Oral History Program Ivy Letha Deming‐Bonelli Interviewed by Mary Letha Bonelli Ashworth 05 July 1983 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ivy Letha Deming-Bonelli Interviewed by Mary Letha Bonelli Ashworth 05 July 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 Mary Letha Bonelli-Ashworth, 05 July 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 July 5, 1983, by Mary Letha Bonelli Ashworth, in the home of the interviewer. Mrs. Bonelli talks about her upbringing and family history in Arizona. LB: Today is Tuesday, July 5, 1983. This tape is being recorded for Ellen Pace as a part of her living history class. I am Letha Bonelli, her mother. She has asked that I record some of the recollections I have of the small Arizona community in which I spent my early years. The name of the place was Arlington; it was downriver from Phoenix about sixty miles just below the juncture of the Hassayampa and Gila rivers. There were about twenty-four families in the valley and one building housed the general mercantile store, the grocery and the Post Office. They were situated about a mile to the east of us. One mile West and one mile South was the two-room schoolhouse which was the center of all activity for the community. It was the place where the voting was held on Election Day (school was vacationed for all of the children). It was the place for Halloween parties--gala affairs, everyone came, and everyone was in costume (they couldn't get in otherwise). Sometimes it was very difficult to guess who was under that costume. Early in the day a pit was dug and then good hard wood was burned in there to make a good bed of coals. Then my dad would take a load of fresh picked corn in the husks, cover that over, and when we took that out at dinnertime there was just never such good corn anywhere in the world. Mother would churn up quantities of fresh butter for us to use on the corn and dad would also bring a load of watermelons from the patch. Other people would bring meats and salads and desserts, all their specialties to share with the 1 community and they'd have this great feast just before the party started. And then they'd have the costuming and the contests for the best costume, the funniest costume, and all of those things. Christmas was also a very important date in that schoolhouse. There was always a huge Christmas tree. It was delightful to see the expressions of the children's faces as they looked up at it and saw the beautiful gifts and packages that were on it and the candles that were lighted. This was before electric lights; the candles were real ones, made of tallow, and they were very carefully screened by the metal containers that reflected their light. The tree always held a gift for everyone present and then if someone came in unexpectedly there was always a pile of gifts in the background that could be labeled at the last moment. Everyone was able to go away with a gift. Sometimes when it became known that a child in the community wanted some specific gift it would be impossible for the parents to provide, somehow that would make its way to the community Christmas tree and the child would have the delight of his heart that night. Our Santa Claus always appeared after a clatter of reindeer on the roof, but somehow he never came down the chimney. He always came in the back door and this puzzled a lot of us. We were eager for him, though, and we didn't care how he got there just so he came and he would come across the stage where all our good programs were put on and where the Christmas tree stood. He would come with a "ho, ho, ho" and there would always be a big chair available where he'd sit down. Then the small children would clatter to the front and sit on his knee for a moment and tell him what they had in mind for Christmas. It was a wonderful time for everybody. There were other important events held there also. The Easter services. And once a month, usually there would be a visiting minister from the various churches, maybe a Methodist one 2 month and the next month it would be a Baptist. All the various Protestant religions were represented and once in a great, great while there would be a couple of Mormon missionaries come down into the valley and they would not just hold a Sunday service but probably would have several meetings during the week before they left. People were very generous in attending whichever group came. Non-controversial subjects were always treated--nobody got into dogmatic arguments at all. Everybody was accepted courteously. And after I grew up I knew one of the ministers who used to visit there when I was small and he told me that there was never a place he had found that was so welcoming and so enjoyable as our little community. Someone suggested that he might have just been "buttering us up" to tell us this, but I think not. He was not that type of person. I think he really felt what he said was true. The school participated in many contests and activities that took in other schools in the valley. We had contests, athletic events (baseball games, basketball games, that sort of thing), and very often we made a pretty good showing in these. I remember my dad coming and coaching us in baseball for a while because the teacher didn't know enough about baseball and was teaching us incorrectly. My dad would take time out of his busy schedule to come down to the school at a certain time once a week and teach the young people to play baseball. We had a teacher one time who didn't know one note from another and could not sing at all, and so Mother came into the school each morning for a while so we had our singing sessions. She also sometimes gave art lessons. When I was four Mother was selected to teach the school because the teacher who had signed a contract had become ill. She had taught for one week when she became ill, so Mother, then, took the school for the rest of the year. However, she was not going to be able to pick up a 3 paycheck for her teaching after the first six weeks unless she could pass some tests that the state gave to teachers--and you must have passed these tests and certified before you could teach. I remember that the time she spent studying made her a little difficult to see when I wanted to see her. This was a really big loss for me because always she had been right there when I wanted her. At this time she had three children. I was the eldest, and I was four. My brother Jack was 21 months younger than I, and then my brother Gordon was three years and three months younger than I, so she had one rather small baby when she took on this extra task. She did the studying, too. I remember the school board president coming down with a huge armload of books and leaving them at our house. They were for Mother to read before she went up to take the test during the Thanksgiving holiday. When the Thanksgiving holiday came, we were left motherless, but my grandmother came and stayed with us during that period. And she passed the tests—we knew that—she went ahead and taught for the rest of the year. Much later when I entered college, the president of the college called me in, this was Tempe State Teacher's College just after it had been a normal school, he called me in and told me he had some records he thought I would be interested in and he showed me my mother's tests that she had taken and told me those were the highest scores anyone had ever made on those tests. MB: Mother, I remember as a young child you told me that your mother read the Harvard Classics while she nursed each one of you children, so she had already had at least three years reading the Harvard Classics. Is that right? 4 LB: Yes, she did this among many, many other things. She also did all sorts of things for the neighbors, for anybody who needed anything. And I can remember no time as a very young child when we had fewer than nine people at our dinner table every day. MB: Describe the home that you were living in. At the time were you living with your grandparents on their farm? LB: I had only my grandfather on that farm. He had a room built out separate from the main house which was his own particular domain. The house belonged to us. It was not a large house but there was a parlor and a master bedroom. There was a long dining room and beyond that a kitchen. And then there was a porch on one side where the girls slept and a porch on the other side where the boys slept, and it was not a large house but it was adequate. When I was 6. . .when I was 7. . .my grandmother died, and there being four young children and four married children in the family, the home was broken up and one of the younger children went to live with each of the married children. MB: Now let's see. Which, this was on your mother's side, so it was the Biddlecome family, right? LB: Yes. Now my father's mother had died when he was four years old and I never saw her. My grandfather's second wife, Grandpa Deming's second wife, died two years before I was born. So I didn't meet either of those ladies. MB: Now your father worked for his father's farm. Was that true? 5 LB: Yes, my grandfather had had an injury when he was in his twenties and it caused a problem that forbade him doing any hard, menial labor of any kind. He was palsied after that time, a very debilitating thing. I remember him always filling a cup half full. Otherwise, the contents would spill as he lifted it toward his mouth because there was that much tremor in his hands. When they had moved to Arlington it was because my grandfather was bedridden with rheumatism. This condition had also, I guess, contributed to a rheumatic condition, and they had lived in Kansas where it became extremely cold. They had about four feet of snow a year. And so he sold his place there, a coal mine and a farm, and moved to Arizona on doctor's written orders. He said that he could not possibly survive in conditions that were there in Kansas. Now, father was fourteen years old at the time, and from that time forward he did a man's work every day of his life. He was put with a team and a scraper to work side by side with an adult man on building the canal. They were bringing the water down into our community, and he did the same work that the men did. MB: Now, how old was he when he married your mother? LB: He was twenty-seven. She was nineteen. No, he was 26. She was 19 and he was 26. Well, she was 19.I may have been right in the beginning. I think he had his 27th birthday the 28th of February and then she had her 20th birthday the 15th of August but they were married the 30th of June. I think that was the way it was. MB: Hmm. LB: He was seven years her senior. 6 MB: Tell us a little about how they met. Had he known her for quite some time? LB: He had admired her for quite some time. She was much younger than he, he felt, and the thing that finally precipitated it was his step grandmother, Sarah Perry. MB: Sarah Perry? LB: Uh-huh. She had picked out a girl, she decided it was time for him to marry because Caleb needed a woman in the house to cook and clean and take care of things. So it was time for Norman to be married and she picked out the girl. And my dad was not about to let her pick out anything for him and though Lucinda Henry was a very beautiful young woman and a very capable one, every asset you could ask for, he could not possibly marry her because Grandma Perry wanted her there. (Laughter.) MB: There was quite a bit of hostility between the two? LB: Well, she had been at the base of every problem he ever had. (Laughter.) And she was the real reason why he was so competent at needlework and things of that type, because the most degrading thing they could think of was to put him in the parlor and make him do needlework to pay for his sins, whatever they happened to be. And he did a lot of needlework! MB: When did he begin to ask your mother out? LB: Well, it was probably a little over a year before they married or before he proposed. Many things at that time were done in groups: hayrides, dances, parties where they sang and my dad loved to sing and so did my mother. And I believe that this was one of 7 the lodestones that brought them together was the music. And Dad played the violin and Mother played the piano a little, enough so that she could do chords while people sang. And they just had a lot in common in music. The hayrides were always fun in the moonlight, and sometimes they'd maybe be going on a "watermelon bust" they called it. They'd go to somebody's field and pick the ripe watermelons, break them, eat the hearts and discard the rest. Just so many things that people have forgotten all about nowadays, but were loads of fun for those people who participated. Dad was an accomplished cowboy. He had a friend who ran cattle on the open range. When he was sixteen, this friend had given him a horse and he dearly loved this horse. It was a very good one, and well-trained and well cared for. About this time my dad had learned to play the violin, though that was supposed to be an instrument of the devil according to Grandma Perry and she insisted that Caleb forbid Norman to have anything to do with such an instrument. And being a good son-in-law, Caleb fell in line. Anyway, he had stayed around the dances, he hadn't danced much, and he had just stayed around watching the fellow play his fiddle. And then one time the fellow laid it aside and went out to get himself a drink of water or something. When he got back he didn't come in: he stayed outside the door for quite a while, because Norman had picked up the violin and was playing it and people were dancing. The guitar accompanist, and the banjo accompanist, and there was one other in the group, I don't recall what he played. But, at any rate, everyone was busily playing one of the favorite melodies the gentleman played. He was an older person. He came over to my dad— dad saw him coming and was starting to apologize. He said: "Say, I'm glad to hear you play that thing, I get so tired of playing that thing all the time. How about spelling me quite often?" And then he 8 proceeded to help dad by showing him a few things that he could see he might improve himself with. They became fast friends. Then one day, for some reason, this violin he had just wasn't good enough and he bought himself a brand new one and he told dad that he could have the old one—which was much better than the new one--for five dollars. So dad bought himself a violin. He didn't ever play it around the house because he was sure grandpa would protest. Instead, he hid it in the grainery and whenever he was down in the south field (down in the "south sixty" they called it), he would take his violin along. While the horses rested—this was a must—he would play the violin and do his practicing. But Sarah came along the road, down that way instead of around her usual route, and she heard him playing the violin. She got out of her buggy and went over and peeked through the salt cedar to make sure that he was the one that was doing it. She went on to the house and she told Caleb what was going on behind his back and that that fiddle must be destroyed. Caleb challenged Norman when he got home, back at the house, about playing the violin. Dad told him yes, he had bought himself a violin and he was going to play it, he was going to learn how to use it. My grandfather said he was not to play it, he was not to own one and that it was said that, “it was said that it was an instrument of the devil.” Of course, he didn't have to say who said it! Anyway, when Dad came back to the house another day it had been broken. The thing was completely demolished and he was so angry that he left home. He was sixteen at the time and he went to California. Norman went to San Francisco, and he stayed in a hotel there, a four-story structure. He received a telegram from his father that his horse was sick, there was no one there to take care of it, and he'd have to shoot it if it didn't get better or if Normie didn't come home to take care of it. He told the truth 9 but the idea of shooting that horse was ridiculous. When Dad left San Francisco, it was the day before the big earthquake there. And this hotel in which he had been staying was the one that dropped down so that people in the top story were able to step out on the street and the people in the stories below that were mostly killed. MB: And he was sixteen at the time? LB: Yes, he was sixteen. He came back home. His dad told him if he could get another violin he could have it. I'm not at all sure that Grandpa was the one who destroyed it, because I always suspect Grandma Perry of being the one that did all of those dastardly things. (Laughter.) At any rate, he allowed it to happen and my dad thought was the fellow who destroyed it. But Grandma may have had Arch with her and he would have loved to do that. You know, I can't feature Grandpa doing something like that. MB: Now, your father stayed at home eleven years after that, though he came back at sixteen? LB: Well, no, not all that time. He came back at sixteen and he was still there when he was married: yes, he had been there... I think he was away a short time. I'm insecure on this, so I'll not record it, but I was born in 1910. They were married on the 30th of June, 1909. I was born the 29th of July, 1910, and we were there until after my first birthday, and I'm not sure what month we left but I think it was right after the harvest which would be completed in August and Dad took a place on the Southern Pacific Railroad as an electrician. Electricity was a new idea in those days, there were practically no safety measures you would count on, and even those that they had, people did not respect. They did not understand the dangers. My dad and two other men, a friend of his and 10 then one man who became his friend later because they worked together, all started on the same day. At the end of a year both of those other men were dead: electrocuted through one thing or another. Never their own fault. Always something someone else had done or failed to do. Dad looked the situation over and he was thinking over seriously about the hazards, you know, he had two children and Mother was staying in Tempe, so they were apart most of the time. He was home as often as he could get there, but very often had to fill in for somebody else who was asked and didn't always make it home on weekends as he had been promised he would. He continued to work for a little over a year, I believe. And Mother in the meantime had been moved to Winslow. She was going to have her third child. I was aged three and almost three months, I guess. Let's see. Actually, only about two months, because I was born the 2 9th of July and Gordon was born the 8th of October. But Mother was living in Winslow. She was put there because it was a place Dad would be, absolutely, twice a week. And then schedules were changed and this was no longer true. And he had hired a woman to stay with Mother and she was supposed to be someone who had experience in practical nursing. He gave her forty dollars advance wages because she was destitute and had to have it. And the next day she went off with a drummer who came through on the train. So Mother was left with the small children and to have another one. And no one in the place that she knew and no help and Dad's schedule at this time had been switched. So it was a little time before he got up there and when he did the baby was three days old. MB: I remember the story that you were told to get help from the lady across the street. Was that right? 11 LB: Well, I'm not sure about that. I don't think so. I think what you are remembering is my story about taking care of Jack. He was as tall as I and outweighed me a little bit, but not nearly so quick. Of course, he was only seventeen months old and we were there without a yard and right on the railroad track. That is the way the section houses were built in those days. So Mother went out with a stick and drew a line and told me that I must never, ever let Jack cross that line that no matter what I was to try to get him to come back with me. If he wouldn't, I was to knock him down. I was to do anything I could, but not let him go across that line. So this I did. A neighbor woman, looking out her window, decided I must be the meanest child in the whole world because of the way I treated that baby. He would be playing and having a good time and not bothering me at all and I would suddenly run and push him over so he fell. And this went on for two or three days and she couldn't understand why that woman didn't get out there and see about it. She came over and said there I was pushing that baby over and she couldn't take any more of it, and so she went over to tell that woman to take better care of her baby. When she got there, here she found "that woman" in bed with a new baby and the only way she could take care of the year-and-a-half-old child was the way it was being done. And she was so upset that she hadn't known the predicament we were in, and she wanted to know how she had food. Mother said oh, I took care of that. Letha washed the dishes. She would get up long enough to start the gas under the food, and I could turn it off, I could stir it, things of that nature. And we were getting along just fine, she claimed. But from that moment on I didn't get to prepare any meals or do any of the cooking or any of those big things that made me feel so important. All I could do was 12 take care of my brother, and if I needed help with that all I had to do was call our neighbor. Her name was Stevie and she surely was an excellent neighbor. MB: Well, then you were about four when you moved back to Arlington. Is that right? LB: Yes. Gordon was… no, I wasn't quite four yet. We went back soon after Christmas, I believe. We went to Arlington to visit for Christmas and Dad had to go to Tucson to do something for the railroad, something in the electrical line, and he turned off the switch that would protect him while he repaired the thing needed to be repaired, and some know-it-all came along and switched that switch back on. But dad had developed a habit of always testing things before he put himself in a difficult or dangerous position and because of this he was not killed. But it was the same kind of thing that had happened to his two friends. So he went immediately and turned in his resignation. They said he had promised to give them so much notice. He said "you also promised to protect me." And he said "you are not doing your job and I'm not doing this one any longer," and he went home, went back to Winslow and took the family back to Arlington. We were with my grandmother for a little while and Grandpa Deming was eager to get dad back on the ranch. He felt he needed him and a son's obligation, and all that kind of stuff, you know, and he promised dad that the place was half his, that "It'll be half yours," he said. "I won't handle the whole thing." He said: "You take care of your part and I'll see that nobody interferes," and this was the agreement on which he went back to the Deming ranch and that was before I was four. I don't know, I think it was before Easter time because we had a picture of Grandma's place right after Easter and that's when we decided that Gordon knew all the people around by name. We sat in a circle and my 13 Uncle Farrel would say: "Hit Leo," and he'd whack Leo with a stick. "Hit Letha." (Laughter.) And we were all so thrilled with the baby, because he was just a little bit of a fellow. Barely sitting up. MB: How long did your father work for the Deming ranch then, before… LB: Well, he was there until I was nine. After Virginia was born, this was in the fall, the harvest was done and there was a forced sale, forced by Grandma Perry. MB: There she is again. LB: Our nemesis again. She decided that Ralph must have his share. He was eleven and he had to have his money. I don't know what she wanted it for. MB: Had Grandpa Deming died? LB: No! But you see, Arizona law is they have in-property community property there and on the death of one parent the other takes it in trust for the child or children. And half of it belongs to the children because it belonged to the mother. Ida died. That gave half of it to Ralph. MB: Oh, she died when he was eleven? LB: No, Ida died when he was born, or within a week after his birth, or soon after. She had had a child that died at birth and they used turpentine on her breasts to dry up the milk. And this hardened the milk in the breasts, according to the way I've been told, and when she started lactation after Ralph's birth it killed her. Now, I'm not too sure of my science there, but that's the story. She had been dead before Mother and Dad were married. 14 This was why Grandmother Perry was setting Dad up to marry Lucinda. Incidentally, Lucinda was always a wonderful friend of the family. MB: Well, then, after you were nine where did the family go? LB: We moved up to what was called the "Flower Pot Place." It was just up the road a halfmile from the Deming place. There was a great big place that had been called the "cowcamp," because when there were roundups in the community why, the cowboys usually all congregated there. They had holding corrals and things like this. There was a windmill that pumped water. And it was really an interesting place and we had lots of fun there because there were so many things dad didn't think to tell us not to do that we couldn't do down at the Deming Ranch because we had always been told not to. But we had a lot more freedom here because Dad was so very busy trying to establish himself somehow, because this came as a complete surprise to him and to my grandfather. MB: Well, why did they have to go through with it, just because? LB: She brought suit. It was all very legal. She brought suit to claim...now she knew the agreement grandpa had made when dad came back on the ranch but there was still sixty acres of ground to clear with mesquite, and that is rough stuff to work in. And dad had cleared all the land now, everything was producing, and it was a boom year--they just had a wonderful crop—and before the crop could be sold she had this claim slapped on the place and she took half of everything. Grandpa had to have his half to re-establish himself. He was not able to work. All dad had was the machinery he had invested his part of the proceeds from the ranch. And when you are forced to sell, and 15 selling at a time when harvest was done, and machinery not needed, it was just a killer all the way around. And here we had a new baby just come home, that was Virginia. MB: That was what, the fifth child? LB: She was the fifth. And Dad had to sell the machinery where he could. It really pulled the rug out from under him. And years of living on a promise, because it was supposed to be half his. Grandpa didn't… MB: But they had never put that in writing? LB: Well, there was writing, but this other superseded it, you see. It should have been done legally, and dad being the kind of person he was he couldn't take grandpa's half. And that is what it would have amounted to. But he should have taken half of it. I think it would have been good for Grandpa. In the end, the Perry’s were the ones who got it all, anyway. You see, he married a third time. It was Grandma Perry's sister he married this time and she died of cancer and dad went up there many, many times with his wonderful hands to help her. It was tragic, the whole thing. MB: Now the family stayed there and farmed on that farm. LB: We didn't farm. MB: Oh, you didn't? LB: Oh, you mean the Flower Pot? That was just a cowhand's paradise. We lived there. And Dad made a trip to Holbrook and Winslow. He had some mining claims up in there. He sold some of them and used the money for the support of the family while he was going through this difficult time. Also, he was in Holbrook when he got the cigar. He had sold 16 one of his mines and he knew this fellow in the store, he went in, and the fellow treated him to a cigar. He said this called for a celebration and he broke out this fancy box of Havana cigars. Afterward, Dad had this terrible infection in the glands underneath his throat and there was all this tremendous swelling. It was a dreadful infection and the doctor said that he had heard of a poison that the Germans put into some products that was in the country. So they obtained the rest of the cigars from this man in Holbrook. Something happened that he didn't smoke his. He laid it down and he didn't smoke it and dad got the first cigar out of the box. He had sold one or two, but for some reason they hadn't been smoked either. Dad was the only one who smoked from the box. But they ran those through a laboratory test and found the poison that caused the problem, and these were put in by the German agents trying to win the war. And he was very, very sick for a long time. It took a long while to get him back where he felt right. Now, it had been just, I think when I was eight, that he had these offers of the, from the baseball clubs, one from Chicago and one from New York. And the scouts had come to Arlington just to watch dad play and that's the time we went to the, we had been lax in getting our chores done, and so when it came time to go, we had to finish our chores and then we could walk up. So we hurried as fast as we could and then we ran that mile. Because the diamond was right back of the store and we had to cross the canal which was exactly one fourth of a mile from the batting box on base and just as we started to cross that canal here came a ball that landed in the canal. And we knew it was our dad who batted that ball because nobody else could bat a ball that far. And on the basis of that, I think, he got these offers he had for the ball clubs. MB: Well, did he ever farm again then, after you were nine? 17 LB: Oh yes, this was much later, though. MB: You stayed in the Arlington area while he did other things, then? LB: Yes, and usually he worked for somebody else. The dam, the Gillespie Dam, was built. I was eleven and twelve during that period, and dad worked down there for over a year. They came and asked him. They said they heard he understood boilers and dad said yes, he had worked around them on the railroad, and so they asked him to come down and see if he could get their boilers going. The fellow who had the job did not understand his work and he had installed things incorrectly and they just weren't working. So dad went down and he got things straightened out and then they asked him to stay and supervise all of this boiler work down there. And he stayed until the dam was finished and he did the boiler work. Here was something that I find intriguing, my sisters find it outrageous; my dad never in his life asked for a job. In spite of all of the problems that we had and the times like the awful Depression, he never asked for a job. People had to come to him and ask him to come and work for them, please, and that's the way he did it. MB: Was he ever, he was never without a job, however, he was just asked quite... LB: Not usually. There were times when it was pretty difficult. As I say, the Depression years, there weren't jobs available. People who would normally employ you didn't have what it took to do the job. They didn't have the money. During that time, someone brought my dad a job application and he was asked if he could do something or other, if he had any experience in this particular line, and he said no he didn't, which was true. However, with his mind it would have taken him fifteen minutes to figure it out and do a 18 better job than the guy who took it, who was Arch Perry. This relative who sometimes didn't treat us quite the way he should have, and whom I suspect of breaking the violin. Yes, he worked for Laurids Anderson on the Hill Ranch. He worked there because Laurids came to him and told him he had to have a good man on the machinery and he couldn't get anybody to fix it right, and he had to bring people down from Phoenix and that sort of thing. So dad, as a favor to Laurids, went to work on the Hill Ranch and he got all of the machinery operating and then did 99 other things, as usual. MB: Now, I remember some early stories about the Papago Indians who lived nearby. Tell us about that. LB: Every year, the Indians would come down the river to gather materials to make baskets and to make pottery. The year I was born, in fact, the day I was born, the Indians were coming down the river and there was a flash flood that forced them to higher ground. They built a camp just maybe a quarter of a mile from our house. They had made this makeshift shelter. It was not raining but the wind was blowing and they had got settled, the family saw them doing this and I had been born that morning about six o'clock. Dad was in the master bedroom with Mother, and they heard this wail and another and another and they decided there certainly was trouble. And so dad hurried to see what the trouble was. He found the Indians all huddled in this shelter, but the wailing outside. There was a young Papago woman who was giving birth to her first baby, and according to tribal custom she had gone out to this sand wash, had dug out a small pit, and she was squatted above this. She was all by herself remember. She had a basket and it was lined with some material. When the baby was born she took the baby and put 19 it in the basket. And she covered all of the waste materials in the sandwash. She did all of this herself. This was Papago custom, and the way it was done. (And later, she was going to have another baby and she was in the camp there by our place.) At that point dad told them that there was a better place to make their camp, a place which was nice and clean. It was down by a big granite boulder just across the canal from the house and he would offer that place to them to camp anytime they wanted to come through. They thought it would be nicer to go down the canal and cut off some of the hard travel down the river so from then on they always camped, twice a year, just across the canal from our house. And, of course, while they were there they were welcome to separated milk, which we pay such a price for now. They were given eggs, and grain, and honey, just almost anything that they could want if they let it be known, why it was theirs. And because dad had shown up—he wanted to go out to help this girl and they told him no, that was taboo—and so he began talking with them. He knew some of their language but he learned it very rapidly after they began coming through and stopping consistently. And, as I recall, he could talk that as well as he could Mexican. He was very fluent. And he talked with them, and a time or two things showed up that they couldn't handle, and dad would be the go-between, between them and the doctor. He would go to the store, call the doctor, discuss the problem and see how he could mediate to get it taken care of. One year, Rosie, this little girl who was born that evening was named Rosie, and she was born on my birthday, and she was always my fast friend. Of course, I don't remember her until we returned to Arlington, but when I was four, they came immediately to see us. They even came, I think, a week early that year to get down there so they could visit with us because we were home. They had a 20 problem of some sort, I don't recall what it was they told me. But the next year Rosie's mother was going to have a baby and this one she could not deliver by herself. She was about to die, and so the head of the family, the clan, came and asked my dad if he would come and help them. And so he said, "No, you bring her to my house." So he put her on the table where I had been delivered. He had practically an identical problem there of the baby being in the wrong position and the baby was delivered safely, and my dad was the one who did the job. From then on, he was the one they went to for every problem of help so long as we could be found, even when we were not in the valley there, if they could find us they would come and ask dad to come and help, because they would not go to a doctor. They didn't trust them. They didn't approve of their methods. But Rosie was my friend. She was a cute little girl and she taught me how to make pottery, and she taught me how to weave a basket, and she taught me how to make little play dolls. And I taught her lots of things, too. We went out in the corn patch and got these little extra ears would start to grow on an ear of corn, they called them corn babies, and we had great times together. She was a cute little girl and very bright. She learned very quickly. I taught her to sing. I taught her to play a lot of games and mother was teaching, you see, the year I was four. And that's the year we came back. And we were on the Ranch when the Indians came in the spring. And then, again, as they returned in the mid-summer. So I think we must have been there in May and August when they came through. MB: Now, later your family moved to Goldroads, Arizona. When was that? LB: This was after I married. From, let's see, I can't remember. I think we were down on the old Biddlecome place when I was ten. And then we moved over on the old Robert's 21 place. When I was eleven and twelve we lived there. That was a bad place to live because we had to haul all of the water we used. And that is a dreadful imposition. But this is where we lived when dad was working at the dam. We did have the old Biddlecome place and were doing some gardening then, but it had been sold to the point where there was not enough to really farm, you see. There was a flood, a big flood. This was where we lost our treasures I talk about sometimes. We had to get out in the night. MB: This was when you were twelve? LB: No, this was before that. I was ten. I'm sure this is right, because it was before Margie was born. And that was when we went up to the Robert's place because it was on high ground and it was a vacant house at that time and we stayed up there for a couple of years while dad was working down at the dam. MB: Well, tell me about the flood. I don't remember hearing that. LB: The Hassayampa and the Salt were both in flood that time and instead of the Hassayampa going down to join the other river it came over its banks and cut a new channel and headed right down into our road, into our valley. And when dad got the word—somebody came riding horseback through the Valley, warning everybody. They got the news at the store where the phone was, and then this person got on a horse and came through the valley telling people about it. So dad got the horses, hooked them up to the big hayrack. They put doors and window screens and everything up on the rafters of the big main room of the house, and then put all kinds of household goods up there. What they had to have to camp out for a little bit they put on this hayrack, the bed and 22 the utensils and things to get by. They picked up a few chickens that went in the henhouse and took them along, but a bunch of them had taken refuge in the trees and we just left those. They got by just fine. The boys went to drive the cows to high ground and they got back just as we were ready to drive out of the yard, and we were all on this big hayrack. Mother and dad and the baby, Virginia, were on the seat up front and the rest of us were on the back. Well, mother had taken all of her very dear keepsakes and put in this one big orange crate. They used wooden orange boxes in those days and it was nailed shut and it was on the seat beside her. We were going up the road and were probably a half-mile from where the road turned up to go to higher ground when we heard the water coming. So dad immediately turned the horses up a very steep bank to get them out of the road and when that wall of water came down it was at least twentyfive feet high. It was just roaring, waving, just huge waves. It was a very dark, stormy night and we couldn't see very well. But dad had this lantern and we had just. We were almost up when this box slid off the wagon. Mother had to hold the baby or the box, so, of course, she held the baby. But they went up an embankment and we had to make our way through mesquite and it was very rough going. Dad got us up out of the way of the water and then he stopped. I remember him using an axe to clear a way for us to go because the mesquites were too thick for us to go through. We went up to the Robert's place then and we camped out for two or three days until we could get our things moved up there. But mother lost so many things that were dear to her in that box. Too bad we didn't just put it up in the rafters with everything else. MB: The other things survived? 23 LB: Everything else was intact. Nobody bothered or. . . In those days people didn't go and vandalize or steal. We were in a valley where that just simply was unknown. And we kept it that way by keeping that type of people from moving in. 24