now. EB: He has taken very good care of himself over the years. LB: Yes, always he took good care of himself. EB: What was the family life like in the town of Kingman when Frank was a little boy? 167 LB: Well, they had lots of freedom, lots of outdoors. Grandmother was extremely busy in the house with the babies. She had babies spaced not quite two years apart mostly, and there were eight births, there were twins at the end. But while Frank was small he was permitted to do chores that George assigned before he went off to the ranch. There were specific things that he told the boys to do and they must have them done when he returned; otherwise, there was some type of punishment. The children were not promised what it would be. This made it much more effective than a promised whipping or something they could count on. Sometimes it was to be forbidden to attend something that they wanted very much to participate in. Sometimes it was a larger work assignment. And always there was some reason why they wanted to fulfill dad's commands. He had a special way of reprimanding or correcting his children. Frank suddenly developed quite a vocabulary. There was a fellow on the street corner that had a terrific one and Frank rather admired it, so he practiced it in private. But then he got to using it and when this came to his father's notice—his father was not profane, ever— and his father called him in to ask him about this, Frank said: "Yes, sir. “Have you used this phrase? “Yes, sir. “And they went through quite a vocabulary before they were through. I think it was the grandmother (Ann Haigh Bonelli) who reported it. She felt that rigid discipline should be administered, but George usually devised his own methods, and so he had written down all the words that Frank had used and he asked: "Now, what did you mean when you said this?" and Frank would explain, or "How did you feel when you said this? “And then he assigned Frank the job of looking up each one of those words and finding a good dictionary word that would express it just as well as this profanity that he had used. And in this way he developed a tremendous 168 vocabulary and he had people in shock very often by his dictionary condemnations. And he enjoyed this role so much that he continued this practice always. When he had been driven to the point where he had to become profane, if he hadn't already found a good English word for it, he would look it up until he could find a word that he could substitute that came out of the dictionary. And I remember the expressions on a lot of faces as he spoke firmly on some subject. EB: When did he acquire the nickname of "Shakespeare?" I know they called him "Shake." LB: Well, this was when he was in high school, even in grade school I believe it started. Essays were a very popular assignment and usually they were done outside of school time and displayed in school. And he would be given an assignment and he would use language that was not familiar to a lot of the other children in the school. They had never had a father who assigned them lessons of this kind. And he had a grand facility with all words, and he had a word every time he needed it. If he didn't have a word he knew how to go find it. So the teachers complimented him and held him up as a great example and the other kids just began calling him "Shakespeare," and then they shortened it to "Shake," and whenever the teacher suggested they match him, why how could you match Shakespeare in writing? EB: Oh, I thought he acquired that because of his interest in Shakespeare. I know he often quoted him. LB: Well, Shakespeare was a source of many good expressions and words and he knew lots of Shakespearean quotations, yes, but this was how he got this or at least this was 169 what he told me. This was how he got this name, and he was apt to write a note even in his last days and sign it "Shake." EB: I know the community in the early 1900’s was comprised of about 200 whites and 200 Indians. LB: The Indians had a camp south of town and they came in from there. It's up where Jeannie Tarr's house is, this was the Indian camp. EB: It's within the city limits at this time, but at that time. . . LB: They didn't bother with city limits, they just built their houses. EB: Yes, but I mean the Indian community was about two miles from the white community? LB: I think it was not that far, I think it was probably a mile and a half from Grandma's house. EB: Okay. It was nearby but separate from the white community? LB: Yes. EB: When Frank was a boy, how large a town would there have been? LB: Well, I don't believe I know. There are pictures in the museum that we could examine that would help us determine this, but, of course, there were lots of extra people who came to the hotel and camps around. EB: It looks quite large in the early 1900's as if there were maybe two or three hundred structures and the railroad terminal. 170 LB: Well, you see, it was established in 1882, that's when Lewis Kingman came through. And they built the railroad depot and then when they brought the county seat from Mineral Park, it made a big difference because people came into Kingman as their county seat. EB: When was that? Do you know? LB: I cannot give you a date on that, I can find out but I don't know. There is quite a bit of history, Kingman history, in existence in the museum in Kingman. The town extended to the graveyard hill, that's over to where the junior high school is now and the football field, and it extended below the tracks about four city blocks, small city blocks. And Grandma's house was probably about a block from the outskirts. Since then land has been leveled and building has extended around there, beyond there, but it was approximately that block beyond the courthouse. I don't remember, I think around 1914 or 1915 was when the courthouse was built, because it came from the same quarry that George got his material for the second house after the burning of the first one. He told Effie: "I'll build you a house this time that will not burn," and he built it of stone and it was wired, all the wiring, the wires were spaced four inches apart in the walls because they couldn't possibly arc over if a mouse got in and chewed the covering. And the best kinds of fixtures were installed now. Frank enjoyed the outdoor type life. He learned to love it more than anything and he always had to be outdoors. He could not stay inside for long periods of time. The shop, his shop, the doors were wide and when they opened up it was a completely open front. Did you ever notice that? 171 EB: Yes. LB: This was his work establishment, after we went to Boulder City. (Should be "after we went to Kingman!”) EB: Do you want to continue talking about his early life? When did he first marry? LB: Let's see, it would be about 1922, probably. EB: He had two sons during that first marriage. LB: Yes. There were two sons. The older son was named John and they called him "Jack." The younger son was Richard. He was named Franklin and it was later changed to Richard. That was after my marriage to Frank, the idea being that I might want to use the full name, but we had determined that we would name George after his two grandfathers. My father's name was George Norman and Frank's father was George Alfred. We thought the common name was a very good one for our son, and his second name was Franklin. EB: Then the first marriage ended and the, his first two boys... LB: Lived in Illinois, in Karmi with their mother. The mother remarried right away and they made their home in Karmi. EB: This was after he was in the service, then? LB: Yes. EB: And then he just moved there to the family home and worked? 172 LB: No, he never moved in the family home and he didn't work with his dad. He had a place in Chloride where they lived, I don't know exactly where that was. EB: Where they, you mean where he and his first wife lived? LB: Yes, he and his wife. EB: And they lived in the Salt Lake area for a short while. LB: She had an aunt who lived in Chloride and she was staying with this aunt when she dated Frank and after their marriage they lived close to her. EB: And then I have a letter that was written by him from Salt Lake City. LB: Yes, he moved up there in the automotive business. EB: But didn't stay. LB: Well, they stayed for a while, I don't know how long they were there. And they were at Peach Springs for a while. She didn't like being away from Chloride so they kept coming back there. EB: And then I meant after she left and took the children and they were divorced, where did he live after that? LB: He went to California for quite a while. He stayed with a friend named Kenny Grizell and they went into business together. They had their own automotive shop and they sold and serviced cars and repaired them, and they built some special cars for racers, and all kinds of things like that. 173 EB: I never heard about that. How long was he there? LB: I think he and Kenny were together three or four years, probably. EB: Where were they living in California? LB: Oh, down near Los Angeles, I don't have any addresses, but Kenny Grizell was later living south of Los Angeles and I met him once. He still was inviting Frank to come back and go into business. EB: What brought him back from Los Angeles? LB: To see Frank. EB: No, I mean what brought Frank back? LB: His parents, his family. Grandmother was always lonely for her boys and I think he left because they needed him back at home. EB: So daddy went home because he was needed at home, probably. What did he do for a job when he went back? LB: I am not at all sure. I think he was working in a garage and that he also helped his father out and things like that. I'd like to talk about an earlier time now. EB: Surely. After he got back from college. LB: He was working on the ranch and it was decided that it would be a good business venture to build a meat market in Chloride. The mine was operating and there were a lot of people there. Fresh meat was at a premium and they could bring in good, fattened 174 stock from the ranch. They butchered it at Chloride and then sold it. At first, this was done in the open. They had no building to work from and then a building was constructed and a meat market was established. Your father ran that meat market and he also had his Brother Leonard working with him. Now Leonard was only eighteen to twenty months younger that Frank, so they were pretty close to an age. Frank took over all the business involved and Leonard became an expert meat cutter. He also had a chance to practice his sculpting that he loved so much. He would make interesting showcase displays in sausage or hamburger and sometimes even refused to tear down the work, of art to sell the meat. When his dad found that out, the sculpting became a little bit restricted and restrained. EB: This was Leonard. LB: This was Leonard. Well, Frank made it a lucrative store. They made good money and it was amazing at the prices of the time, because they gave away the heart, the liver, the brains and things of this kind. They sold steak for twenty-five cents a pound that was almost any kind of steak. And still they made a lot of money and they received more for the animal than they would if they had shipped it and sold it in the city. George was pleased with the venture. After a while Frank got to thinking it would sure be nice if they had some way to preserve that meat. They had to sell it off as soon as it was butchered because they didn't have any way to keep it. EB: No refrigeration. 175 LB: There was no refrigeration of any kind and there was no ice available anywhere, so Frank decided that they should have an ice plant and he went somewhere where they had one, it was an ammonia plant, he stayed and worked in the thing for a while and learned how it operated, and came home and built himself one. He did this all on his own and he had the ice plant operating in Chloride for quite some time. They sold ice in Chloride, they used it at the meat market, they hauled some into Kingman. They'd freeze it in two hundred pound blocks at the ice plant and load it on a car with a pickup bed, cover it well with canvas and burlap, and drive into Kingman. They had no problem selling ice in Kingman. Even the stores there were happy about it because it improved services there. It was after he left Chloride that the ice plant went out of business because there was no one around who could fix it and keep it operating. He showed me where the ice plant stood. He told some of these things to me at that time. He said he always enjoyed building and inventing. It seems he improved some of the machinery that was used in the ice plant that he built, and people came from other places to examine and copy his methods. This was also a point of pride of his. EB: How long did he keep the ice plant, do you have any idea the number of years? LB: I don't know how long it operated. He left, you know, after a while and someone else operated it while he was gone off into the service. EB: When he was first married he also had the ice plant. Then he left Chloride and..? LB: He went off to the war, I think, after the ice plant was built. EB: Oh, I see. 176 LB: And then someone else was operating it but they were not very successful. I don't know whether he rejuvenated it when he came back. EB: Leonard said that when the babies were tiny, the two boys were tiny, the house was close enough to the ice plant that when he (Frank) would hear them crying he would run over to the house. He was very solicitous about the children. LB: Well, his wife was not a very domestic person. She was a very social individual and often he would find her at the drugstore having a soda and the babies were by themselves. Of course, coming from a household with Grammy running it, he had an entirely different view of the feminine role. He really protested this. EB: So he must have run the ice plant after he was married for a while, too. LB: Yes, I think, perhaps, the stay in Salt Lake City was before he took over the ice plant again. I just never bothered to put this on a time line and I don't know. EB: Then, do you know how long he'd had the station when you married him? LB: Yes, he had built that all from the ground up and he had built it all himself with the help of his brothers and a few other people that he hired. It had been operated for a time as a service station. It was, in 1932, a service station and garage. The garage building was separate. It was probably fifty feet from the service station and this was because he did welding and things of this type and was concerned about fire, so he built it separate. This was an operating concern when I first met him in 1932. Then in 1935 when I went back up there, he had closed the service station. He had some chickens he was raising and he was just doing mechanical work and he had his chicken farm out back. And for a 177 hen house he built a replica of the station. It had the tower, it had all the proportions of the station itself. EB: I find the fact that he closed the station and just had an automotive shop intriguing because that place was located out in the middle of nowhere, so they would have to come a long way to have him do their automotive work. LB: But he wanted to do automotive work only for those people who wanted him to do it. EB: So they had to come out there to get it. LB: They certainly had announced this as a fact when they drove nineteen miles to get him to fix things for them. EB: How interesting. And they couldn't even buy gasoline out there. LB: No, he kept a drum of gasoline in back by the garage but he would have no gasoline in his tank. He didn't like tourists. And I quite understood that because one time my aunt and I stopped there. We were just on our way to town and we wanted to know if he needed anything and we would run any errands he needed and bring back things for him. And while we were there a car pulled in. They took a can of gasoline out of the back of their car and put gas in their tank. They put oil in their engine that they had carried. They used his restrooms and left them absolutely terrible. And they used his water to put in the radiator. Now remember he was hauling his water four miles down this road that I described. Only he could drive it. And then they wanted him to give them some canned food that was on the shelf. And one of the children started to steal a fan belt off the rack and he saw this and insisted the kid put it back and insisted they leave. 178 In their haste to leave, because he (Frank) was angry, the man dropped his wallet and it was absolutely crammed with $10.00 bills. He had plenty of money and still he was making his way as though he were completely poverty-stricken. The child was evidently stealing on command. It was a very bad situation. There were things like this. Well, when he found this wallet and he got us on our way to town, he called the sheriff and told him the wallet had been found and the people were on their way to the river, and asked him to see if he could stop them and get them to come back and get the wallet. So the fellow made his way back and was given the wallet, but minus the amount that had been taken off the shelves because we found other things missing. The things were in their car when they came back. He made them clean up the restrooms and, oh, that fellow was so angry. They didn't do it and it wasn’t . . . but the sheriff was out there and he said: "Well, you just take your choice. I can just take you to jail or you can do what you ought to do, supposed to do. “It was really comical. But this was the kind of thing that could occur and he just could not stand people who were dishonest, so it was better, I think, that he should close the station. EB: So when you lived there after you were married it wasn't actually a service station, it was an automotive shop? LB: No, it was an automotive shop but people would come by and try to make it a service station and try to use the restrooms and things like this, but they were locked. He had signs before you got there from either direction that the station was closed and there was no gasoline to be had, "No Services," was the way he stated it on the signs. 179 EB: One thing I remember about dad: he was just like your dad and grandpas and his brothers in one respect, he liked to prospect. LB: Yes, "there's gold in them there hills and we want it," you know. EB: I know one of our favorite things was to go out prospecting with daddy for fool's gold. He'd take us out. LB: Oh, some of what you found, you know, in that sand wash where the rattlesnake was, was not fool's gold. That was the real stuff. EB: Oh, was it? LB: But it was a wash from way off up above and there was never enough gold to matter, but when you panned it you would find real gold, very little and a lot of panning, but it was real gold. EB: Tell us a little more about dad's activities. LB: Oh, his activities were extremely varied. He was always building roads, he was always seeing after livestock. He'd dock them, he'd brand them, he'd butcher them. He'd just do almost anything that needed to be done. He could do it and do it well. EB: A "Jack of all trades." LB: Well, and a specialist in most of them. He was very, very good with machinery and he could fix anything that showed up and even if it were worn out he could make another 180 piece to substitute. It might cost a lot more than it would to buy a piece, but if you couldn't get a piece, he'd make one. EB: Talk about what he liked to wear in clothes. LB: Well, he liked cowboy boots and riding pants or Levi’s. He liked Stetsons. He'd never wear anything but a Stetson hat and Justin cowboy boots, with very pointed toes. His favorite color to wear was white. He liked anything white, and white shoes he liked if he had to dress in shoes. But he didn't usually wear them often because someone told him it was ostentatious, I believe Watt Thompson was the one. So he avoided it quite a bit. EB: Avoided wearing white? LB: So I didn't know for quite a while that he liked, it and I bought him a pair of white flannel pants that were the delight of his life. And I bought him a cream-colored silk, well, it was a satin shirt but it was pure silk, and when he put that on he just really felt elegant, but he would never go anywhere in it. He'd wear it around the ranch and things like that. EB: I can remember him in -wool shirts, in long-sleeved shirts. LB: Pendleton shirts. EB: Pendleton shirts, yes, with the sleeves rolled up. LB: Yes, that is what you see in this picture up here. EB: Oh, was it? LB: One of the plaid shirts. 181 EB: That is how I remember seeing him. LB: That was really his favorite way to dress. EB: I also remember him always with a pipe or cigar. LB: Yes, when he woke in the morning he smoked cigarettes until he'd had breakfast, and then after breakfast he lit up a cigar, and he chewed it and smoked it a little once in a while and had that in his mouth until dinnertime, and then after dinner he smoked a pipe while he relaxed. EB: That seemed so ridiculous for a man who was an absolute fanatic about cleanliness. LB: Well, he claimed the tobacco would kill all kinds of things. And I would laugh and say yes, it would kill him, too. EB: It probably did. But I can never remember smelling smoke on him. LB: Well, he smoked before breakfast before his bath and then after his shower he was chewing his cigar. But there was tobacco all over the house all the time. He told me not to worry, it would keep the insects out, and it seemed to do it. We never had many of those. Silver- fish can't abide tobacco, and that's about all we had. EB: I know he smoked a pipe a lot. I remember his pipe always. I remember also, even if there were less than a block to go, if there were a truck or a horse around, he preferred to ride. LB: He preferred to ride. You would, too, if you wore cowboy boots. 182 EB: I'm the same way. I do not like to walk. LB: He would wear shoes, however, if he was going to walk somewhere and knew it. One time he went in his Doodlebug across country to one of the springs. It was 23 miles the way he travelled—you know, he just took off across country. He knew by the formation on the horizon where he was going and he just started out from the ranch in that direction and wherever he would come to a fence, he'd take out his staple puller and yank out the staples, let the fence down, drive across it, and then nail it back into position. Well, he thought he'd come back by the road, but he got down in that—it was Burns Springs where he was going and it had a rather precipitous road down into the canyon where the house was, the orchard, --and when he got down there he couldn't get back out. The road was too steep and too bad. It needed a lot of repair. He was going to bring me a load of fruit but it was supposed to be a surprise. I didn't know this and I didn't know where he was going, so he got down in there and couldn't get out, and there was nobody around he could find to help him. And so he decided to walk home and he started out. Well, that 23 miles was a long hike. He didn't start until almost sundown but he wanted to be home. He didn't want me to worry. Now, I never worried until midnight, but it was a very dark night. It was a night when there was no moon and I had become concerned because the cowboys rode in and someone had stopped at Shep's station and they told him there that Frank was going to Burn's Springs, and if he made that trip and were successful and he came right back, he should have been home before sundown. So I got in the car filled with gas and I got my babies ready. Then I thought about it. He had a hard, fast rule. I was never to drive after sundown because 183 he feared many, many things for me if I were out after dark. Women were helpless and all this sort of thing. And so I decided that at daybreak I would get you little girls into the car and go if he hadn't come in the meantime. Of course, there was the possibility that he would come in later that night, but he didn’t had you girls in the car, it was not sunrise yet, and I was coming out to get in the car to start the journey when here he came limping in. He had walked all night in his cowboy boots. And his feet were so sore and he was so abused because I hadn't gone out to look for him. And I listened for a while and finally I just set things straight. I was not very soft and kind in my delivery but I told him he had made the rules, I didn't like them and I would never abide them again—I promised—but that was what I was doing when I didn't go out the night before hunting for him. And I said I decided that would be stupid and ridiculous on a dark night with two babies in the car and not being sure the report I received was accurate. But, at any rate, this was when I began breaking this rule of his and I would go to visit my parents in Goldroads and I would wait to see my father who didn't come in from his work until four o'clock and if I did wait to see him I didn't get home until after dark. And I decided that that was one of the things I must do. EB: I remember that he was a crack shot. LB: Yes, with pistol or rifle, either. EB: Did he go target practicing? LB: No, he never played around with targets. He shot things that needed shooting, a rattlesnake or a coyote that was bothering stock. 184 EB: It was part of his work skills, then. LB: I read this report, environmentalists say that coyotes don't bother your stock, but we had many young calves killed by coyotes. I must admit this, however. One time I went to the back door and it was storming and there was a huge dog outside my screen door huddled against the house. I tried to shoo him away and he just looked at me, and his eyes were so big and yellow in the light, and I called Frank to see him and he said: "That's no dog. That's a timber wolf. “So after a while when the rain let up he left. About two years later I was taking a walk. I often walked in the early morning. I had a large Doberman Pinscher dog and the dog walked with me right at my heels. I walked about a mile from the house, and as I approached the pasture gate, I saw these animals. They were just outside my range of vision. It was barely daybreak when I started out and it was getting lighter all the time. They were coyotes. There were 23 animals there and they made a ring about around me. I am sure if I had not had the dog I would have been attacked. When I got to the gate I hurried at the last when I realized what was happening, and the one behind me would come up closer and then I would turn and they would move back a little bit climbed up on the gatepost which was a twelve by twelve, and I stood up there and yodeled, knowing that the cowboys would be awake and that if they heard me, they knew that was a signal for them to come help, and in a few minutes Bob Guess and a couple of other fellows were down there. The coyotes were shot, a large number of them, by the cowboys, and they had characteristics of this timber wolf that I had seen on my doorstep. It was rather a frightening time for me. The 185 dog stood at the base of the post there and he growled and kept the coyotes back. When the riders came, of course, they dispersed quickly. EB: They were afraid of dogs, then? LB: Well, they were afraid of him and me, I guess, anyway, they stayed back but there was a very definite closure of the circle as we travelled and then as we posted ourselves there. EB: I know Ron on the farm, they changed the rules about trapping coyotes and didn't allow them to be trapped, and in one year we lost thirty lambs. The coyotes were just slaughtering the lambs, they were not eating them, just killing them. LB: That's right. Well, like them getting into a chicken pen. Here's where we saw the damage first. They would get into the chicken pen and then kill for the pleasure of it. But these were part timber wolf. EB: Were there a lot of coyotes on that range? LB: Yes, there were at first. There were not so many when we left. EB: There were also Gila monsters and rattlesnakes. LB: We had, I think, about six kinds of snakes on that ranch. Of course, we had one hundred square miles that made up the ranch and there were different kinds around. The Mohave rattler was about three feet maximum in length and awfully mean and terribly poisonous. The large diamond back was much bigger but a lot less dangerous. 186 EB: I remember them bringing one into the Dairy Queen that was six feet long. LB: Yes, they often were that length. I saw one once that measured just over seven feet and he had fourteen rattles and the ends had been broken off. We don't know how many he carried before. EB: What other kinds were there? LB: There was the pine rattler. It was green in color and it came from up around Pine Springs and was named this because of its color and its place of origin. It was a smaller one and never grew, I guess, probably two and a half feet was the maximum for that one, but they were mean little critters. They would chase you. They didn't stop and coil and rattle like snakes usually do, but would chase a horse or someone on foot, coming right at you. One of our cowboys let out a war whoop one day and he yelled "Pine Rattler" and Frank galloped over to see about it. He jumped off his horse to take care of the snake, expecting the snake to coil, but the snake didn't coil, he just started toward Frank, so he pulled his six gun and shot it quickly. You know, when you shoot at a rattler you are almost dead certain to hit its head because it lines up with your gun barrel. EB: Oh, really? LB: Yes. I didn't know this and I was feeling so proud of myself for being able to hit the snake in the head and then this was pointed out to me, and it is true, they will follow the gun barrel. 187 EB: So dad shot it. LB: Yes, killed it. But that thing was coming right for him. I was there and saw it. You know, sometimes I would listen to cowboy stories and I always had that reservation as to whether or not it was the truth because they were notorious for building yarns. But your dad was pretty nice to me. He didn't do things like that to me. EB: Speaking of predators. Did they have cattle rustlers? LB: Yes, especially when it came to the. . . EB: Purebred stock. LB: Yes. It was a strange situation, but one time we found a truck and it was pretty well loaded with carcasses, and the brands had been cut out. They were right there and they were on our property, and so Frank fixed the truck so that it wouldn't start, let all the air out of the tires, and then he sent a couple of cowboys down to stand watch. They parked up on a hill close by and as soon as the fellows came back, one of the cowboys went to the ranch house to get your dad. He came down in the truck and he blocked the road so they couldn't get off onto the highway. We had a good fence and they had to go through the gate. Well, those fellows saw him coming and they took off afoot and the cowboys took off after them on their horses and roped them, two of them, and tied them up to some fence posts on barbed wire fences. They were absolutely scared to death. It was pitiful, they were so scared. Frank pulled out his six- gun and shot around their feet, shot the hat off one of them, and told them to dance, etc. 188 EB: Oh, dear. LB: He had those poor guys so scared they couldn't see straight, and he told them to get out of the country, clear out of the country, because if he ever laid eyes on one of them again he'd shoot them right between the eyes, and he turned them loose. He unloaded the meat, put it in his own car. There were, I think, seven head of prime beef in that load. The two rustlers took off toward Nevada, they didn't stay in Arizona, and it's true we never saw them again. Oh, that was funny. And then very often we would find places where somebody had slaughtered one beef. And one time we met a fellow on the highway who had had a breakdown. Frank always stopped to help people, and he stopped to help this guy, and he was sniffing, he could smell the . . . EB: Fresh meat. LB: The blood, yes. He said: "What do you have on the back of that car, anyway?" It was a touring car and this thing was in the trunk. It had been cut in quarters and stored back there. He hadn't bothered to cut our brand out, so it was still on that flank. So Frank followed him to Kingman and went to the Sheriff's office and they talked about it, and the guy paid him what he figured that animal would bring on the market and went on about his business, but I think he was probably reconciled to the idea that he should not rustle, too. EB: They let him take the meat? 189 LB: Oh, no, but he had to pay for it, and then Frank gave the meat. Your dad collected for it and told him he'd give this to the welfare office and that's where he took it. Your dad took it and donated it to the welfare office. I don't know who ate it, probably not the welfare because that was good meat. The guy didn't have any need for this, you know. He had money with him. EB: I remember he did believe in a Western code of justice. He lived within the law if that were available but he handled it himself if it weren't. LB: Well, he handled it, usually. He usually reported to the Sheriff what had happened and he always was truthful. EB: He was very interesting. He was a true Western man, I think. LB: He felt honesty was a very exact art and you practiced it as your living light. He never had a debt that he did not pay, and I tried to follow this tradition after his death to be sure that he had fulfilled all his obligations. EB: Didn't he spend some time in the hospital making sure that you knew all of his debts? LB: Yes, after the surgery and we found the conditions. The doctor told him that he would have three months to three years to live. He was asking for a time frame and so he called me and asked me to get notebooks and pencils and pens and get in there and we'd get things organized. He spent the entire time that he was awake from then on for three weeks—the time of his life—recording his wishes and the status of his business, who he owed, who owed him, how much and what kind, you know, and who I could depend on to help me if I needed help and who I should not trust. Never once did I find 190 him in error and I had not realized how well he knew people. But he knew how you could trust some people and how you could not trust that same person, and he just knew them. EB: He wasn't very judgmental about his friends. LB: You never heard him judging people, you never heard him. EB: But he was aware of their faults and really didn't mind? LB: That's right, but he was also aware of their virtues and he built on those, and even though a fellow was not up to his standards he still had an empathy and a friendship for this person. He felt a lot of this they couldn't help; it was just a part of them. EB: I remember when he was angry, he had a violent temper. LB: Yes. EB: I inherited it. LB: You know about it, then, and how difficult it is. EB: Yes. He rarely was angry, though, but when he was angry he was very angry. LB: And his eyes would change and take on an icy look in them. EB: And he'd go white, pale. LB: Yes. EB: And usually he would hit something. 191 LB: And I was fortunate he never was angry with me. EB: No, he usually took it out on a building wall or something. LB: Yes, I remember the time he hit the wall dividing the bedroom and the hall, and his fist went right through both sides EB: I don't think he was terribly angry that time. I think he was just emphasizing a point. LB: Well, he was reporting something that angered him. EB: I remember the fist coming through. LB: Yes, it came through into your bedroom. EB: Was it sheetrock? It came tight through two layers. LB: Through two layers of sheetrock. EB: I remember Daddy loving music, but having feelings about several songs. LB: Well, he said he didn't like to hear "Red River Valley" because that always heralded bad times for him when he heard that song, had listened to that song. He loved the "Rose of Texas." EB: He loved "Mexicali Rose." LB: Yes, he liked that one. EB: And he loved "Whispering Hope." LB: Yes, there were just certain songs that he really liked. 192 EB: He liked "Danny Boy." LB: Yes. He liked any of the church hymns we played and sang. EB: I didn't know that. LB: Yes, he did. He loved to hear you girls practice and your singing. EB: "In The Garden," I know he liked that one. LB: Well, remember for a while you or Mary one was practicing to play for the Sunday school. EB: It was Mary. LB: And, of course, those were all church hymns and he would wait until after we had finished our practice on Saturday before he went to work, and that was about noon, because he loved those church hymns but he didn't want anybody to know he was listening, I think. He had a lot of feelings that he didn't like to share and religious feelings were one of them. He was a very sentimental person and he didn't want anyone to know that. If he thought you were guessing it, he would back off. EB: I remember he never came from Kingman to Boulder City without gifts for us all. LB: Yes. EB: He loved to give presents. 193 LB: And it might be a rock or it might be a gem, but it had to be something. And he loved flowers, but he didn't like hothouse flowers, he liked wild flowers. I know with both of you girls he brought me wild flowers. EB: When we were born. Oh, how nice. I remember every Christmas, he loved those silly cherry chocolates and he always brought you a box of cherry chocolates. I think you hated them. LB: I never ate chocolate because he liked it so well. EB: Oh, it wasn't that you disliked it? LB: Well, if I ate a chocolate I didn't want one again for many days. And he could eat two pounds at a sitting, you know. EB: I remember, also, both he and his brother Bill loved pinion nuts. LB: So did I. EB: And he loved steak. Well done or rare? LB: He ate it any way I cooked it. He never, ever complained about my cooking, not ever, not even when I burned the biscuits on our honeymoon. EB: What other foods? I know he liked pie. LB: He liked apple pie, he liked cherry pie and he liked lemon best, and he'd eat any kind of pie. If you put it in a crust and called it a pie, he'd eat it. EB: Did he eat fresh fruit much? 194 LB: No, he didn't care for fresh fruit. He hadn't grown up with it like you had. EB: Now, my son who is like him grew up with it but doesn't like it. LB: For goodness sakes. He liked a steak and potato menu with pie for dessert. He would drink water and milk but he had other things he preferred. EB: What did he prefer? Bourbon? He didn't drink beer, did he? LB: Yes, sometimes, he didn't prefer that, though. EB: I thought he liked Jim Beam. LB: I can't tell you brands. Bill brought a case of stuff from the coast one time, it was all extremely expensive, I know. I had made a rule that if he had the stuff on the place it had to be at the barn, it couldn't be at the house, and be brought the stuff in and set it on my table and I told him to remember that he was not to bring that stuff in the house, but he didn't want to take it to the barn because the cowboys would steal it and that was "good stuff." But he brought his cronies to drink it with him in the house and that I would not tolerate, so I again asked him to remove it. He laughed at me and didn't do it and went off with the boys, so I emptied all the remaining bottles down the sink. And ruined our septic tank. EB: Ruined your septic tank? Not to mention your relationship for quite some time. LB: No, it didn’t damage our relationship the least bit. He merely acknowledged that I meant what I said, and explained it to Bill, or tried to explain it to Bill. When Bill came out he 195 expected to have some of that, too, and Frank told him where it went and Bill looked at me like I was a murderer. EB: Teetotalers were not within his scope of understanding. LB: I did not very often go that direction but there were some things I knew I had to enforce or things would be out of hand. I would not be in control of my own house. I had two little girls. EB: What kind of reading material did he prefer? LB: Oh, he loved Western stories that was Zane Grey and Harold, what was his name? Wrote “When a Man’s a Man.” He liked those, he liked Shakespeare, a lot of classics, but he would never bother reading them. I would be reading something and he would come in and ask me to share it and then I would have to go back and start the book over again and read the whole thing to him. But I didn’t mind at all. I loved to read for him and share the ideas that were there. It helps you know a person so well, to share your ideas of what you’ve read. EB: Is there anything else about him that we haven’t discussed that you would like to talk about? LB: Well, I’d like to talk about his fathering, what a tremendously interesting person he was. He always fascinated children, his own and everyone else around. And children gathered all around. They knew it was going to be fun where he was. He would load the car up with a bunch of kids and take them downtown for an ice cream cone just on the spur of the moment. He was going to town, so he would take a gang of kids and buy 196 treats. Also, just the simplest things would become adventure, like your gold mine you mentioned. We’d go with him, and whatever he did, where ever we’d go, would be fun with him. He was a charming, beautiful, exciting, lovely man. 197