LA PLATA COUNTY SERIES

2008-12-12T20:56:00.000-08:00

BUY NOVELS WITH LA PLATA COUNTY SETTING

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Luther%20Butler&page=1

TucK

2008-10-08T10:04:00.000-07:00

TUCK
NOVEL BY
Luther Butler

List Price: $7.98

Amazon's Price: $7.98

Description

Tuck was orphaned when cruel Indians killed his mother on their farm in Kentucky. Left to die along the trail he was saved by Old Ed. The tender boy was taken to Matagorda, Texas where he grew up with his human family of Old Ed, Molly, Freck, Jim,Tad and two ex-slaves. Mixed into the family were a bunch of animals with funny names such as Squint Eyed, Crooked Horn, Spot, and several thousand longhorns, and some very unusual Savages. Mix all of these characters with two cattle drives from Texas to San Diego and you have Tuck the damnedest saga of the West you ever read. Let three brothers fall in love with the same dance hall girl; lead them into the Civil War, and when brother fights brother and you have a love story you can't put down.
href="http://www.caiman.com/Caiman/details.cfm?ASIN=073889933X">

MELVIN BUTLER'S LIFE

2008-07-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

1957 Melvin and his family

MY BROTHER MELVIN LEFT THIS JOURNAL ABOUT HIS LIFE IN LA PLATA COUNTY

Melvin Butler My Life and Times

Early Days in Durango
1
My folks came to Durango Colorado in the spring of 1918. Their names were David Homer (D.H.) Butler and Melinda Anne (Lennie) Jenkins-Butler. The reason for moving to Colorado was to accompany my Uncle Lester and Aunt Mary Butler. My Uncle Lester (W. L.) was in the final stage of tuberculosis and needed to live in a higher and drier climate. D.H. and W.L. were brothers and Lennie and Mary were sisters.
Both families traveled together, coming over Wolf Creek Pass in a 1913 Model- T Ford. My brother George and I and my cousins Lois, Jane and Norman were riding in the car with one adult while the remaining adults were pushing to get the car over the pass.
A brick house in North Durango on west second was home for both families for a period of time. Then my Uncle Lester and Aunt Mary moved to Dolores and my Uncle became a W.T. Raleigh salesman.
Dad ran a second hand store in a two-story building on Main Street in Durango; it's located just north of the Durango Herald. He also sold Singer Sewing Machines and Baldwin Pianos from Pagosa Springs to Dove Creek.
During the summer of 1922 we lived in a cabin on the west side of Mancos Hill, which Dad obtained in exchange for a piano or sewing machine. During my childhood we spent time on several different occasions at that cabin.
HOMESTEAD EXPERIENCES
In Oct. 1922 we moved to the 200-acre homestead located four miles west of Kline Colo. and three-fourths mile west of the Redmesa Reservoir. We made this move by team and wagon. It was a very hard winter with at least two feet of snow with no roads or snowplow. The first few months we lived in a tent. The homestead dwellings were for the most part very simple crude structures. About March, we moved into a house Dad and a neighbor had built. It was built of poles set in a foursided trench. Cedar poles were set on the corners, with pinon poles set upright in the trench between. It had 1" un-planed lumber for flooring. The roof was constructed with 2x4 rafters covered with un-planed boards and then with tarpaper as a final covering. The walls were plastered with mud and straw. This building was crude, but warmer than most frame houses of the time. These houses were framed with rough two by fours and un-planed lumber. There was no insulation and many times newspaper was pasted to the walls and then it was painted with calcimine. Some homes had cisterns made of jug shaped holes plastered with cement and sand for water storage. Many used fifty gallon wooden barrels, which were filled at the river or springs. A neighbor told me the dry-land farmers eleventh commandment was, Six days shalt thou haul water and on the seventh day thou shalt grease thy wagon.
The first winter, my brother George and I, walked four miles to a two-room school at Kline. The teachers were Mrs. Pearl Crawford and Mrs. McClendon. The roads were not maintained at this time. The latter part of the winter we attended a one-room school held in what is now known as the Cater house located one-fourth mile north of
2
the Lyle Wiltse homestead. Thirteen students were attending this school (Myrtle, Hubert and Harris Booker, George and Melvin Butler, two or three daughters of the John Butler family and at least two of Lyle Wiltse's sons) Miss Underhill was the teacher. Miss Underhill was engaged to marry the Wiltse boy who was killed that spring at a dance at the Pleasantview School.
The next two winters we attended school on the Cain homestead, about two and a half miles away. The school district, known as the Rockvale district, was twelve miles long and three miles wide. The Rockvale school, a solidly built sandstone building, (which is still standing), served about 40 students. They came from coal mining families in the upper end of the district and children who lived on ranches and farms. The district allowed the children in the south end a teacher from Nov. thru April. This school was held in the Cain house. This was an abandoned one-room farmhouse, about twelve feet by sixteen feet. It had a cistern that held about five hundred gallons of water. This was filled at the beginning of school. We drank from a two-gallon bucket with a dipper. The house was in heavy pinon and cedar timber. This school had twelve students, eleven boys and one girl. As there were no toilets, the boys were to use the timber on one side and the teacher and the one girl the other side. There were no roads, only two tracks. George and I just had a trail through the sagebrush and timber. Our teacher, Miss Jesse Bell, was in her early twenties, and this was her first teaching assignment. She boarded with the Young family about a half-mile from the school. She was a wonderful teacher, although I am sure we drove her out of her mind at times. The students took turns arriving at school fifteen minutes early to start the fire in the coal heater .The teacher would pay that student a quarter. There was no walk to shovel, so therefore no shovel. That first year none of us were over nine years old. We worry about kids being unruly today, we weren't exactly little saints. When the teacher paddled us, we were smart enough not to tell Mom, as we would get another licking. Anyway at times, I am sure Miss Bell felt like screaming. One day at noon, on a snowy day, she wanted us outside. She volunteered to play follow the leader, with her leading. Anyway after a few circles in the timber she was lost. She kept the first grade boy with her and told the rest of us to scatter out, and the first one there to ring the hand bell. It was snowing heavily, but within ten minutes we were all at the school. By second recess teacher and the first grader walked in. We were throwing erasers and having fun. Needless to say the teacher was irritated and kept us in school until almost dusk that day. Another time, we all got the giggles and giggled at everything. Teacher was almost frantic; I had slid down in my seat giggling behind my Geography book. She put her knee in my stomach and grabbed me by the hair and said," are you going to stop it?" Every shake I said, "yes ma'am", and sure enough, I was cured. Another time, we boys were playing follow the leader. It was a windy day and you couldn't hear anything, even a few feet away. George was leading, and he said, "here's the teachers tracks, let's follow them." Quite suddenly he ran onto the teacher. She was squatted down doing her duty. He jumped right over her, and the rest of us scattered. After noon hour, we went red-faced into school. The
3
teacher said for us not to go into the woods as we might see a bear.
There was a man who turned his pack burros loose to graze in the sagebrush and fields for the winter. We kids would capture a burro or two and ride them to school. There was a wire corral that we kept them in. Once in a while we would be late, and turn our animal in the corral, and run for school, forgetting our lunch pail. The burros would get our pails open and eat everything. On these occasions everyone shared. George and I had empty lard pails to carry our lunches in. One day I had half a bucket of lard for lunch. Miss Bell taught us for two years.
Miss Bell taught school for years. She didn't marry until after her mother died. She married a widower named Coon. In later years I met her at the Nazarene Church in Durango. She played the piano for them. I was pleased but embarrassed, when she told people that I was one of her best students.
The next two years, school was held, in an empty two-room house, a mile and a half to the east. The Kimsey place, (this house was the farmhouse that my wife Eula, daughter Linda, and I moved into after getting out of the Navy in Sept. 1945). An older lady, Mrs. Wyatt, taught us, and there were no more shenanigans. Mrs. Wyatt lived in Redmesa. During the week she lived in one room of the school. Her husband would come with a team and wagon and take her home for the weekend. Mr. Snyder of Durango taught the next year. They still had school at that house, but we moved to Durango Co. for the winter. We moved back the following spring. One evening my brothers, George, Raymond, and I were coming home from school on our burros. Raymond was thrown and kicked in the mouth. The other burro fell over Raymond and George's leg was broken. I tied a burro to a fresno and pulled it backwards over the snow. We got George inside and I went to the Thompson's and borrowed a horse. I rode four miles to Kline and Mrs. Holgate called Dr. Smith. It was near midnight before the doctor came and set George's leg. Mom suffered a miscarriage from this episode. The doctor treated her when he returned the next evening.
Dr. Smith was the only doctor in a fifteen or twenty mile radius. He and his wife lived at Marvel, which was six miles from us. He lived a very rugged life but was a very kind and dedicated man. In winter he made house calls for miles with a horse and buggy, in the summer he used a Model- T Ford. His charge was $1 per mile one-way that many times he didn't get. During that time the medicine chest contained very few items. Kerosene and sugar for cough syrup, turpentine, mustard plaster, and mentholatum for rubbing chests, black draught and calomel were standbys for liver and bile attacks as well as fever. Good old Castor oil and epsom salts for laxatives. Aspirin wasn't here yet. Iodine, creosote and peroxide were used for cuts and infections. Paregoric was used for colic and also given as a painkiller.
THE TRIP FROM CLEBURNE TO MANCOS
In 1929, when I was fourteen years old, we spent most of the winter at Uncle AI Jones, in Cleburne, Texas. My brother George, and I went to school in Cleburne. I was in the seventh grade and he was in his first year in high school. Dad got impatient to head back to Colorado, and we started back in May, before school was
4
out. Dad turned in his old, 1913 Model T Ford for a 1925 Model T truck, paying perhaps $150 difference. We started out with our belongings in the truck, with Dad driving the truck, and Mom driving the Model T coupe, with me by her side to pull the emergency brake if she got excited and forgot to hit the brake.
The old truck had rotten tires on the rear so every few miles we had flats to fix. George and I had to pump up the tire with a hand-pump.
We had no money, so we were broke by the time we reached Wichita Falls, Texas. We camped at filling stations that had sheds built for campers. The sheds were free if you bought gas or groceries from the station. We worked a few days at chopping cotton, for a dollar a day, from daybreak to sunset. Mom worked with us, as she was faster than Dad and we boys. They had twenty or so choppers with an overseer to watch our progress. The chopping hoes were about 12 inches wide, to thin the cotton. You had to chop Johnson grass and crab grass out of the rows also. I was fired after 3 days, as I would get nervous when the overseer watched me chop too much cotton.
After a week, we got a tank-full of gas ahead, plus a few groceries, and we headed up the road. We camped out in a swale about a half-mile wide, around Electra Tex. We had a tent that we fastened to the side of the truck to sleep in. There were oil wells with pumps all across the valley. In the early evening, it began to pour down rain, and the water kept rising to almost a foot deep. It was to late to move the truck; we moved our belongings into the truck and waded out to a filling station about a quarter of a mile away. We stayed until about midnight when the storm abated, and we thought the danger of a tornado was over. We rented a tourist cabin that was attached to about 4 other cabins, with carports in between each cabin. It started to rain again and the wind started to gale strength. A sort of twister, picked the cabins up, swinging our end in a half circle and breaking loose the gas line on the other end. Dad and I were leaning on the door to keep it shut. Mom was praying. Raymond and Frances were excited, and George went under the bed. About 2 or 3 in the morning things quieted down, and some slept on the bed, and the rest on the floor. The next morning we went back to camp and straightened out things the best we could. The tent was saturated in oil and the bedding and our clothes were soaking wet. We lit the coleman camp stove and Mom cooked a breakfast of sorts.
We traveled a few miles that day and camped at another little store and campground. Being broke, Dad again pawned George's and my watches for groceries. These watches, a Waltham, and a silver faced watch with the balance wheel showing on the front, he traded for in Rico Colorado. Neither one would run for more than an hour or 2. He gave them to us and would always redeem them before leaving.
Anyway we got a job suckering corn for a prosperous farmer. He said that if we could keep up with his boys he would pay us one dollar a day each. We drove out to the field but saw no one in the waist -high corn. Soon, 2 guys got up and began working, throwing corn suckers. We walked out where they were. They said, "We thought you were our Dad", Our Model T coupe was exactly the same as their Dads. The boys
5
were about 28 or 30 years old. One was married and had a baby several months old, that hadn't been named yet, because nothing suited the old folks. We started pulling suckers on two rows each. About half way down the row, Dad whispered, "I don't think we can keep up". I told him, "They are just taking one row each". So when we got through the field we changed to one row, and had no trouble keeping up. At lunchtime, went to the house, and the old man said that lunch did not go with the deal. Anyway they fed us. In a week's time, we finally had enough money to gas up and move on to Claude Texas.
Between Electra and Claude our food money ran out. Dad fixed phonographs, clocks, and sewing machines for a dollar or two. Sometimes taking milk or eggs for pay. On one occasion, he had a gallon of milk in a galvanized bucket that had been used for gasoline the day before. I can still remember the taste, but we were hungry enough that we drank it anyway.
In Claude Texas we camped at a filling station and grocery campground. It was wheat harvest time and George, Dad and I were paid $2.50 a day for shocking bundles of grain. George had a job handling 4 horses cultivating on a section of maize. They had a wagon parked in the field with hay and grain for the horses. A bad hailstorm came up and George unhooked the horses and tied them to the wagon. George crawled under the wagon for protection but the horses broke loose. The boss and my brother had a wild time catching them. This farmer had a bunkhouse for the workers. George was tired and went to bed early. He dozed off and excitedly called, "Mama, Mama". One of the men said, "what is it George"? George answered, "Look at the little red wagon Santa brought me". Of course he got a ribbing over that!
We soon had enough money to buy good tires for the truck. Dad got a job hauling grain from a combine to the granaries. We had to shovel grain from the truck, this was before augers and it was a lot of work. Grain was shoveled from granaries to box cars when shipped. It was a bumper crop and they could not get railroad cars fast enough to keep up with the harvest. After the granaries were filled, we hauled grain to an elevator about 6 miles away. The old truck didn't have enough power to pull up to the elevator with 2 tons of grain. There was always a long line of trucks waiting to unload, so there was plenty of help to push the truck up the ramp to the elevator. When the elevator could handle no more grain they would unload the grain into huge piles in vacant lots. As long as the piles were rounded out the rainwater would run off.
One day George and I were out of work. We were waiting for a farmer to hire us when an operator of a theater asked if we wanted to work. We cleaned the theatre in about 2 hours and swept up a couple dollars in change. We were paid in tickets for a two nights showing of, Uncle Tom's Cabin. This was the first time we went to the movies so we enjoyed it very much.
When the harvest work played out, we camped in Raton, New Mexico. Our sister, Frances became violently ill. The Doctor termed it typhoid fever. She was about 7
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
6
years old. We moved over the hill to Trinidad, Colorado. Dad rented an apartment in a house of ill repute that had been closed by the city. The building looked luxurious and was carpeted with red carpet and the sofas and chairs were upholstered in red also. George and I did not understand about this but I knew Mom didn't like it. Anyway we got a good Doctor and Frances survived. She must have been a hardy child as she had diphtheria as a baby in Durango, Colorado. Then she had pneumonia at 3 years of age in Gallup, New Mexico. All of these were deadly illnesses at the time.
We stayed in Trinidad until Frances was well again. Dad fixed sewing machines and He, George and I did yard work, hauled ashes and trash for income. Dad traded for some goat cheese that a Mexican family had made. It smelled like Limburger cheese. George and I ate it. Mom made us keep it outside between the window and screen.
We traveled on to the San Luis Valley. Eating lunch at La Veta, we were playing around the park and discovered about 50 copies of The Saturday Evening Post, in a big culvert. They were new and had another week before the date of sale. We figured someone had stolen them and hid them. We peddled them between there and Ft. Garland. Dad had bought oatmeal, raisins and coffee wholesale to sell at residences along the road. It was in bulk and didn't sell, so we had several months supply of oatmeal and coffee. The raisins were eaten up fairly quickly. This was the only coffee we drank for years because the folks didn't care for it. We arrived in the San Luis Valley around the 1st of July. We went to work for the Japanese farmers cutting head lettuce and cauliflower and picking peas. They paid us $2.50 for an 8hour day. The County agent looked after the old Fort Garland and rented us a couple of rooms to live in. The Japanese were very nice to work for and were very hard workers. The women tied the cauliflower leaves around the heads to bleach them and mark which day to harvest the heads. I don't know how they figured this out, as they tied 3 or 4 days harvesting at a time. They had several colors of twine and this way we cut a different color each day, throwing the heads into a wagon to be taken to the packing plant. This was before refrigeration so the boxcars had ice bins at each end where blocks of ice were stacked. The ice was cut from ponds in the winter. The temperature would get down to 30 degrees below zero and freeze the ice 18 to 24 inches thick. The ice was sawed from the pond in blocks about 18 inches wide and 24 inches long. It was then stored in sawdust in ice sheds to keep for the summer.
Back to working for the Japanese farmers, I was afraid these hardworking people might have lost their farms in W.W.II and put in concentration camps. As for living in Ft. Garland it was very interesting for George and me. We found equipment like packsaddles, harnesses, and items used in the Indian fighting days. The cannon and cannonballs and some artifacts were still there. The building walls were made of adobe bricks at least 24" thick. The water was pumped by hand from a well in the courtyard and the toilet was over a hole several feet deep. The Fort at present is under the Park service.
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
7
About Sept. 1st we moved to Alamosa Colorado and rented a house for the winter. It was a frame structure with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room with one faucet in the kitchen and an outhouse by the alley. As I remember rent was $30 a month. George and I worked at farm work haying at Mosca about 30 miles north of Alamosa. Mosca means mosquito in Spanish. They ate on the horses more than us.
Covering their neck and shoulders. After that we worked shocking grain and hay for a Mr. Kencannon, (later we learned he was an uncle of Maurice Butler's wife Louise). He had a son our age and we worked together a day or two. There were wild ducks in the swamp nearby and we took turns sneaking off and taking a shot at them with a single shot 22-caliber rifle. We didn't get a duck but received a talking to from the boss. He said 1 boy equaled 1 boy, 2 boys equaled 1/2 a boy, and 3 boys equaled no boys at all. He put each of us in a separate field. I don't remember what Dad was doing at this time but we got together again working in the potato harvest. We tried picking up potatoes but didn't last long. About 6 men made up a crew. They had a sorter pulled by one horse. This screened out the small potatoes and a man sacked and sewed the 100- pound bags. They paid ten cents a hundred to pick them up in wire baskets and dump them in the sorter. The fast pickers tried to pick one hundred sacks a day. You weren't wanted if you couldn't keep up. We didn't make it. Dad drove the old Ford and we hauled the sacks to the cellar. George and I took turns lifting the bags and stacking them on the truck.
In Nov. as usual, we went to school. George went first year high school again and I took another try at 8th grade in East Alamosa Elementary. We had to take turns helping Dad peddle produce in Alamosa and towns in the south end of the valley. Dad had 2 truckloads of apples from Mancos and Salida. The produce was bought from wholesale and the potatoes and beans from the farmers. A lot of the older Spanish people didn't speak English and we learned the language well enough to say what we had to sell and make change. A Mexican man named Joe also helped Dad through the winter. He was a pleasant guy but his wife was missing in the spring. On asking Joe about her. He said, "His husband came and got him". The Mexicans got him and her mixed-up. We found the houses with signs that announced, "NO PEDDLERS ALLOWED", would buy the most. One house had a 4 ft high fence with a "BAD DOG", sign posted. George said,"they don't have a dog". I knew better but he went on in. Before the man could open the door, a Bulldog was after George and he went on in after the man opened the door. The man gruffly said he didn't want anything and put George out, saying the dog didn't bite. The dog was trying to get him by the seat of the pants and he jumped the 4 ft fence. We both developed a lifetime hatred of peddling!!
It was a cold winter and George and I had a daily job of cranking the old Model T. We would jack up a back wheel, put it in high gear and take turns cranking, by hanging on the side and walking the wheel. We also used a kerosene torch to warm the engine. One morning we got the carburetor on fire. We were at the front door but George went to the back door and casually said, "Dad the truck is on fire". Dad got
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
8
excited and ran out in a hurry but the neighbor had scooped snow on the fire. We had the double job, drying the engine and starting it.
Brother Luther was born in November and Mom went to the hospital for the only time to have a baby. Dad paid the hospital bill but George and I worked out the Doctor bill doing yard work and planting garden for the Doctor's wife in the spring.
Mom's brother, Will Jenkins, came out in the middle of the winter and stayed with us for a while. Uncle Will's wife Laura had died the winter before in Wicks, Arkansas. Uncle Will had run a sawmill in Arkansas and had done timberwork. His wife's brother George came with them. His oldest son was married and stayed in Arkansas. The ones with him were: Nellie, Neuman, Neal and younger sisters, Neva and Nora. They were a fine family. Nellie, a beautiful girl was about 18 years old. Neuman was about the same age as George and I. Work was scarce and Uncle Will, Uncle George and Neuman cut tall trees along Alamosa streets into firewood. They rented a house in Alamosa for a while. Uncle Will was a fine man and I have fond memories of him. We finished out the winter in Alamosa and graduated. A few days before school was out we headed for Mancos, Colorado. I am sorry I didn't mention that Frances and Raymond also went to school with me in Alamosa. Raymond would have been about nine years old and Frances about seven years old. I am afraid I made heroes out of George and me. I don't have vivid memories of the younger ones.
Anyway we were at the cabin east of Mancos the following summer. Uncle Will and family came by that summer and stayed with Uncle Lester and Aunt Mary. They went back to Oklahoma or Arkansas.
My younger sister Vera, like Frances, was born in the cabin at Mancos. Brother, Virgil was born at the homestead near Kline. That was another story of very hard times during the Depression years.
P.S. I am afraid this story sounds like George and I did all of the work. We didn't, as all of us were in it together. I loved baseball and played hardball at Menefee School in Mancos and at East Alamosa. That was the end of ball playing days. We went fishing with Uncle Will one day in the Valley and I caught a carp. This is my only fishing story. My granddaughter Randa went fishing years later on a date with Jim. She came home wearing an engagement ring. Her Mom Sue said, "Fadi went fishing one day and caught a carp. Randa went fishing one day and caught a sucker"! Weill think I had better make another record and call this my first and last attempt to write a story. With love, Grandpa, also known as "Fadi".
LI FE I N MANCOS
The year after our trip from Cleburne, Texas to Mancos, Colorado, we lived at a log cabin east of Mancos on the West Side of Mancos hill. George and I walked the four miles to Mancos high. George was in the tenth grade and I was in the ninth. During that year we worked for the farmers in the area. Dad used the model T truck hauling produce from Farmington, New Mexico to Mancos. He hauled fruit and vegetables from New Mexico and would peddle them around Mancos and at least a few trips to Rico, Colorado. Rico was a mining town about sixty miles up the Dolores River.
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
9

I
Rico was going full force at the time. There were some good homes, but many were shacks and tents, all over the hillsides. One experience that really stayed in my mind was that I was accused of stealing a woman's purse. She lived in a tent. I had sold her some green beans and roasting ears and she paid me. I went to some other tents with some green beans in my hand for samples and when I came back down she saw what she thought was money. She had hid her purse after paying me and in her excitement thought I had stolen her money. She called the sheriff and made quite a scene and me feeling bad being accused of stealing. Her husband came home from work and found where she had hid the purse. This is the only time in my life I had the sheriff after me. I learned a valuable lesson from it and never accused anyone of stealing falsely.
Another experience that stayed with me was I walked into a yard with a high fence. It was several feet to the door and after knocking; the biggest dog I have ever seen in my life came around the house. He was bigger then a half grown calf. I was quaking in my shoes, the lady came to the door and seeing my fear she assured me it was just a puppy.
After selling our load we stopped at a farmhouse a short distance from Rico that had a sign wanting help putting up hay. The elderly couple, the Barlow's, raised a garden and milked a few cows. They sold milk, berries, and produce to the miners. We stayed two or three days helping them. Dad cut the wild grass hay with a horse-drawn mowing machine. This was the only time in my life that I saw a hay field so steep that you could cut the hay only one way, with the cutter bar on the uphill side. Then go back with the cutter bar about 3 feet off the. ground. We worked two or three days, Dad cutting and raking and me shocking. It began raining and Dad was worried about getting home. We hated to leave without finishing the job. Mr. Barlow was disappointed I wasn't a fisherman as there was some nice trout in the pools along the Dolores River and I could have fished without a license being a kid.
Dad had met one of his sewing machine salesmen, acquaintances, in Rico and promised that I could ride a horse that he traded for in Cortez and keep it awhile at the eighty acres at Mancos. Dad got the three dollars and I got the joy of riding the horse. The horse was a good one who was off the minute that your foot hit the stirrup. Well I didn't have a saddle so had to put the horse along a bank and jump aboard on the run. The horse didn't slow down for ten miles, by this time I had very little hide on my bottom so I piled off and led the horse for four miles. Still being four miles from home I rode the horse on the run on in home. We had an old nag of our own so George and I enjoyed riding for quite awhile until the owner came and claimed his horse.
This being a long time ago my memory slipped. This was in the summer of 1930 and we did not start school until November of that year. My youngest sister, Vera, was born at the same cabin that year where sister, Frances, was born in the fall of 1922. We kept in shape walking the four miles to school. We cut wood on the hillside and slid the wood, on a bobsled we made. The snow was at least two feet deep. We still
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
10
had to take turns helping Dad with his old ford. We hauled potatoes and sold them and peddled them from Bloomfield up the Largo Canyon in New Mexico.
It would take us an hour to walk each way on highway 160 to go to school. We seldom met a car and it always was going the other way. At this time highway 160 would be packed with snow and coal haulers used sleds to haul into Mancos. I remember when they finally got a plow the gravel would show by the time they passed our place. This stopped the sleds and they had to go back to their wagons. THE LIFE OF A SHEEPHERDER
My brother George and I spent some ten or twelve years herding sheep. George spent another two or three years herding sheep after I left for the Navy in 1942. Our lives were no worse then the cowboys had been for years.
A few years we spent the winter south of Farmington, New Mexico. There were about thirty sections of open desert land, with only four or five sections deeded. These were vacated by homesteaders who found the land to dry to farm. It was rolling prairie land with low hills that barely broke the wind, for tents and bedding the sheep. There were breaks or Bad Lands, skirting the open land that had sparse cedar trees and very little vegetation. What rains that came would run off so the early settlers built a few ponds to catch water for livestock. The vegetation for grazing was mainly Mormon tea and grama grass. There were herds of Indian ponies and quite a few cattle. A neighboring sheep man had two herds of sheep with around 1,000 sheep in each herd. We had around 800 ewes in our herd. We moved camp now and then, sometimes shoveling 8 or 10 inches of snow off the ground before pitching the tent. The ground wasn't generally frozen under the snow so we would dig a hole about 18 inches across and 18 inches deep. Potatoes, vegetables, and canned goods were put in the hole to keep them from freezing during the night. A sheepskin was thrown over the top of the hole. A camp stove that burned wood, a couple of chuck boxes with lids that made tables, and bedrolls made our furnishings. A ten-gallon milk can held our water. About 30 minutes after camp was set up and a few rugs scattered about the camp, the camp was comfortable. Of course on zero nights it was a bit nippy in the morning.
The Indians built their hogans with the door to the east. We were told this was
their religion. We found out that if you didn't have the door facing east the prevailing winds would blow your abode down.
The first winter in this area we would drift the sheep two miles to a water hole, if there was no snow. The second winter we hauled water from Farmington, New Mexico and were surprised that 800 head of sheep only drank fifty gallons of water a day during cool weather. We fed a sack of cotton seed cake or grain a day, so many times we would have 40 sacks of grain stacked against the walls of the tent. It was surprising what would go in a 12 by 12-foot space. Our sheep dog usually slept outside but sometimes he would come in for while. If we were crowded all we had to say was "Coyotes, Tip" and he would go out and bark up a storm.
George and I tried to both be in camp but sometimes we would be alone 2 or 3
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
11
weeks at a time. George had to take off one winter until his heart strengthened for an appendix surgery. So I was alone most of the winter.
When George had his surgery he couldn't pass urine. The nurse told him if he didn't go soon that they would have to catheterize him. Being a young sheepherder he thought she meant to castrate him. This made him go in a hurry.
Any way back to herding. Stormy nights when it was blowing and snowing we had to keep bringing the sheep back to the bedding ground. We had an old Montgomery Ward battery operated radio in winter camp. We would turn it on loud so we could find the camp. Blow storms usually lasted about 3 hours at a time. Not 2 or 3 days like in Wyoming. The neighbor sheep man had one camp northwest about two miles of the other. One storm the up wind herd drifted away from camp with the herder after them. He saw a lantern hanging in the woodpile so he spent the night in his fellow herder's bed. The other herder spent the night about six miles down wind in the breaks.
The Navaho Indians had it rough at this time. They usually had broad rimmed-wheeled wagons pulled by ponies. Sometimes they would scrape back the snow and camp in the open with only a small fire. Sometimes if they were close by we would cook supper for them. One time our camp was about two miles back from the road. It was a foggy day with about six inches of snow on the ground. Two Indian men came to the tent. They were lost and wanted to know where Ship Rock was. When out in open country you had to keep your bearings by some mountain or peak in the area. I told them Ship Rock was about 20 miles to the northwest. While we ate supper they dried their socks and shoes by the fire. After they ate they tied feedbags around their feet and took off across country to their Hogan's.
Portable radios were not out yet so our neighboring herders on a quiet night would walk two or three miles to listen to our radio. We had a couple of hymnbooks and some times sang. This had a double use, entertainment and scaring the coyotes out of the neighborhood. We went back to the ranch to shear the sheep and for lambing time. This meant some 18-hour days. This was through April, May and early June. Our first lamb, one spring, left us red faced. The sheep were grazing in a large field and we picked out a ewe that had to be the mother. George and I relayed running in a circle until we caught her. We gave her a talking too about motherhood and staked her out on a long rope. Held her so the lamb could nurse and she claimed the lamb but had her own lamb two days later. George was the real herder. If a ewe had twins and didn't claim one and he saw them once he could pick them out and make her claim both of them. I did not have this talent so I packed a can of sheep marker paint and marked the mother and her offspring. We split the herd in small bunches after they lambed. One time George was checking on them and a killer coyote was sneaking around and cut the throats of thirty lambs. We put doggie lambs or a twin or triplet on these sheep when possible. They claimed the lambs by smell so we would fasten a piece off the dead lamb until she would claim it.
After a month or six weeks of sleepless nights, we were ready to head for the
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
12
mountains. It would usually take about 3 days on the roads and stock trails to get to the forest ranges. One summer we spent the summer in giant larkspur country. We were about 15 miles northeast of Durango Colorado, on the Florida River. The larkspur was poisonous to cattle, but the sheep thrived on it. We had 2 or 3 miles of pack trails to camp. We left our cook tent quite awhile, and moved our pup tent and bedrolls about every night. There was a fall about 6 feet high, with spring water that made a perfect shower. This water was icy cold, and I took it quietly, but you could hear George's whoop a mile down the canyon.
There were numerous deer and grouse on this range. We had a grouse for dinner sometimes, which was illegal. We butchered a goat now and then for fresh meat. You could hang the meat in a tree at night to chill and then put it in a meat sack and keep it in a bedroll in the day. It would keep for several days this way. While on this range there were numerous rotten logs that had hives of wasps. The sheep would have these bees stirred up so by the time we came along that they would be in a vicious mood. One time we were carrying over bedrolls to another site. We had bees swarming around our head. We dropped our bedrolls and ran. We had to leave them until after dark to get them.
Once George had lumps under his armpits. During the night he had a fever and was delirious. There was no way to get help. There was a mountain spring nearby which was ice cold. I kept bathing him with towels soaked in this cold water. I did a lot of worrying and praying that night. Near day break his fever abated and during the morning the lumps burst and drained. We thought this was caused by tick bites.
It was a two-day trip in the spring with the young lambs but on moving in the spring we went down a county road through Bodo cattle ranch. We drifted into the present Bodo Park. Today this is a commercial business area. Then it was just a sagebrush flat. It was near dark so we camped for the night. We could see another herd on down along the Animas river. We thought they could see us and thought they were camped for the night. We thought wrong and about 3,000 ewes and lambs were mixed in the morning.
The ewes and older lambs were paint branded but we had a number of young lambs unmarked and Toots Markle's herd was the same. We put the herds in the Rio Grand railroad corral. We spent the whole day trying to separate them. We got through about dark and camped the night with the sheep grazing on the hillside at the entrance of the present road to Fort Lewis College. George and Toots had worked harder separating the sheep then I, so I spent the night keeping the sheep out of a nearby field of oats.
Markle took his herd through Durango heading to a mountain range between Durango and Silverton. We went across the college mesa and up the upper Florida River. The next day was spent transferring hungry lambs between herds.
Along in September we headed back home. We came down the same route we had used in the spring. We stayed a couple days on the Old Milk Ranch. The sheep grazed on the blue lupine. This area today is all covered with houses. As we drove
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
13
the herd up College hill a small plane dropped altitude fast and landed on the mesa. George and I thought it had crashed and fought the brush getting up the hill and were chagrined and relieved to see he had landed safely. College Mesa was Durango's only airport at the time. It was also the golf course and the caretaker asked us to stay a couple of days and graze down the daisies and weeds. There were not any golfers or planes while we were there. The lambs were driven with George Kikel's lambs back to Durango and shipped on the D&RG railroad to Denver. George was amused at Mr. Kikel's telling that his sheep dog did not understand a word of English. The dog had been all summer with a Spanish herder. Dad went to Denver to sell the lambs. He came back complaining that he would never go back to Uncle Harold's and Aunt Lucy's again. As Aunt Lucy asked him if he wanted to take a bath. She was just being nice. After a week on the train trip and being around the stockyards he needed it.
The next year, about 1937, we went to a forest range. We drove the sheep nearly to Mayday in La Plata Canyon over old Baldy Mountain about ten miles into the Lightner Creek Range. A veteran forest ranger by the name of Tom Price counted the sheep at the Heather Ranch on the La Plata River. Tom was a character of sorts, one time he walked upon Joe Mestas, another sheepherder, who had just illegally killed a grouse for supper. When Joe saw Tom he quickly threw the grouse in the bushes but his hands were all bloody. Joe thinking Tom had not seen his illegal act made up a story of having butchered a sheep for dinner. Tom said he was hungry for mutton so why didn't they go back to the camp and have some supper. Joe kept making up reasons; he needed to stay with the sheep. Finally Tom said, "Why don't you just grab that bird out of the bushes and lets go have some supper?"
At any rate Tom gave us instructions on the rules for grazing in Mayday and said to be careful, as it wasn't a pleasant job to take bodies out of the mountains on a packhorse. The Lightner Creek Range was at 10,000 feet altitude at the lower end to around 12,000 feet altitude at the upper end. There was about two weeks grazing above timberline. It was so steep you hardly dared to gather the herd into a bunch, as the rocks would roll killing the sheep. As long as they were scattered they would dodge a rolling rock.
George did most of the herding at this time. The tent was setting a little below timberline. I helped him some here and remember the peak was 13,000 feet on a marker. At one camp we kept the packhorses and a burro on an open glade, on higher above the sheep. We had a yearling colt; its mother and another mare were hobbled on the front legs to keep them from straying too far. The horses would come down in the heat of the day. The colt and burro would get into the tent and raise havoc.
The government trapper had a bear trap set, which we were to watch. A cub got in the trap instead of the mother. We didn't have anything but a 22-caliber pistol. George shot the cub to get it out of its suffering. The cub squealed just before it was shot and the mother came out of the timber in a rage. George started to run and fell
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
14
over a log. He got up, seeing the futility of running, he faced the bear and backed off a few feet and the bear left him alone. I think our collie shepherd dog helped rout her.
The next day George found the bear had eaten her cub leaving a piece of the skin. George brought the skin down and hung it on the tent saying that will keep that burro and colt out. It did all right, as when the horses came down and smelled the bear; they left a trail of dust. A hobbled horse couldn't travel fast unless they loped. George took after them and caught them about ten miles down trail. He took the hobbles and tied them around the mare's neck and the rest followed her. He rode her bareback and got into camp well after dark. I was worried when he didn't come back, but it was alii could do.
Another time he was clearing trail, and came upon a cub, and the mother charged him, but the dog routed her. We had a series of experiences that summer. In the fall we camped at the railroad corrals at Hesperus. Another sheep man was counting his herd from one pen to another. The engineer was backing cars to the loading chute; he pulled the whistle on the train scaring the sheep. The scared sheep knocked the man down four times. He got up mad and was cussing the engineer out. The engineer picked up a pickaxe from the coal bin and told the man to just call him those names again, without smiling and he was going to get it. Everyday wasn't this eventful thank goodness!
The burro is what is known as a horse burro, and followed the horses. Her load was a chuck box on each side of her saddle, the tent, cooking utensils, camp stove, and stovepipes. The chuck boxes were about 15 inches at the bottom with a lid that hinged about 12 inches up to around 4 inches at the top. There were shelves with tableware and canned goods. The lids were let down and served as tables. This made a pack about 4 feet wide. This was often wider than the space between trees. The burro was an expert on judging her space, one ear, would go back on the side that was near a tree and the ear went back on the other side when a tree was on that side. She followed behind and never scraped a box.
The next two years we were assigned the Buck Creek range, which was about 18 miles up the ridge between Junction Creek, the Animas River, and Hermosa Creek. It was a wooded range covered with quaking aspen, fir trees, and some pine. You could seldom see the whole herd. You had to depend on tracking around the herd to see that there weren't any strays.
To get there we had to cross from Wild Creek Canyon down where highway 160 is today. Then to Lightner Creek and up it to the old school house and over the ridge to Junction Creek. Junction Creek had a bridge a little over 4 feet wide. The first night we camped about a mile and a half up the ridge. The sheep were bedded down above camp with the pack animals hobbled and turned loose further up on the ridge from the sheep. I put my bedroll down the trail to keep animals from going back. About 2 o'clock a.m. the horses came down the trail on the run there was a bit of moonlight so I run after them. The trail zig zagged and I cut across each zag. I got
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
15
ahead and was gasping for air when the horses got on the bridge. It was quite dark so they were surprised that I was there. I caught the lead mare, unhobbled the horses, and rode her bare back through the herd. About daybreak we figured it was time to move on.
Buck Creek was quite a ways from water. We found that on lush green forage the herd did as well with out water and kept us from making trails to water. We would keep the main tent for supplies and cooking in the same place for ten days. The Forest Service frowned on bedding the sheep in one place more than one night so we would let them bed down wherever night caught them. We put up a pup tent to sleep in to be near the herd. We heard of a bear killing several animals in a herd at night, but we never had this trouble. Along toward fall a bear would kill and eat a lamb, which also ate into the year's earnings.
Buck Creek was steep and was bear and elk country. We were on this range for two years. The government trappers set a trap about 1/2 mile from camp. He tied the trap to a toggle. The toggle was made out of a log about three feet long. He found he had caught one but it had taken off with the trap. It was his payday in Durango so he asked George and me to find the bear, kill it, and recover the trap. We told him we didn't have a rifle, and he said we could kill it with an axe. We trailed it for a mile and a half before breakfast. Any way the vegetation would spring back up after the bear passed. We were fearful of walking up on an angry bear. Being weak, hungry, and fearful, we gave up the chase and climbed back to the camp exhausted.
George found the dead bear along with the trap later in the summer. During a dry thunderstorm, we saw lightning strike a tree about a mile away. Fire and smoke boiled up. George grabbed a shovel and axe, crawled on a horse and headed over to the fire, telling me to gather the sheep in case a forest fire got out of control. This would have been futile, as the range was all timber. Luckily it was a ground fire and George chopped and scraped a fire lane that contained it from spreading.
The ranger and crew arrived about the time he was through. George received a letter of thanks and a check for $2.50. Ittook the C.C.C. boys 2 or 3 days to beat out the sparks.
One time I was alone for a week or ten days. My food supply was low, so I butchered a yearling, rather early one morning, on a level place a few yards below camp. I hung the meat in a sack high in the shade. Any way, I had taken the axe that evening to cut a ridgepole for the pup tent. It was getting dark when I came back to the tent to get supper. A bear was eating the entrails, it was dark, and I couldn't see it. Tip the sheep dog had a certain growl when a bear was close. I was about 10 feet away when it backed off and ran. My hair was standing on end from that encounter.
We kept fresh meat several days by hanging it in a tree to chill and then rolling it in a bedroll to insulate and keep cool during the day. One time about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, George said he was going to check on the pack animals in a glade about a mile from camp. A hard rain and lightning storm came up. It was getting late evening and he hadn't come back. I went up the ridge he had gone and I shook with fear as I
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
16
came upon two different trees that had exploded from lightning that afternoon. I got to the place where the horses' grazed. The horse's tracks with George's footprints were on the trail up the mountain. I knew then that he was after the horses. He didn't show up until about ten o'clock, so I took the gas lantern hoping to meet him. He had caught up with the horses in about 19 miles. He did as I had done the night I ran down the path. He rode the lead mare with the others following. In the mountains you can see the white trunks of the quaking aspen trees, even in darkness if they are dry. After a rain you can see nothing. Being unable to see, he tied the mare with the hobble ropes under a large fir tree. He spent the night without a fire, staying dry even though it rained throughout the night. He came on into the camp at daybreak.
Later that summer we were moving the sheep and camp to the other side of the range a bear killed six ewes. We had some poison given us by the Government trappers to put in a warm carcass. We moved about another mile and tied up our sheep dog, Tip, to keep him from going back. He slipped out of the rope during the night and went back and died near the dead sheep. We were devastated and sad from losing the best friend and sheepdog we ever had.
That fall as we went through Durango we hired a Navajo boy, Henry Jack. He was seventeen years old and a wonderful friend and helper. That
Winter he married Edna Plantora a beautiful Indian girl from the reservation. She stayed with him in camp now and then.
The next year we took the sheep to Bear Creek Range about six or eight miles further around the mountain. I didn't go to the mountains. I stayed at the farm trying to raise grain and pasture. I would take supplies and groceries and meet George and the packhorses at different points as close as I could get with the truck. Our brother, Raymond, helped me some on the farm. That summer it was dry and the lower pastures were short. The Forest Service let the stock and sheep men stay on the ranges another 30 days. In late September, a snowstorm marooned the herd in the mountains.
Not knowing the snow was so deep I went in on foot to help George and Henry get the herd out. I tried cutting across to the range I hadn't been to before. Night caught me at about 10,000 feet on Kennebec Pass. My pant legs were freezing. I back tracked six miles and stumbled on a prospector's dug out. He had a fire going so I followed the smoke. I stayed the night with him. He shared what little food he had. left the next morning and he went down the canyon leaving for the winter. I made the mistake of taking his advise to go over the mountain by the Bessie G. Mine. I found this to be about 11,000 feet. Two men were at the mine. The pack trail to the mine went around the peak, above cliffs, so I had to tread very carefully to avoid falling over. The men gave me a meal. I left about two in the afternoon. I could see the site of the neglected mine about six miles across the canyon. It took me well after dark to get to the mine. Three men were still working the mine. Their boss, James Dennison, had gone home. They fed me and let me sleep in Jim's bedroll. They said
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
17
a bunch of sheep had gone down the ridge that morning so we figured it was ours. walked 15 miles, and Butch Cordell met me with the pickup and we rode on to Durango, only to find it was the wrong herd. Butch took me back to the trail and I stayed the night again at the neglected mine. The next morning I went on up the trail about six miles, to find George and Henry breaking trail and driving the sheep.
We drove the sheep about 15 miles down to Junction Creek. We corralled
them and counted them the next morning. We were thirty head short.
Our losses had been heavy that spring. George and I walked about eight miles on each side of the ridge and back that day. George took the mare with a bedroll and some food back to the summer range to look for them. Henry and I took the herd across a mesa west of Durango. Today this is the present Crestview development on the west side of Durango. It was just weeds and brush at that time. Driving on the west side of the Animas River there were a few small houses. One house had a room built out to the east with a door on each side. Some of the sheep were bouncing through the rooms, not wanting to face an angry housewife. I didn't ask if they had caught a sheep to butcher.
Henry and I drove the sheep on south of Durango to the Tommy Lewis ranch. About three days later George returned from the high country. He had found fifteen sheep and put them in an old corral. He found the other fifteen and drove them with the others to find a coyote had killed two of those. He gave another to the men at the neglected mine to butcher as a token of thanks for their help. As I believe we kept the sheep at the Tommy Lewis ranch for a while and shipped the lambs to Denver. George went along and he and Mr. Brown, a sheep man and Vice President of the First National Bank got off the train and walked for exercise as the train climbed over Cumbres Pass.
In November, we heard of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In January, George, Raymond, and Cousin John went to Phoenix to see the folks. Our numbers came up for the draft. They told me they would defer both of us if we didn't hire any help. I volunteered to go so was in Denver and in the Navy in March 1943. George had the harder job staying and running the sheep. He never told me much of his hardships for the next two years. Henry Jack and his wife and child helped him for a while but was getting only $30 a month plus board. He decided to work in the shipyard for higher pay. He was drafted into the Army, and was killed in Germany. This was sad news for a young man that had very little to fight for. I drew $25 a month for a few months until President Roosevelt raised the minimum to $50 a month. While in the war zone we received another $25. I worked up to 2nd class petty officer and aviation machinist mate and never drew more than $95 a month base pay.
To get back to the story George married Phyllis Roth and Eula and I married in June 1943. I was on the U.S.S. Guadalcanal in the middle of the Atlantic when I received a letter from George asking about selling the sheep. I told him to go ahead. After selling and paying off debts he had just enough to buy some machinery, a 60-acre farm, and a house for him and Phyllis on the mesa near Kline.
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
18
I was released from the Navy in September 1945 and Eula, baby daughter, Linda and I moved into the old frame house. George had bought some acreage, which was un-cleared, for the back taxes. It was a perfect set up if we could have borrowed the money for machinery and clearing. After struggling for two years we broke up the partnership. George and I have always been close, as brothers and I don't know even yet if it was a fair division of the partnership. George is a wonderful brother and I have never heard any blame from him. He moved to Arkansas, and always seems to have the misfortune of selling before the price rises.
SHEEPDOGS Bowser
Thought to be a mixture of coyote and English shepherd. Bowser was our dog, George and myself, in the days while on the homestead. He was a loyal pet, but at times we saw him playing with the coyotes. During mating seasons he would be gone for a few days and we thought we saw his tracks with the coyotes. There were numerous hollow logs that Bowser would chase cottontail rabbits into. He would
bark until brother George or I would chop into the log and get the rabbit. He would get the head and entrails. The carcass was fried of went into a stew.
One time he treed a young mountain lion. He lion stayed in the tree until we got close, and then it ran away.
Another time we were getting a load of wood, and we heard him bark. He was in some heavy timber on the south side of a field. George told me to go on home with the team and wagon. I saw him go into the timber and come out immediately. He found Bowser barking at a bobcat, which was hissing and spitting at him.
Perro (dog in Spanish)
In later years at the Mancos place, we had a yellow haired dog of unknown origin named Perro. A lovable pet, but not too bright. Our cousins from Dolores Colo. Would come for a visit. We would climb to the top of a high hill just south of the place. We enjoyed rolling large rocks off the cliff, down the oak brush covered hillside; Perro would run across the slope chasing them. He never got hurt, which just proved that he was just a worthless mutt.
Jogger
A black and white English shepherd, was unintelligent dog. When we were on the road with the sheep he would go ahead of cars and clear the road for them. This would get him a lot of praise, which he loved. He was a good sheepdog, but lazy. Rather than work, he would takeoff for the farm, which was miles away.
Tips
A brilliant sheepdog fathered by Jogger. A single pup he was born and raised in sheep camp. His mother a small collie named Fannie, would bark at the sheep, but
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
19
you couldn't send her around them. In open country you could send him around the herd as far as you could see. If he was out of hearing range, he would look back and obey commands by watching hand signals. When on the move with the sheep you could send him around either side. He would chase coyotes away from the herd. When on the winter range, he would come into the tent for a while. If it was crowded, all you had to say was "coyotes Tips" and he would go out and bark up a storm. At lambing time he would catch a lamb by tumbling it off its' feet. If you thought a young lamb was being left in dense brush you just had to tell him to "hunt him up", and he would bounce here and there until he found it. He would hold it down with his feet and bark until we would get it. On the mountain range he would rout a bear by barking at it. He would dodge the bears' paws and always got it to run. This was the smartest dog we ever had.
BEE STORIES
My first experience with bee trees was when I was 9 or 10 years old. It was Dads first experience, also his last. There was a big hollow cedar tree on the north end of the homestead that had wild bees, and honey that could be seen through the knotholes. Dad decided to get that honey. My mother brother George and I went along to help. We didn't get enough smoke into the tree to sober up those bees. After chopping and sawing and getting numerous stings we gave the project up. Dad got the most stings and his face was swollen beyond recognition for a few days.
Several years later while herding sheep on a mesa in the foothills, I saw smoke on the hillside. I went down to investigate and found a neighbor with his wife and 2 children, trying to rob a bee tree. We had his wife and children to stay back at a safe distance. We borrowed some baby diapers to cover our heads and faces. We got about a gallon of honey. The neighbor wanted to know if I would help him with another tree the next day. The next day we met in a deep canyon. The neighbor, Vic Terrell and his sister's boyfriend Parks Cordell. They had brought a bee box and a large container for the honey. We smoked the bees and cut and split the tree. As soon as you would get the honey busted up the bees would quiet down and go to eating the honey. They would cluster into a ball or swarm. A bee smoker was about the size of a large coffee pot with a small bellow attached. You could put rags or cedar bark on fire, but smoldering, to put smoke into a hive or tree. Anyway my brother George, who was scared of bees, came by. He got a chunk of honeycomb, which turned out to be the only eatable honey. The rest was brood comb with young bees. The bees swarmed into a ball on a branch about forty feet up a tall pine tree. The canyon wall was so steep that we could get about thirty feet from them and throw rocks trying to break the branch. This didn't work, so Vic, being a small agile man, climbed the big pine tree by clinging to the bark. His plan was for Parks and me to catch the swarm in the open bee box and container held over our heads. He made
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
20
it up and cut the branch loose. He yelled with his shrill voice for us to catch the swarm. We caught the swarm in the containers but they were mad again by now, and began stinging Parks and me. We abandoned the project and ran. The bees clustered in another tree too high to reach. Vic came out of the tree saying how lucky he was not to get one sting. Needless to say, we abandoned the project.
I read a story of a man finding bee trees by watching bees at a waterhole or flowerbeds. He said you could see them flying straight for home with their load in the evening sun. You could walk to the place of last sighting, and see other bees doing the same. By using this method you could always find the tree. Later that summer I found bees in a large red cedar tree on a hillside in a remote canyon. Some folks I had met came to help, and we got about 70 pounds of honey without incident. In later years, I found and robbed bees in trees and walls of buildings. Sometimes having experiences that were humorous. I later put swarming bees into boxes and left them in the timber where caught. We took part of the honey for 2 or 3 years. Some deer hunters found the hives and took the honey and destroyed the boxes. I recently talked with a nephew who lives in Kentucky. He has 4 or 5 hives. He says his bees know his voice and do not sting him when he takes the honey or works with them. I've heard of others who can do this also. I could never be deceitful enough to strike-up a friendship with bees.
MOMS TO BLAME
I have always detested people blaming a parent for cruel treatment when they were a child. They can be forty or fifty years old and not admit that somewhere they reached an accountable age where they could have straightened up their lives. I may be wrong! My mother said I bawled until I was two years old. We lived briefly in the tall timber of Arkansas while Dad sold sewing machines in the oil fields of Oklahoma.
She would put me in the feed trough while she milked the cows. What kid wouldn't be traumatized at this kind of treatment? And a mixture of cottonseed meal, molasses, and cow slobbers has marked me for life with a COWLICK!
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
21
ALL IN A DAYS WORK
In the fall of 1952 after an extremely bad crop year I went to work cutting 1000 or 1500 fence posts to pay grocery bills. I did the fall plowing and planted fall wheat between times. Later in the winter Merrill Strobel joined me in cutting another couple thousand posts. The posts wouldn't sell till spring. Needing cash and hearing of a mile of highway to be built below Hesperus we decided to try for a job. It was the middle of March and the snow was still around 3 ft deep. The day we applied for work a dozer had just pushed down through the right-of-way. The foreman was there and we were hired. The next morning we were handed axes and told to cut some scrub oak that was 3 t 6 inches in diameter. We hadn't worked long when the foreman brought a chain saw and asked if we knew how to run it. Merrill said we did but I had more experience. I had been sawing about an hour when I turned to Merrill and asked if he knew what he had got me into. I told him they were going to expect me to saw that mile of big cottonwood and pine trees that was in the way. I had been cutting cedars for post and knew nothing about cutting tall timber. I would have walked off if I hadn't been desperate for a job. The large cottonwoods had limbs sprawling out in all directions. The foreman did tell me the trees usually fell the direction of the watermark on the trees. I was sawing in a clump of large trees and the boss told Merrill that Melvin wasn't afraid of those trees like the sawyer on the last job! He didn't know that I was sweating blood and doing a lot of praying. After about 6 weeks of cutting and bucking the trees into 10 ft lengths the dozer pushed them into piles for us to burn. After the winters work our coats were rather ragged. With our first paychecks Merrill's wife Emma and my wife Eula went to town and feeling sorry for us bought us some denim jackets. After the first day of burning the piles of brush. The sparks got into our jackets with the starch in them and burned the entire sleeve off Merrill's and mine was full of holes. Of course we weren't in the jackets as we had laid them aside while we worked. Well our wives were not sympathetic, as we had to put on our old coats. After 2 months of this work clearing and helping build a bridge across the LaPlata River. Merrill went back to spring work on his farm. I was still desperate for money. I dropped into the carpenters union headquarters in Durango. I was told if I could saw a board square and read a plumb line and read a measuring tape, I could have a job as a carpenter on the Mesa Verde tunnel. The next morning I showed up for work and told the boss he had a hayseed carpenter on his hands. I knew the man and he assured me I had a job. The tunnel was pretty well along. I wasn't told that the union carpenters had walked off the job on account of exhaust fumes from the cement trucks and paving trucks in the tunnel. I along with some other temporary workers was put to work building forms for the curbs through the tunnel. It was so smoky that you could hardly see the lights. The pay was good so I worked about 2 weeks and quit on account of the fumes. One fellow didn't know how to read the tape would hesitate and then say its good enough for a highway. Well it wasn't as there was about 2 inches tolerance on the curbs. After the engineers made us move the forms he was fired. It was interesting work as
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
22
mine rails were laid out ahead and an arched form was moved along to shape the tunnel roof. Tons of concrete was blown into the curved forms and steel was tied ahead. I was feeling bad as I drove home one evening so I quit. I went into the union office in Durango and was assured I had fulfilled time to get a union carpenter card, but that I would likely sit on the bench, as more qualified men would get work first. I was told that if I could get a job at the Vanadium Corporation of America, (VCA.) I would have a permanent job. I applied and got seven years of worse fumes than the tunnel had been!
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
23
W.W.II EXPERIENCES HUMOR IN UNIFORM
While I was taking machinist training in the U.S. Navy, two sailors kept playing pranks on each other. Their names were Cotton and D.O. Caloway (Droopy Drawers Caloway). One night we had a blackout in the shop. When the lights came on Cotton had evidently taken a nap. His face was completely covered with black graphite grease. One night, Droopy Drawers was my partner on a lathe. Droopy was sitting on a G.!. Can sound asleep. An officer came by and shook him. He thought it was Cotton and got up and thoroughly kicked the Gold Braid on the shins. When he woke up his expression was so funny that the officer had to laugh.
While in boot camp we were continually being marched around. One evening while being marched to the movies an officer yelled, "move it out, don't be a horses tail". Someone answered, "don't be a horses ass". The officer yelled, "halt, who said that?" It was too dark to see and of course no one answered. We were all amused. One time, I was sent to fire school, we were sent into a replica of a ships engine room to put out an oil and gas fire. We were amazed to find, with a fog nozzle to cool ahead of us, and followed by a foam nozzle. We could walk into a blazing inferno.
We put out a number of oil and gasoline fires. The last day, two crews of us competed putting out fires. A crew comprised of three men and a chief. We had to unroll 3 lengths of hose and attach a nozzle. We had to start a small gas engine, "the handy billie pump". All went well until the knot on the starting rope hit our chief in the eye. Our team won and put the fire out first. We didn't get any credit, as we had two lengths of hose connected and the third hose hooked in a circle.
One time on the small carrier "Guadalcanal", while in flight operations in the Atlantic, a plane came in and caught fire. They always had a man in an asbestos suit, known as a monkey suit. This man helped get the pilot out, in this case unharmed. A warrant officer, a good man, was always present when things happened. The cameraman had a picture of him loping across the deck with a fog nozzle in his hand. He turned it on and is astonished to find he had no water and on looking back sees the boys still rolling out hose. A fire aboard ship is no joke. The next time we had movies the cameraman said he had a special. He shows our officer in slow motion putting out the fire. I expect our officer could have killed him.
Another time between flight operations I noticed a young sailor had a toy plane. He would put the plane through all sorts of didoes, making airplane noises. I asked him if he didn't get enough of the real thing? He assured me that he did. He wanted to see how long it would take for someone to ask him if he was crazy.
When in the South Pacific aboard the small carrier Altamaha a fellow crewman who was 5' 5" and I was 6' 4" tall. Our bunks were 4 bunks high and were fastened to the bulkhead during the day. I had the fourth bunk and he the third. When it was bedtime he would say, "giant it's time to let the beds down". One morning before dawn when General Quarters sounded saying, "man your battle stations". We had 5 minutes to get dressed and out of the compartment before the hatches were closed.
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
24
This was quite a scramble for 40 men. We would go out on the ships bow and climb a ladder to the flight deck. One morning my shipmate had started up the ladder, and I reached above him and we went up the ladder together. I couldn't drop back as another man was behind us. Anyway we made it and when he saw it was me against the skyline he said in disgust, "oh it's you".
ALTAMAHA CRUISE TO THE ISLANDS
During WWIII was on the small carrier U.S.S. Altamaha. We were transporting squadrons and planes, to the fighting on Guadalcanal, in the south pacific. The first cruise was from San Diego Calif. We had 80 Navy planes with the wings folded, and they were crammed into every available space. In case of a submarine attack, there would not have been time to launch any planes. There was only one plane ready on the catapult.
There were 700 men regular crew plus 300 men in a squadron aboard. On the return trip we traveled 2500 miles to Honolulu Hawaii, to pick-up another load of troops, without any planes or an escort. On one trip we carried 300 to 400 Marines, to Johnson and Palmyra Islands, to relieve Marines that had been there since the bombing at Pearl Harbor.
The men were in bedrolls all over the flight and hangar decks. One evening, I had to cross the hangar deck, which was quite dark. I stepped on a pups tail, and he ran crying across the deck, with me begging his forgiveness. The men were all laughing. As I was going down the ladder to go below decks it happened again. The next day I was looking everywhere for the dog. I asked a marine "where is the dog?" He laughed and said "there is no dog, one of the men is a ventriloquist, and is having fun." This made me think of the indomitable spirit of the American G.1.
AN UNFORGETTABLE DREAM
In the late Fall of 1943, I was on the small carrier U.S.S. Guadalcanal. We were escorting convoys from Norfolk Va. to Europe. The British, would escort the convoy from French Morocco on to their destination.
After leaving the convoy, we cruised down the West African coast nearly to the Equator. The crew was never told where we were, or where we were going. According to the lively scuttlebutt (gossip), about our destination and purpose. We were to hunt-down and destroy German submarines.
I dreamed that our ship was anchored in a harbor with a seawall across one side. There were some sunken sailing vessels with only the top deck above water. In my dream a German battlewagon appeared on the open ocean, and began firing at us. was terrified, and was running zigzag down the flight deck, to avoid getting hit.
About 10 days later we were anchored in this same location. I was worried the whole time we were in port. The sailing vessels were sunken, to keep them out of enemy hands and to clutter the harbor, in case the Germans and Italians took over.
I have never figured the purpose of this dream, except to keep me on the straight and narrow. The location was Casablanca French Morocco West Africa. On the deck of one of the vessels, a group of Arabs would sit in their white robes, not moving a
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
25
muscle. One of the guys said that they were Norfolk shipyard workers.
My cousin Paul Butler from Dolores Colo. Was in the terrible fighting, driving the enemy back into Italy, and freeing some of the Jews from a death camp. Ninety percent of his original unit was casualties.
EXPERIENCES ON THE Guadalcanal
After going through the Panama Canal we caught up with our squadron and planes at Norfolk Va. We were assigned to the job of escorting convoys of troops and supply ships from the United States to Europe. We had 18 planes with pilots and airmen aboard plus a regular crew of around 700 men. We never saw the ships we were escorting from the carrier. Our job was to keep submarines from sinking the convoy.
I am sure the pilots would have seen the ships everyday. Our torpedo T.B.M. planes had a crew of a pilot, gunner and radar man. One trip out, we were caught in a storm between Norfolk and Bermuda that was as rough as I had seen. The waves seemed 50 or 60 feet high. One friend was washed off the flight deck during the night. Two of the destroyer escorts (D. E.) dropped back with floodlights searching for him but without any luck. Our planes did not fly on very rough days but often the ships would be rolling and pitching when they took off. I had great respect for these men. The British took over escorting the convoy to their destination, somewhere off the coast of North Africa. Our job was to hunt German submarines up and down the coast of Africa and once as far as the Bay of Biscay, on the northern coast of Spain. Our planes flew 24 hours a day. I am quite sure the other small carriers did the same. We were not allowed to show any lights. The flight deck was outlined with small
lights like stage lights in a theatre. A signal officer stood on the after end of the flight deck with paddles with lights in each hand to signal the altitude of the planes wings. He would signal them off if they were in the wrong position. The signal officer had to be of a brave and cool nature and had to dive into a net over the side if a plane was about to hit him. The first run out we did not have a lot of luck, operating mostly from dawn to dusk. Subs, our own and enemy, would stay underwater with their periscopes just above water when torpedoing a ship. They could locate ships underwater by radar. They ran on batteries during the day and had to surface during the night and use diesel generators to recharge batteries. The radar on the planes could spot them as soon as they surfaced and drop a bomb or depth charge on them. It took 72 hours to sink one sub. There were 65 men on most submarines. This particular sub just the captain and one sailor survived. One sub and a cow (tanker with fuel) were spotted about 80 miles away in late afternoon. Four planes were sent to sink them. They completed the job. There was a wild storm came up before they could land. The deck was rolling and pitching, and the first plane in, went into the water over the port side, taking some 20-millimeter guns off with them. The next plane went partly off the starboard side, hanging up on a cable along the catwalk. They were going to cut the cable with an acetylene torch but found aviation fuel all over the deck. The other two planes were short of fuel, and couldn't land with the plane hanging across the deck. The captain had to tell them to water land. Our
,----------------------------------------------------------------------------------.-

Melvin Butler My Life and Times
26
planes would float only about 5 minutes. Just barely enough time for the crews to get out. It was dangerous to use lights but the destroyer escorts turned on floodlights and all of the men were rescued.
This cruise out we had tragedies. One plane lost its bearings while on patrol. The pilot could radio to the ship but couldn't receive. They didn't make it back. We later learned they had to water land off an island, and the water was so rough, the 3 men had fought for 2 hours and drowned. Natives of the island said the water was so rough they couldn't help them. Another plane had the engine conk out, and the pilot told the gunner and radioman to get ready for a water landing. The men misunderstood and jumped. At the last minute the engine caught up and the plane made it in. The pilot dropped marker dye where it happened but the men were never found. I remember how bad it made me feel to see 5 boxes of belongings to be sent to families. Anyway out of 18 planes, we only had one plane in flying condition, and one to take parts from. And we were still in the war zone.
The last cruise I was on the ship, we were 500 miles from Dakar off the coast of West Africa. It was Sunday and we had only one plane on patrol. As the plane came in to land, the pilot saw a submarine periscope breaking water. It was in the middle of our ship and destroyer escorts. The pilot dived and released torpedoes that were carried under the wings. The sub thought they had only one plane to fight, they surfaced and broke out their anti-aircraft gun and fired a shot about 4 ft. from the pilot, leaving a hole in the wing. The pilot dived and strafed the sub, hitting the gunner and
wounded the captain of the sub. The submarine crew panicked and abandoned the sub. The sub was running in a circle. Captain Gallery of our ship had a premonition before we left the states that we were going to capture a submarine, and the pentagon laughed. He had men on our ship and the escorts ready to man one.
These men chased the sub in small boats, and were just in time to turn off the detonators, and close the sea valves that were opened to sink the sub.
The subs crew and Captain were picked up by the destroyer escort and then sent by a boat chair on a cable to the carrier's deck. There was a space about 30 feet wide across the ship between the stacks under the flight deck from the engine rooms.
This was fenced off on each end. And the subs crew was held in it. It was a dry heat of about 80 degrees so they stripped down to their shorts. They were fed the same as we were, and released on the flight deck, and showered from a fire hose. Someone put a sign on the entrances of their quarters," U.S.O.". Our ships doctor was a German from New York, and the navigator was Dutch. The Germans had killed their families. When the subs gunner was buried at sea, our Chaplain, announced on the loudspeaker, anyone that wished could stand at attention while he said a prayer. I am quite sure this is more than our enemy would do. One of the destroyer escorts tried towing the sub, but had to turn the job over to the carrier. We kept flying
planes, even though our speed was 12 knots instead of 18. Another submarine was sunk while we had prisoners, and I wondered how they felt, hearing the cheers when our plane landed. It seemed cruel to cheer when 60 men were killed, but this was
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
27
the terrible result of war. The submarines had sunk so many of our ships and thousands of our men had died. Another small carrier the "Liscombe Bay" sailed out of Astoria Oregon about 10 days before our ship sailed. This ship was torpedoed and 700 men out of 1100 died. I got the cart before the horse on some of this. Sick bay was allowed several cases of whiskey for medicinal purposes, for the officers. Two men stole all of this except for a case or 2 on the top. They emptied a water cask on a life raft and poured the whiskey into it. One of the men, made too frequent trips to the raft, so they were caught. Thousands of gallons of aviation fuel was stored in a large tank with a space all around it that was filled with inert air, to cut down danger of explosion, in case enemy bullets entered through the hull. To make a long story short, several cases of beer was stored in this space, for a beer party for the men, when we would get to Casablanca. Needless to say this never happened, as some of the men would risk their lives to steal the beer. The cases were empty by the time we were at anchor in Casablanca.
Back to the captured sub. After it was in tow, there was a wild storm during the night, and broke the towline. It was picked up the next day after the storm abated. A sea going tug came the 500 miles out of Dakar and towed it to the states. The Germans didn't find out about the capture during the remainder of the war. The German codebooks and maps that showed where the mines were set in the harbors were taken. As fast as the Germans changed their code, our forces had the change. I don't remember when the prisoners were taken from the carrier. Anyway, the carrier was running short of fuel, after towing the submarine. We went into a port on one of the Azores islands. It was a beautiful sight to see the terraced hills against the blue sky. They were not able to help us, so a sea going tanker, fueled us at sea two days later. It was no easy task to fuel at sea in rough water. They had to shoot lines between vessels and pull fuel hoses over. There was a danger of the tanker and carrier banging into each other. On the way back to the states, we anchored 2 days at Hamilton Bermuda. Half the crew was allowed liberty, with the stipulation that if they behaved the rest of us could go the next day. Well the majority of those ashore had to be dragged back aboard stinking drunk. The rest of us were allowed to swim in the ocean. This was my first time, and last swimming in the ocean. Those of us that handled planes were allowed to wear flat inner tube life belts instead of the bulky kapokjackets. I blew some air into my tube, and was enjoying the swim. I was out about a hundred yards, and chatting with an officer. I admitted that I couldn't swim. He told me I was brave to be out this far from the ship. Anyway, when I climbed onto the ships, "Jacobs ladder". I found there wasn't a breath of air in the belt. The thing was full of holes. I guess it is easier to swim in salt water.
On arriving back in Portsmouth, I was given 3 days leave and travel time. I was given 3 more days, but didn't hear of it until I went aboard. I was broke, but I walked off and got 3 days stevedoring, with 60 Negroes and a white boss. I stayed nights at a Y.M.C.A. It was frowned on in Virginia, for a white man to work with black men. It was interesting to me. We handled 2 wheel trucks unloading cargo from barges, and
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
28
then loading them with 500-pound slabs of some kind of meta\. I had done some of this kind of work in Seattle, while on liberty. I found out about the injustice that Negroes had to live with. I had worked for 1.50 plus time and a half for overtime. In Virginia the wages were 65 cents an hour with no overtime. The men were great for singing as we worked. We had to push the load up the gangplank at first and then hold back, as the barge was loaded. Anyway I went back aboard ship with it about to get underway. I learned that 2 friends that had been with me from the time we shoved off for the Pacific, had put me down for shore duty, under the point system. I just had time to get my sea bag and gear, before the gangplank was lifted. They had chosen Atlantic City Naval Air Station for duty. I was given just enough time to go home to Colo. and get Eula, and my sister Frances, and go back to New Jersey. I only saw those friends once, as they decided Atlantic City wasn't as fun for liberty as they thought. I stayed in Atlantic City until I was released from the Navy at Lido beach N.Y. in Sept. 1945. This was the beginning of another story, as sister Frances, Eula and 6week old daughter Linda and I set off for Colorado in a $200. 1934 Pontiac. LIBERTIES IN Casablanca, MOROCCO
While on the small carrier Guadalcanal, we anchored 3 or 4 times in the harbor at Casablanca. Our planes landed at an air base while we were in port. The harbor was horseshoe shaped, with a stone sea wall on one side and the city of Casablanca on the hillside surrounding it. There were several, sailing type French vessels, sunk in the harbor, with their top decks above water. I understood the French did this when the enemy took over.
The crew was given a few hours liberty each cruise. We always had to struggle through a crowd of beggars and vendors at the dock. At first I had trouble, but was told some words that I've forgotten, that would give you passage. I don't know whether they were swear words or not. Tom Harrison, a friend and the ship's postmaster accompanied me. We had our pictures taken by a photographer who used the old type of camera that he had to use a hood. We had our pictures taken so that we could portray the throng around us. The cameraman managed to take the picture without a single native appearing in the photo. One man insisted that Tom hold his monkey on his shoulder, but he was upset because the monkey wet on him. Another man had some insects in a tray and wanted some money to see him eat them. Tom asked him if he liked them, and why we should pay him to eat something that he enjoyed. We paid one man 2 dollars for a ride on a two-wheeled cart that had rubber tires. He took us out to see the Sultans' palace. He kept saying "yeah" to his horses and Tom asked what it meant. He said it meant "gitty up". Tom said well why don't you just say "gitty up" in an America G.\. know it all fashion. One trip we had the privilege of some of our ships company to go in the back of a truck to Rabat the capitol of French Morocco. Some of the Sultans' guard held a parade with some outdated cannon and military equipment. We paid a Jewish boy to give us a ride on a buggy pulled by 2 ponies. There was 6 or 8 of us, which made quite a load. Some of us would walk up grades. We stood around with a crowd to watch the Sultan go to a
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
29
Moslem temple to worship. There were guards that stood in a square around the temple. They were all Negroes about seven feet tall and had their swords drawn. I asked one of the people about it. They said the guards were to keep unbelievers out. I sure wasn't about to tell those guys that I was a believer. Anyway our guard was astounding for a boy of 16. He said he could speak Jewish, French, English and Arabic. There were some modern buildings. He took us to one of the better buildings to eat dinner. On the way back we saw a camel and a donkey with hayracks with loads that were comparable to their size. I forgot to tell that we were fortunate to have a ships photographer with our group and he was nice enough to give each of us pictures. We were not allowed to have cameras.
TRAGEDIES AT SEA
After leaving San Diego on the U.S.S. Altamaha, a small carrier. In the fall of 1942 we headed for the South Pacific, with a squadron aboard, and 80, FA.F. Fighter planes. Planes, which had the wings folded, and were jammed into every corner of the ship. After going by Honolulu Hawaii, we went about another 2500 miles to Noumea, New Caledonia. We cruised around the islands awhile, off the coast of Australia, training the pilots for carrier landings.
The fighting was going on at Guadalcanal. Our first tragedy, while training planes for dive-bombing and strafing, at a target towed behind the ship. One of the planes exploded for some reason, and all that was left was a piece of cowling floating on the water.
The next tragedy was a plane going off the port side of the ship, snapping a cable along the catwalk. We lost the plane into the ocean but the pilot survived. When the cable broke, it snapped back and caught a friend in the face. He died about 2 hours later. The next tragedy happened while we were at target practice, one man was on the flight deck watching the procedure, when a 40 Millimeter shell exploded prematurely over his head and he was killed. Our squadron flew on into the fighting at Guadalcanal and the survivors landed on a land base or carrier.
We would go back to Pearl Harbor without escort or planes, for another squadron and planes. There were some scary times, but they were false alarms of submarines. There were no more casualties while on this ship, although there were numerous accidents.
One time I was operating the forward elevator; a fighter planes tail-hook missed all of the arresting gear cables, and was slicing up the deck with the propeller. I was coming up with the elevator. I didn't have time to be scared. At the last minute the pilot hit the brakes and the plane flipped over, with the tail at my feet.
Another time a plane was revving up on the catapult. The ring hooking it to the catapult was faulty, and broke before the catapult equipment was released. This meant the plane had to reach flying speed in 90 feet. We ran across the deck, expecting to see it sink, but the plane barely skimmed the water and took flight. This was the pilots lucky, or unlucky day, as he landed after his flight, the ship pitched over a wave, and threw his plane at the conning tower. He gave full power
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
30
and missed the tower, but landed upside down in the water. The plane sank, but the pilot emerged almost instantly, and miraculously was unhurt.
Another plane came in from a flight with a wing fuel tank that wouldn't release. It did, however, release when the plane hit the deck and burst into flames. The man that stood by in an asbestos suit, (monkey suit), helped the pilot. out. The fire crew put out the fire, and no one was hurt.
Another time, it was announced to watch the landing, as it is the 1000th landing. As it turned out the pilot came in on a wing and a prayer. It was on one wheel and a wing tip and a crash. On the last cruise that I was on the ship. After unloading the planes we were sent by a small atoll or island, Funi Fudy, which was in the process of being fortified. The Japs had been bombing it every day. It was among other small islands. We were supposed to get in at daybreak, but it was foggy and the navigator couldn't find it. We had one small plane, an S.O.C. aboard. It was sent up to locate the island. It was high noon when we found it. There wasn't a dock to unload supplies, gasoline, and ammunition. They had to be unloaded on a barge, along with 50 of the ships crew to help unload. The crewmembers were to be picked up on the next cruise. It was nearly evening when we got underway. A ship appeared on the horizon. It was thought to be a Jap war ship. There were tense moments as we manned our guns. Our anti-aircraft guns wouldn't have been anymore than peashooters against a fighting war ship. A tropical rainstorm hit almost instantly, and obscured everything. We were on the guns for hours but we never saw any sign of the ship again. On arriving in Pear Harbor it was decided to go to the states for repairs. On the cruise in, one of the boilers shutdown. We barely made more than 8 or 10 knots per hour for several days. We didn't have enough speed to cross the troughs between waves, so the ship would roll from one side to the other, making you think it might go on over. My sleeping quarters were directly under the galley. I could hear the cooks cursing as they chased pots and pans across the steel deck. Radio silence was never broken unless necessary, as there was danger of an enemy sub. locating us. We finally made port, and we took turns to go on leave. I got 3 days leave plus travel time to go home to Colorado. Eula decided to marry me. Colo. law required 3 days for a blood test, so we eloped from Durango Co. to Aztec N.M. A Methodist minister married us.
Our last day, we visited my folks in Albuquerque N.M. I left from there to go back to the ship and return to the South Pacific. Instead, 80 of us were transferred to Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle Wash. to go aboard another ship. This was the last I heard of the Altamaha.
W.W.II CHRISTMAS AND EASTER
At Christmas of 1942 my ship a small carrier, U.S.S. Altamaha was at anchor in a small harbor at Noumea New Caledonia. One of the larger carriers was alongside. It had a 20 ft hole blown in its flight deck. A cruiser had the bow shot off and one of the compartments was flooded. There were 16 bodies closed in it. Anyway our crew put on a Christmas play, using the forward elevator lowered to about 6 ft above the
Melvin Butler My Life and Times
31
hangar deck. The small hills looked similar to the setting where Christ was born. The sky was different as there were barrage balloons with cables attached to keep enemy planes away and large searchlights searching the sky.
At Easter the next spring we were heading back to Pearl Harbor. We were heading back the 2500 miles without planes or escort. It was a perfectly calm sea so the chaplain had me operate the after elevator to move the ships piano onto the flight deck. He held services, with men who were not on watch attending. This seemed a very peaceful setting.
The next Christmas eve I was attached to the small carrier, U.S.S. Guadalcanal. We were ready to leave Norfolk, Va. at dawn, escorting another convoy to Europe. This was quite a memory as there were about 30 of us. We were trudging through about 4 inches of snow looking for a church service. There were a number of churches; some with the doors unlocked and with candles burning, but no services. Every time out there was the danger of being torpedoed. I have often thought how the men in the convoys that were heading for the battlefields felt knowing that some of them would never return.
The next Christmas I was doing shore duty at the naval air station near Atlantic City N.J. Eula, Frances, cousin Maurice and I went to Christmas services in Pleasantville N.J. where we were living. Maurice had gotten leave from his Navy unit for Christmas Eve.

2007-01-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

Listed in the Durango, Colorado Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Firm, Online Marketing Firm

2006-10-24T15:22:00.000-07:00

http://lbutlerlaplata.blogspot.com/

BUY NOVELS BY LUTHER BUTLER AT SLASHED PRICES

2006-06-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Barnes�&�Noble.com - Book Search: luther butler
HUGE SLICES IN PRICE http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=luther+butler&z=y&cds2Pid=9481

LA PLATA COUNTY MAP

2005-08-11T19:47:00.000-07:00

MAP

googletestad

ROCKVALE SCHOOL HOUSE

2005-07-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

The Rockvale school was built sometime between 1900 and 1905 (former students and area history books don't pinpoint an exact date). The school was closed in 1948, when the population of western La Plata County an area known as the Dryside declined and Hay Gulch students began attending an elementary school at the old Fort Lewis College campus south of Hesperus.
Rockvale teachers arrived at the schoolhouse to fire up the coal heater and warm the schoolhouse before class started at 8 a.m.
The school day, which lasted until about 4 p.m., mainly consisted of the basic academics: reading, writing, math and social studies with short recesses in the morning and afternoon and an hour for lunch. Windows and kerosene lamps lit the school until electricity came to Hay Gulch in the 1940s.
When I (Luther Butler) went to Rockvale School in the first and second grade there was a bee hive in the north wall of the building.We children spent many an hour catching drones (they had no stinger) so we could attach them to pencils with sewing thread.I wasn't unusual to see a pencil fly through the air as the male bees pulled it around.Once in awhile a student and a bee would have a run in and stings around the eyes would cause the teacher to have a student lead the victim home.
During my first year Scarlet Fever broke out in November, and we didn't have school again until March. One of the eighth graders died of the illness.
Since we lived seven miles from school by the road, we would cut through the woods if the snow wasn't too deep. When it snowed sometimes drifts would get very deep. With the temperature below freezing, we had a good workout twice a day. In spite of the hardships the Rockvale School experience has always been my best school days.

ROCKVALE SCHOOL 1935-36

2005-07-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

TOP ROW LEFT TO RIGHT THIRD AND FOURTH GRADE 1.SAM CORDELL 2.LEE SMITH 3.BILLY DUNN 4.CONNIE HUNTINGTON. 5. LINNEL BAIRD/ BOTTOM ROW LEFT TO RIGHT: MAXINE YOUNG (2ND OR 3RD GRADE)/ FIRST GRADE: 1:EARL SMITH 2. JACK HUNTINGTON 3. JOHN BROWN YOUNG 4. ED CORDELL 5. LUTHER BUTLER/ CARMEN CORDELL (4TH OR 5TH GRADE)Miss Binder, teacher for all eight grades, had me sitting with Ed Cordell until we had too much fun, and I had to sit with Maxine Young which I enjoyed a great deal.

LUTHER BUTLER'S EARLY MEMORIES OF LA PLATA COUNTY COLORADO

2005-07-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Durango Herald Online: "Galloping Goose railcar "

LUTHER BUTLER'S EARLY MEMORIES OF LA PLATA COUNTY
CABIN EAST OF MANCOS
On November 14, 1929, my parents were returning to La Plata County after a year in Cleburne, Texas trying to sell a boxcar or two of Delicious apples grown in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Their journey was halted in Alamosa, Colorado by my birth in a Luthern Hospital. From this hospital, I got my name. I'm thankful they didn't make it to La Plata County for my birth since the hospital in Durango, county seat, was Mercy Hospital. Luther is hard enough to bear, but think of a name like Mercy!
Before my birth, my father had owned a music and a Singer Sewing Machine store in Durango. Many times he had taken land in trade for merchandise so when he returned to La Plata County with me and four other of my siblings, he started developing these rough but very picturesque pieces of property. From all of the land the mountains were either visible or very close.The first place I remember living on was four miles east of Mancos, Colorado. The beautiful piece of forested land was surrounded by mountains that towered over the log cabin we were so proud to own.

D&RGW RAILROAD My most vivid memories of this home was sitting on a front porch that opened up to a view of the D&RGW railroad that allowed a narrow line train to come out of a mountain pass where the train would run west across pasture land and then disappear into more mountains.It is easy to remember the black engine with smoke pouring out while it pulled brightly painted boxcars that rumbled before a red caboose emerged. After all these years, the smell of coal smoke still drifts into my nostrils. Sometimes instead of the train, a bus mounted on wheels designed for the tracks would come bouncing around the bend with a few passengers and the daily mail inside. It was easy to see why this odd vehicle was called the Galloping Goose.
DUST BOWL During the early 1930s, while we were living in a green paradise the people east of us were going through the era of the great Dust Bowl. One warm summer morning a train of canvas covered wagons came down Mancos Hill and proceeded to cross in front of our cabin. The odd thing about this covered wagon train was that the cumbersome vehicles were being pulled, or at this part of the travel down the steep grade, held back by teams of black and white Holstein milk cows that some enterprising dairy men from Kansas were saving from choking dust by making them into draft animals.For several years during the Dust Bowl,it would snow, and when the storm was over there would be a layer of red dust blown in by an east wind. Years later, I would think of this when eating a white cake decorated with chocolate.
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, MANCOS During the time we lived close to Mancos, my father filled in on Sunday Morning at First Baptist Church, Mancos. Although he had only finished the fourth grade in Fort Worth, Texas, he was an ordained Baptist lay preacher. Two incidents at First Baptist come to mind. 1. I was approaching four-years-old, and since my older sister took care of me, I was determined to stay with her during Sunday School. One lady with nice silk stockings pulled me out and took me to my class. Determined I would stay where I belonged, she stationed herself across the door. Doubling up, I ran between her legs and returned to where my older sister was. 2. Eventually the church called a business meeting to discuss calling my father to be a full time minister. Most of the people were inclined to vote him in - except one staunch elderly lady. Getting up during the meeting she announced loudly that she had been a member of the church for years, and since she was the Peter of the Church, she didn't want my father as a minister. A group of teen-agers in back of the church auditorium, including my three brothers, grew hysterical at this announcement. Although my father continued to supply, he didn't get the job.
GOAT AND SHEEP RAISING The 1930s were an era of poverty for many in rural La Plata County. Although Mancos was a few miles in Montezuma County from my father’s homestead land in La Plata County, he determined to start using the two places by having his two older sons raise goats. With most of the small homesteaders starved out, he knew he could run his herd across vacant places by paying a small yearly fee. My two older brothers who had dropped out of high school were looking for a means to support themselves and the rest of the family. Sheep were their choice, but with goats more easily traded for, they became the dominant part of the herd.The distance from the log cabin east of Mancos to the homestead near the La Plata River was fifty or so miles, which would have been a long drive. The two young men knew of an old Spanish Trail that went southeast from Mancos to the homestead. The distance was some twenty miles or maybe even less. Therefore, they drove the small herd between the two places. Starting off with primarily goats, which were gradually replaced by sheep, which were easier to herd. The goats would climb the steepest trail to a prominent rock or mountaintop. Bringing them back down became so hard that one or the other brother would use a rifle to bring the wander home.One day when the herd was close to Mancos, some cowboys rode up. “Mr. Butler,” they said, “we want to rent your goats for a rodeo.” The deal called for the goats to be let loose on Main Street in Mancos. Using their pickups as barriers, the ropers were going to offer prizes for the rider who could rope the most goats. A large crowd gathered. The ropers mounted horses and began to unlimber their lariats. The crowd cheered. Firecrackers went off. Dogs yipped and ran after the goats. It was the most hilarious thing I ever saw. Goats jumped into pickup beds, crawled under pickups, and bunched up on the sidewalks. Cowboys went crazy trying for prize money, but I’m not sure that more than three or four goats were caught that day.Soon after this, my father began buying angora goats for the high quality hair that could be woven into beautiful rugs. This time my father planned to put my mother and older sister to work in weaving the rugs. He bought a spinning wheel along with a loom. The last I remember of the rug making equipment was that it sat idle in the cabin. One unfinished rug was on the loom. My mother would cook, cut wood, hoe crops, tend babies, but she would not make rugs!
SHEEPHERDERS My father had traded a piano to a widow for a quarter section of land between Hay Gulch and Alkali Canyon. The land had been opened to homesteaders when the Ute Indians were forced to move to the Colorado River in Utah. The woman’s husband had died before he could build a primitive house (homesteader’s shack) and clear fifteen acres of land both of which were required before the Government would turn over ownership. There were other obstacles two of which were there was no water and the dirt roads became impassable after rain or snow.My mother lived in a tent before my father built a temporary house from upright cedar poles. Apparently, the family preferred living in the log cabin near Mancos until my father could find a way to bring both places into production. While my father tried to make a living by peddling vegetables and fixing sewing machines, my mother and two of the older boys were able to clear the required fifteen acres.As I wrote, many of the original homesteaders had droughted out before I was born in 1929. Vast acres of pinyon and juniper (white cedar) forests surrounded by sagebrush flats lay vacant. On land without enough rainfall to support agriculture, my father and brothers made a living by raising sheep and goats. The latter animals could use the brush better, but they were difficult to herd – and they made the herding of sheep very difficult. By the time I was three going on four, the goats were almost a thing of the past.Over this vast area of land, my brothers herded their flock. Eventually they were able to gain permission from the U.S. Forest Service to lease a large block of land for summer pastures.
When does a child start remembering events very clearly? I could not have been more than four when I was allowed to spend periods of time in sheep camps. After day work was done, my brothers would set up camp. During rainy periods and in the winter, they pitched canvas tents. During clear weather, they would make a camp under the stars. Building a roaring fire, they cooked after which they read. The youngest of the three brothers played a mouth harp and a guitar.Now here we were miles out in the woods away from any dwelling when young men and boys the same age as my brothers started drifting into visit and listen to the music.Story telling was one of the major ways these visitors and my brothers entertained each other. Fighting sleep, I would try to keep my eyes and ears open long enough to hear tales of fighting wild animals, snakes, and chasing rustlers and once in awhile, a killer. My greatest joy was imagining that I was Robin Hood camped with his merry men. Cedar smoke mixed with tobacco were often the last memories I had of a weary day.
HOMESTEAD RUINS By the time I can remember much about the Dryside between Hay Gulch and Cherry Creek, most of the homesteaders had cleared out. Drought, cold weather, low prices, and perhaps muddy roads and who knows what else had caused a general migration to greener pastures. Where there should have been four families on every section, there were abandoned houses that were quickly rotting back into the fertile red soil. Just about every abandoned farmstead still had a few apple trees, a remnant of a flowerbed, and a dirt cellar that was starting to crumble. My youngest sister and I spent countless hours sifting through dirt to find broken plates, corroded eating utensils, and a few books in the old cellars. The house that was a twin to ours still stood a quarter of a mile to the north of our home. A disabled World War I veteran still tried to make a living on his farm located several miles to the North. Seven or so miles to the north, a family of Cordells still raised fairly good crops. To the northwest, a Texas migrant still raised goats and cattle. To the east of us on Hay Gulch where there was irrigation water, several families were making a go of it.My remembrance of this vast beautiful land framed by mountains was abandoned fields pock marked with prairie dog mounds. The Black Book my mother taught me to read out of spoke of desolation of desolations. Except for a land whose beauty could be only temporally marred by humans, the abandoned homesteads were straight out of the writings of the prophet Ezekial!
A couple of miles more or less from our house, along Alkali Canyon, a house still stood along the canyon wall. Some of the rooms had been dug into the sides of the hill, and the walls were lined with rocks. We raised potatoes in the rich loam of abandoned fields where children had once played. Sometimes in my imagination voices of a happy family drifted through the vacant air.
My favorite place to go on Alkali was to a log cabin where an Indian fighter had built a cabin out of logs. There were no windows and only one door. Gun ports had been cut in the walls so the occupant could fire smoking rifles at marauding Indians. Since Navahos had in the early days drifted into this valley, I don’t know if the shots were fired at them or at the Ute who occupied this land until the Government drove them out. The good thing that this location had was a living spring that furnished water for the occupants and their animals. Since the water was contaminated with alkali, I don’t know if it was safe for human use.In this vast, empty land that I loved, my two older brothers and my father (most of the time he was off peddling) tried to make a living by farming and raising a few cows, and a large herd of sheep that numbered around three thousand. Whether my father always paid to pasture the sagebrush flats is doubtful. There just weren’t many people around to collect rent. Most had moved off to far away places and only lawyers in Durango knew where they were. Since much of the land could be bought by paying back taxes, our family started putting every spare dollar into purchasing it. As late as 1947 I was able to buy four hundred acres across Alkali for a thousand dollars. I let the land go back to the owner after a down payment. I wanted to get an education. The next year, gas wells were drilled on this land.
1932. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT Since I was born November 14, 1929, I was not very old the November day when Herbert Hoover lost the presidential election to Roosevelt, but as though it were yesterday, I can remember my two oldest brothers and my father riding a horse to Marvel in order to defeat the restorer of legal alcohol. We owned a small herd of horses that we used to farm and pack supplies to the sheep camps. Snow had not brought the pack animals out of high La Plata Mountain pasture.Old Dewey was an old horse that we used around the farm for cultivation and short rides. Since he was the only horse available on Election Day, my two brothers and my father took turns riding him to the polls at Marvel. While the three took turns voting, the other two did chores and watched that coyotes did not get into the sheep herd.Although my two brothers were old enough to vote, my father gave them strict instructions on how to mark their ballot. Since voting was by secret ballots, if either brother voted on their own, they never mentioned it while I was around. Hoover had the misfortune of being president when the Great Depression started. Whether he was responsible for the financial mess is for historians to figure out. The only criteria my father and two brothers used in not voting for Roosevelt was that he promised to end prohibition.
Father was the last to ride the old horse to Marvel. While he waited, I went with him to let the sheep graze on last summer’s corn stalks. We built a fire and I listened to a lecture on the dangers of alcohol that Roosevelt was about to release on the country. I was not brave enough to point out that under prohibition there were enough alcoholic beverages being consumed to keep people drunk whenever they wanted to tie one on. Berries, grain, and fermented fruit and vegetables were keeping our neighbors well supplied.Later in the afternoon, we went to the house for lunch and then my father rode Old Dewey up the east road toward the polling place. Since Brother Johnson had opened the church for those who wanted to listen to one the election results broadcast over the sputtering airwaves, I was asleep when he returned, but I heard him regretfully announce that Hoover had lost.
My father, David Homer Butler, born in Liberty, Amite County, Mississippi, around 1890 to a schoolteacher father and a nurse mother never learned to accept the lowly position in life that the Depression tried to force him into taking. With Roosevelt’s New Deal, dignity and prosperity was to come back to rural people of La Plata County. Projects with initals like WPA, CCC, and some other weird letters, were supposed to lift us above the poverty level that my mother thought we were below. Young men around us were soon joining the CCC work force to improve America. The closest camp to us was at Red Mesa, some ten miles away.
My mother told my father that if he didn’t go to work there soon, she was going to apply for Relief benefits. Here my father was faced with the dilemma of going to work for Roosevelt’s plan to end poverty or to my mother putting the whole family on Roosevelt’s great Relief program.With great sorrow my father put on his best brown suit, bought himself a new shiney carpenter’s sqaure and took off for Red Mesa. I watched my proud father walk down the lane toward what he considered the most humiliating thing he had ever done, go to work for the government. My older brothers rejoiced to see him go because they could now farm and raise sheep without his constant bossing. For three days sorrow hung over our home on the Dryside. Ma moped around as though she had lost the most precious thing in her life, my father. On the fourth day we could stop worrying that Father would fall off one of the new buildings he was working on at the CCC camp. He came walking down the hill on our east road. All of us ran out to greet him. It seems he had walked off when his supervisor wouldn’t allow him to take the day off and help a sick neighbor. I don’t remember my father ever offering to help a sick neighbor work before or afterwards. He was not going to work for any government sponsored agency.
How my mother got to the relief office to apply for assistance, I don’t know. In a few days, a smartly-dressed woman in a new car came to fill out the numerous papers that would make us dependent on the State for food and clothing. The haughty woman who stayed all day examined the three younger children. She measured us for new clothing. She left a book that told how my mother should prepare the food the government would soon provide. In other words, in modern terms, she was a pain in the ass.A few days later again her car came down the road. Ma, with great expectations went out to meet her. My youngest sister and I ran out to receive all the new clothes we were going to get. My oldest sister hid in the kitchen.The great dame pulled out a brown grocery sack that contained a box of dried milk, a new pair of underwear for one of my sisters and nothing else. "I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler, but your husband has too much land and livestock for you to qualify for relief." All the way from the sheep shed, we could hear my father let out a cheer. My mother threw the pitiful package back into the government lady’s hands as she told her, "We don’t accept charity."I scuffed my bare feet in the hot Colorado dirt as visions of new shoes and clothing drove east on the road back to Durango. Dad took over his bossing job again.At that moment I was the proudest I’ve ever been in my life before or after. We were poor, but we were not on Roosevelt’s damn Relief.
LA PLATA COUNTY PEOPLE Without neighbors for miles to the south and that much further to the west, part of the time we had no northern neighbors for nine miles, except for neighbors three miles to the east on Hay Gulch, we lived in isolation. Even with few neighbors, people constantly found their way to our door. Cowboys looking for lost cows, prospectors still hoping to make a strike in the mountains, and some just plain drifters came down the dirt road that led to our front door.Robert Frost’s poem, TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME, reminds me of what our situation was. In the early 1930s, men were wandering through the country looking to work for food and a place to stay. And, the men who came to our place often came in mud time. Since gravel roads were miles away, our visitors had to either come over frozen ground or slosh through mud and water that soon filled the tracks of the wanderers.One time two men came who claimed they could witch for water – and gold! The talker of the two blew tobacco into the clean air of our house (none of our family smoked) while he told of the magical thinks he could do. Since the locks on the two doors of our house had long since rusted shut, we had taken blocks of wood, drilled holes in the center and turned these stops to keep the doors from opening to unwanted visitors. Barely four-years-old, my eyes grew big as this man told of how he could with his mind, make the door guards twirl. He never did it. A few days later, he moved his starving family into an abandoned house situated three miles from us on the La Plata River. He and his partner tried to support the woman and her children by divining for gold. My parents kept coming up with food. Several years later, the man who was supposed to be a husband and father robbed First National Bank in Farmington, New Mexico with a water gun. We just supposed the desperate man had his divining rod point to the wrong gold.
My two favorite characters were with the Salvation Army in Durango. Dad gave them permission to rob some bee trees for the honey they wished to dole out to starving people in the County. These two were the most jovial people I have ever met. Since my father was a religious zealot, he spent too much time helping others instead of his own family. The bee robbers were robust to the point of being over weight. Although one of my brothers helped them, the two men did most of the work themselves. Early settlers had brought in tame bees that filled hollow cedar trees with gallons of liquid gold still in the honeycomb. Since bee trees were often tall and big around, the two helped by my brother would start a fire, put on green limbs and smoke the bees into submission. Watching these two heavy men run when an angry bee got after them was better than a circus that I had never seen.I have to pause to tell what I had heard about the bees that early settlers brought westward as they traveled. The white travelers often brought small pox with them. Indians who had no immune system to fight the disease often died to the last person in the village. Since bees traveled about thirty miles ahead of their owners, the Red Men thought bees carried the dread disease that poxed their face if it didn’t kill them.When the bee robbers brought in raw honey, my mother would put a wash tub on the wood burning stove and render the honey so it would pour into glass jars. Since my dad would not let anyone rob bees during the cold winter months, the Salvation Army workers came in early spring so the bees would have flowers available. The funniest thing about the two men was that both were stung on their bare bottoms while going to the great outdoors bathroom. The house filled with laughter as these two tried to find soft places to place their sore butts.
<strong>Veterans
I remember two veterans who used to come to our house. My favorite was a Civil War Veteran who would show up unannounced. He and his wife would fill the room with cheer while they took on over we smaller childern. 1933 was a long time after theWar between the North and South had ended. This man must have been at least ninety years old. Always smartly dressed, he would sit in a rocking chair so I could cuddle under his flowing graybeard. What a Northern veteran was doing in the house of a Mississippi rebel I’ll never know, but I’m thankful for the memory he has left me.The other veteran I remembered lived five or six miles to the north of our place, A World War I veteran he had been gassed in the trenches of France. Often out of his mind, he came to our house a few times to hire one of my brothers to work for him. A good farmer, he had been able to hold onto his homestead farm until he was declared insane and sent to Fort Lyons to live out his years behind wire fences. Stories of the crazy things he did drifted into my tender ears. First tried to poison neighbors including our family with some borrowed sugar. Next, he shot a neighbor’s mule when he hired the neighbor to bring his team over and do some plowing. When my father had to testify at the hearing in Durango, we went to town and shopped until the trial was over. For as long as my father lived he grieved over helping send his neighbor to the Veterans Hospital for the Insane.
Members of the Methodist Church at Marvel, Colorado stand out after all these years. Brother Johnson, the minister, often went on peddling trip with my father. His salary was so low that he had to supplement it with other work. The two men would go to Farmington, New Mexico and buy a load of fruit and vegetables. Staying out several days, they would go from house to house peddling their goods. Dad always got the live animals while the preacher got the cash. This is a delicate subject but one day my father brought home a very nice sow. With plans of raising a pigs, he and my brothers borrowed a boar from a neighbor to do the honor. When the boar was turned lose with the willing sow, it was soon apparent that she didn’t have the proper opening to be a mother. We ate hog meat all fall. Since I was barely four I have to this day never understood the deformity.
Lawrence Miller was another of the church members who meant a great deal to me. Stricken with polio when he was a child, he always had to swing his crippled body along between two crutches. When I was diagnosed with polio while in the Navy, Lawrence’s remembrance was my inspiration. Whether it was God's grace or the LSD I was given, I never had to use crutches.
Doctor Smith worked out of his home-office in Marvel. If there are no other people in Heaven, I’m sure he will be there although I don’t remember him being in church. When an epidemic of Scarlet Fever threatened the life of every child on the Dryside and Hay Gulch, three or more times a week, Dr. Smith showed up to try and save my life, and the lives of other sick children. When it was too muddy or the snow was too deep for his automobile, he came in a buggy pulled by a sturdy horse. The epidemic struck in the late fall when I was in first grade at Rockvale School. On the first visit, the doctor nailed a red sign on our door. We were quarantined. No one was allowed to enter the house. My father could buy groceries at Marvel by standing outside and calling his order through the open door. School was closed up before Thanksgiving and never opened again until March.
Doctors at that time were very limited as to what they could do for patients with viral infections. Only in recent times have medicines been developed to kill the germs causing the sickness. In Doctor Smith’s time, only the symptoms could be controlled. When the four children in our house got the disease, my mother cleared the congestion out with her fingers. Kerosene mixed with sugar was of some help. In spite of this, Dr. Smith continued to watch over his patients with careful eyes. A few nights when we were very sick, he stayed at our house to help my mother keep air passages cleared. I remember him trying to doctor us by the light of a flickering kerosene lamp. It would be years before electricity would come to our house.Before the Scarlet Fever, my mother got blood poisoning after a scrape with a rusty wire. Several times the doctor brought in a bone saw to remove her arm above the elbow. Each time he tried one more thing before he cut. In desperation, he poured a bottle of iodine into the wound. It left an ugly scar, but my mother kept her arm.
Dr. Smith never sent a bill. Most of the times he was paid with chickens, hams, mutton, or eggs. How he got money to feed his family or to buy the necessities of life, I don’t know, but he usually drove a nice car. Once in awhile he made a trip to a far off place like California.
Every spring he sold my mother enough calomel to give each member of the family a dose. A white tasteless compound Hg 2 Cl 2 used esp. as a fungicide and insecticide and occasionally an eternal medicine, the patient was not allowed any sugar until they took a laxative to purge the system. Calomel plus sugar I was told, your teeth would loosen and fall out. Although I survived the dosage, sometimes I would have rather died. This copied poem explains the situation well:
Calomel
Ye doctors all of every rank
With their long bills that break the bank,
Of wisdom's learning, art, and skill
Seems all composed of calomel.

Since calomel has been their toast,
How many patients have they lost,
How many hundreds have they killed,
Or poisoned with their calomel.

lf any fatal wretch be sick
Go call the doctor, haste, be quick,
The doctor comes with drop and pill
But don't forget his calomel.

He enters, by the bed he stands,
He takes the patient hy the hand,
Looks wise, sits down his pulse to feel
And then takes out his calomel.

Next, turning to the patient's wite,
He calls for paper end a knife.
" l think your husband would do well
To take a dosc ol calomel."

The man grows worse, grows bad indeed
" Go call the doctor, ride with speed."
The doctor comes, the wife to tell
To double the dose of calomel.

The man begins in death to groan,
The fatal job for him is done,
The soul must go to heaven or hell,
A sacrifice to calomel.

The doctors of the present day
Mind not what an old woman say,
Nor do they mind me when l tell
I am no friend to calomel.

Well, if I must resign my breath,
Pray let me die a natural death
And if I must bid all farewell,
Don't hurry me with calomel.

from American Ballads and Songs, Pound
No tune given: songs well to O Tannenbaum (COPIED)

MICKEY LESTER You will notice that so far I have used very few full names. In Mr. Lester’s case, I’m breaking the rule. When we went the seven miles to Marvel to buy supplies or to attend the Marvel Methodist Church, before we got on the graveled road, we passed the Lester place. A three-room house surrounded by smaller buildings and a large barn sheltering a shed roofed with sod, the house weathered under the Colorado sun. When a small child, we went there often.Before the great stock break of 1929, Mickey had used his wife’s money to run a bank at Marvel. When times were stable, Mickey lent a great deal of money and took land to secure the note. When the depression hit, the couple was left with large tracts of land and very little money.Mickey had one big tragedy in his life that he mentioned frequently. Falling off a hay stack and living, he referred to it "as when he knocked himself sensible."
With every word I write about this man, my heart fills with love for a man who treated a little boy with great kindness. Mickey had been superintendent of the Sunday School at the Methodist Church. Suddenly, he dropped out and joined the Kline Mormon Church that was across a field east of his house.One day my father got up the courage to ask Mickey why he changed churches. Mickey said he had two reasons: 1. The church had a Sunday School picnic at Cherry Creek. Somehow, even though he was Sunday School superintendent, he was not notified. 2. His second reason was the best. From the Mormon Church, he could watch his hen house even when he was supposed to close his eyes in prayer. With a chuckle, he said that the Mormons had left his poultry where they belonged. His scripture for this change started out, "Watch and pray."The last I heard of Mr. Lester, when the Depression ended, he regained his money and a lot more. He had sold his house at Kline to my oldest brother and opened a real estate office in Durango. Apart from selling the same place two or more times, he was doing well.
HORSE FARMING IN LA PLATA COUNTY.Horses were still the main source for La Plata County farming in the early 1930s. A few farmers were beginning to buy tractors, but the initial cost was still out of the range of most depression strapped farmer. The farmers of German descent near Rockvale School used large breeds such as the Percheron to pull their farming equipment. Horses first bred to carry knights in ancient Normandy clomped through Colorado mud.
Large breeds did not fit our needs. My father and brothers had to have draft animals that could also be used to carry packs and riders along narrow mountain trails. Sheep tending required a smaller, sure-footed animal. Our family started their herd with a race horse mare bred to stallions that resembled the modern quarter horse. Strong for farm work, they could climb mountain trails. Some people called these horses, broomtails, but they suited the farmer-sheep raiser better than most animals except the Spanish donkey that was good in the mountains but not worth a plugged nickel for pulling plows and other farm equipment.
I grew up understanding terms such as; single trees, double trees, wagon tongues, Georgia stock, lister, turning plow, mower, hay rake and a multitude of other horse drawn farming equipment.Our horse herd, which consisted of fifteen to twenty animals seldom rested. Spring plowing required two horses to pull the turning plow as soon as the ground was dry enough to turn. After plowing, a team pulled harrows, heavy drags to level the field, then came the one horse planter followed by one or two horse-pulled cultivators. Most of the herd was on its way to the mountains before the crop was big enough to hoe. Except for one or two older horses not suited for mountain packing, the herd would not walk on level ground until snow caused them to come to lower ranges for food. The older horses spent the summer pulling a cultivator.
Since except for water we caught in the cistern, we had to haul our drinking water three miles from the La Plata River a horse or two was needed to pull the wagon used for this task. When no horses were available, my mother would give us smaller children buckets, and off we would go for a picnic and to bring water on our return trip to the house.
When killing frost hit then the horses were hooked to wagon and loads of corn fodder was hauled into fenced areas so deer and other larger wild animals wouldn’t destroy it before it could be fed to the livestock. When snow came, the horses were used to skid cedar post out of the woods. Often times the sale of this fence building equipment was used for our Christmas presents.
Although we always had at least one Model T Ford truck, the roads were not passable except for horses. Snowdrifts and later, mud, would not permit motor driven equipment. I can still remember riding to Marvel holding onto an older member of the family as our mount moved along. The two school-attending children often rode horses the seven miles to classes when the animals were available. When the snow got deep, the horses were hooked to sleds to pull feed to the sheep. My dad bought cottonseed hulls by the truckloads. Fifty gallon barrels of sorghum molasses spread over the dry hulls from southern farms along with corn fodder raised on our fields supplemented the sagebrush and buck brush that the sheep browsed on all winter. This kept the animals alive until weeds growing under the snow emerged to fatten the winter-starved flocks.Horses, besides being beasts of burden, became members of the family. We gave them pet names such as: "Chigger", "Old Bird", "Dewey," "Fanny," and other pet names. We knew the characteristics of each horse, and we knew which ones were fakers when it came to performing their tasks. Old Bird, the mother, grandmother, and great grandmother of our herd, became in her old age, the best faker of all the horses.Since the horses would often go to the Mormon Reservoir, a mile from the house, to drink and graze, they sometimes became stuck in the mud. Old Bird turned up missing one summer day. Soon after a search, she was found bogged down along the Reservoir water. Daddy and an older son cut two large cedar posts from the hillside. Attaching a pulley to a cross bar attached to the posts, a rope was lain out on the mud before it was pulled under the trapped animal. Here the whole family had labored all day under a summer sun to rescue the pitiful mare. Before the rope could be shoved under her muddy body, the old horse stood up, walked out of her trap, and went to grazing!
Marauding bears sometimes spooked the pack animals used in the high mountain pastures. The sheepherders tending the sheep hobbled the horses when they were not riding them or using them for packing. Sometimes when the horses had to escape the bears, they would hop along for miles until the bears gave up or a herder could fire a rifle to either scare or kill the pursuer.
When it came to riding a horse, I have always preferred to go bareback. The other members of my family preferred a saddle. We tried English posting saddles, side saddles for the women, and some other types, but the only one that really worked was the Western work saddle with the roping horn that I feared would ruin my manhood before I had a chance to try it out. I am not ashamed to tell that I have awakened wet with sweat when dreaming about a saddle horn.
For work, we used bridles with blinders over the the sides of the horses’ eyes. For riding, we used bridles with bits that could easily stop or turn the horse. Spurs were not allowed. Once I saw my father pull a neighbor’s boy off one of our horses that he was spurring.At first the only machinery that I saw used on our farm was a threshing machine driven by a steam engine mounted on wheels. The threshers would start on the Dry Side and farms across the La Plata River and then go to farms close to the mountains such as Fort Lewis, Hesperus, and Thompson Park where the grain matured last. We used horses to pull the wagons loaded with sheaves of straw to the thresher. Once there, several men would feed the bundles into the roaring mouth that scared horses so much that sometimes two men would hold them to keep them from running.Huge haystacks accumulated where the empty straw blew out of the thresher’s blowpipe. Sometimes these mounds moldered for years. On our farm, we only raised enough wheat for harvest every three or four year. Drought, deer, rabbits, and violent storms knocked us out of harvesting grain more often. When there was a haystack, the sheep soon demolished it when the snow started falling.
My two older brothers, over my father’s objection, bought a used International tractor. This iron monster was mounted on metal wheels on which the rear ones had steel cleats that dug into the soft soil. When the tractors were moved on pavement or graveled roads, the cleats had to be removed to keep from tearing up the roadbed.
Tractors did farm work much quicker than horses. They did not have to be fed during the winter months. Human labor was cut from crews to one driver, but the machines were not as beloved as the horses that worked so hard.
HOUSING IN LA PLATA COUNTY A few were built of bricks, a few were built of logs, but our three-room house was built of pine boards. A few of the houses had only single walls. We were fortunate to have double walls that kept some of the cold wind out where it belonged. Periodically the older members of the family would mix flour with water to make paste to hold newspapers on the walls to keep the winter cold out. In the front room, there was real wallpaper with flower designs accentuated by a border glued over the paper.
Even though there were always two full sized beds taking up a fourth of the floor space, in the evening there was always room for a picture puzzle, a rocking chair by the light for a reader, and space for a ring for a marble game. When bedtime came the games were put away, and when the three older brothers weren’t in sheep camp, they slept in the bed farthest from the window. My parents slept in a big bed by the north window, and when there was a sick child, my mother crowded it in on her side. The only time I hated the sleeping arrangement was when so many children were in the big bed that I had to sleep at the foot with my father’s feet in my face. Just thinking about it makes me sick.
The front room had a door and three windows through which enough light came to make the room well lit during hours when the sun shone through panes of glass that were clean only after spring cleaning. This room also had a flu with a stovepipe to attach a heater that would burn either coal or wood. My younger sister and I spent many a winter afternoon sitting on the backside of the bed and watching snow fall on the mountains. When it was time for my brother and older sister to come home from their seven-mile journey to Rockvale School, we watched the north field intently for their return.
The kitchen ran along the west side. Built with a roof that sloped toward the west, there was less room to stand by where the back door opened. The north end was partitioned off to make a pantry where shelves contained flour, sugar, salt, and whatever articles my parents could afford. At the opposite end of the room, there was a flu for a stovepipe. With only two windows, on winter days the room was always dark enough to require a lit coal oil lamp. A long table at the north wall has a space for two chairs where my father and mother sat to eat. Down both sides, there were two long benches. Whoever built them left overhang on both ends. When the benches were loaded and one child was sitting on the overhang, those sitting in the safe zone would stand and dump the remaining child on the floor. When the bench came flying up, my parents would swat the guilty parties.
When the whole family gathered around the table, there was friendly conversation spiced with good jokes. After we finished, my father would read to us. Often it was the Bible, but sometime it was a magazine or newspaper article.Sometimes there would be disaster at the meal. Too much food on the spoon, and a small child would choke. One time during the coldest part of the winter my father traded for a stalk of bananas that we hogged down. Suddenly my third oldest brother grabbed his throat and choked out that he had swallowed a biting spider that had been on the fruit earlier. He knew he was going to die so my father prepared to rush him to Doctor Smith. My mother calmly examined the place where my brother was eating. Sticking her finger on a red powder, she tasted of it. The mystery was solved when it was discovered that the hurt one had sprinkled red pepper on his food.
When I starting walking the seven miles to school, one dark wintry evening I sat by the stove with my frozen shoes in the oven to thaw so I could take them off my cold feet. My mother got me a spoon and a soup bowl and told me to dish some hot vegetable soup out of one of two pans on the hot stove. Finally after I couldn’t cut the meat, I stood up and got a knife. My mother told me that there was not any meat with the vegetables. Bringing the lamp off the table, she discovered I had filled my bowl with hot dishwater. The tough meat was the dishrag! We both laughed.
A small bedroom and a closet ended the south end of the front room. Barely big enough for a double bed, my oldest sister had to share her sleeping area with my youngest sister and I. Snuggling closely together, we slept warmly under heavy quilts. Sometimes on snowy afternoons, the three of us would listen to my sister read before we took naps. Summer or winter, if I was sick Sis’s bed was my place of refuge. In the summertime on rainy days, I would watch the tall pinyon trees sway with the strong wind.
During the hot summertime the children moved out and left the house to my parents. The male children slept in a garage that was separate from the house. The two females slept in another out building. Sometime when the weather was good, we would put down tarps and put our bedding on this ground cover. Many a night I remember going to sleep under a star lit sky while coyotes filled the air with their beautiful music. Since then I have slept in college dormitories, Navy barracks, and after I married, in my own house. Never has anything equaled the beauty of sleeping under a Colorado sky!
One thing I’ve almost forgotten about our house was the bed bugs. This copied article describes the critter better than I can. "In most parts of the United States the only bed bug of importance to man is Cimex lectularius. Bed bugs of this species feed on blood, mostly from people, but are also known to feed on bats or other animals including rabbits, rats, guinea pigs and domestic fowl, especially when the animals are housed in laboratories. The bed bug has a sharp beak that it uses to pierce the skin of the host. It then begins feeding, injecting a fluid which helps in obtaining food. This fluid causes the skin to become swollen and itchy. Bed bugs are nocturnal, that is, they feed at night, often biting people who are asleep. Where infestations are severe one may detect an offensive odor that comes from an oily liquid the bugs emit. Bed bugs can be enticed to bite during the day if light is subdued and they are hungry.
DescriptionA mature bed bug is an oval-bodied insect, brown to red-brown in color, wingless and flattened top to bottom. Unfed bugs are 1/4 to 3/8 inch long and the upper surface of the body has a crinkled appearance. A bug that has recently fed is engorged with blood, dull red in color, and the body is elongated and swollen. Eggs are white and are about 1/32 inch long. Newly hatched bugs are nearly colorless." (Copied)The only thing this article doesn’t describe is the misery of sleeping with this horrible nocturnal beast. In the summertime we’d take the beds apart, take them outside, and wash the hardware in coal oil. Then we would put coal oil in container and set the bedsteads in the liquid. This didn’t work. The bugs would drop from the ceiling and feast on our tender bodies. Raw, red splotches would mar our skin for days. The itching would never stop. For some reason since I am grown, I have never seen a bedbug. I certainly haven’t missed them.
Since my parents had relatives who fought in the Civil War, they taught us a song that went: "Said the bed bug to the flea, you bite him on the ankle and I’ll bite him on the knee while we went marching through Georgia." Damn, I feel like cussing when I think of the misery.
MODEL T’s, MODEL A’s AND OTHER FORD JUNK
Although my mother told me she drove a Ford touring car when she was carrying me from Cleburne to Alamosa, she never drove any kind of a motor vehicle after that. The old touring car rusted away under a large pinyon tree that shed countless years of needles on the weathering seat. The family vehicle was a Model T truck and then a Model A that was much more modern. The Model T had three pedals that acted as a shift. Between pedaling for gears and another pedal for braking, the driver was very busy. Luckily using a lever on the steering column controlled the gas and spark.
Ma and Dad would get in the cab, take a sick or smaller child in their lap, the rest of us would climb on the truck bed, and away we would go. Two or three times a year we went to Durango. Perhaps once or twice a summer, I would get a ride to Marvel, but most of the time we would head down the La Plata River to Farmington. Dad would stack vegetables on the truck bed from small farms in New Mexico and then head north to mining towns and isolated homesteads in Colorado. While he fixed sewing machines, he peddled. Farmington had a much longer growing period than did the people closer to the La Plata Mountains where sometimes there would only be sixty frost free days.
During the years I rode in a Model T or A, I never got to ride up or down a steep hill. Both vehicles were built without fuel pumps. The fuel flowed from a tank under the seat to the motor by gravity. This worked well when we were traveling on the level or going down hill. When the truck began to climb, the fuel stopped flowing. The driver would unload passengers, turn the truck around, and back up the hill. From the smallest to largest passenger, we pushed to the top. When we got to the top of the hill, my mother thought it was too dangerous for us to ride. Repeating our journey up the hill on foot, we hoofed it down the other side. Although the brakes were never the best, my dad seldom had any trouble. A few times he ran the truck up the bank and used a tree for brakes.
To add to all the other troubles, there was usually mechanically trouble. To start the motor, an adult had to take a crank, place it in a hole under the radiator and crank until he or she was blue in the face. First, before the cranking, the gas and spark lever had to be in the proper position. Set the spark too low and nothing would ignite the gasoline. Set the spark too high, the motor would backfire and knock the cranker to the ground after a wild ride in the air.The old trucks did not have a battery. The current for running the motor and lights was produced by a series of magnets mounted on a wheel called a magneto. The best use for the magnets when they were no longer functional was to pick up nails and other pieces of metal.
The second oldest brother was the mechanic. By trial and error, he was able to keep the trucks running some of the time. When snow covered the ground, he brought the motor into the kitchen after putting a tarp on the board floor. Carefully, he replaced oil rings, ground piston heads, and fiddled with all the other parts. Aside from the kitchen smelling of gasoline and kerosene, the rebuilt motor usually worked when he bolted it back into the truck. So good did he become at this that when he had to go into the Navy when WWII started, he worked on the planes on an aircraft carrier.
The most memorable event that happened was when the Model T stopped on a drizzly day when we were going to our place near Mancos. For some reason, Ma thought she had to have a certain needle out of her white cotton-sewing bag. Setting on the metal running board, she used both hands to dip into the hundreds of metal pins, needles, etc., mostly etc. My mechanic brother laid the magneto on the truck frame so he could work on it. Without securing it, he gave the crank a hard turn. Sparks jumped from the magnets into the metal truck frame. My mother with her hands still in the bag full of metal screamed. Her long black hair came unpinned and stood straight up. The bag went high in the drizzle coming from the sky. Without looking either way, she ran for my brother while she yelled that, "I’m going to kill you when I catch you!" They went around the truck a dozen times until both of them bent over with laughter while they held onto each other for support. Those magnetos were good for some good laugh. The funniest thing was to hook the wires to the seat of an outdoor toilet and wait for someone to set down. With a turn, electricity shot into the unsuspecting victim. Sometimes the person would scream and run outside without fully dressing!
Windshield wipers, when there was one, were ran by a mechanical device inside that had to be manually ran by the driver, or if the driver, was lucky, by the passenger. I spent a few trips frantically working the device while my father drove through heavy snow or rain. When the temperature was cold enough outside we would have to stop and scrape ice before continuing.
Money was so short that sometime my father would not have enough to buy license plates. Draping a sheepskin with the wool on it over where the plate should be, we would make our trip.
Driving over narrow unpaved roads, and sometimes, un-gravelled roads, was a hazard in dry weather. When the roads were icy or muddy, accidents happened. Once when we going down Wild Cat Canyon to get to Durango, we stopped because a touring car had gone off the road into the water. Sadly we watched two men carry a beautifully dressed lady out of the canyon. I will always remember her hat covered with roses and blood. The worst wreck I remembered hearing about was one snowy night came in from Hesperus to tell us about a man crashing as he came down the road from Mancos. When the car hit a tree, the driver was impaled on the steering column. There was nothing anyone could do as the injured man pleaded for someone to shoot him.
Whenever Dad went for vegetables or cottonseed hulls, when he was due home, we children would gather at the front window to watch for headlights. Since we could see car lights on the Mesa, some three miles away, we waited to see if they were announcing the arrival of our Model A truck.
REMEMBERANCE OF A COUSIN WHO CAME TO VISIT Before I was born, both my father and mother's relatives came to live with my parents in La Plata County. This message is from the son of my cousin."My mother spoke on many occasions of their time spent in Colorado with the Butlers. I wish I had listened more intently. She spoke of hardships of life in Colorado that she had heard about. Apparently there were troubles with Mormons in the early days. Illnesses were a serious matter when medical help was not at hand. Large snowstorms would bring isolation, also jobs held by Butler men, which would keep them on the road a good bit, was the cause of isolation. I do recall that raising of sheep was one of the economic activities.Regarding parallel histories, (Of Jenkins, my mother's family and Butlers, my father's family) I have been impressed by the sameness of the paths followed by our forebears. Of my forebears, (Jenkins) first point of entry into America was, in every case, the Chesapeake country: Virginia, Pennsylvania, or Maryland, between 1650 and 1750. Later, as new lands safe for settlement became available, my forebears showed up in the Carolinas, Georgia, or Alabama, or all three in that order. Mississippi and Louisiana were already settled when the time to leave Alabama came about; it was necessary to bypass these states and move on to Arkansas and Texas, to find new farmlands. Somewhere I heard that southwestern Colorado was one of the last areas of the continental United States, even into the twentieth century, where a family could homestead public lands.
MORMON TROUBLE Apparently, my father and the Mormons at Mancos were friendly. When my father moved to the Ute land, trouble started. There are two sides to every story, but I know only what happened one summer day when I was four going on five. Going to the north of the house I heard someone chopping wood in a grove of trees about a quarter of a mile from the house. When my father and I got to where the noise was coming from, we found a Mormon man from Kline and his two sons loading wood onto a wagon. I don't think my father would have objected to anyone getting a load of wood, but while the father chopped, the two sons were unstapling barbed wire and rolling it up. When we got there, they had several rolls on the wagon. My father grabbed the bridles of the horses and throwing me in, we took the team and the wagon to the sheep shed. Un-hitching the wagon, my father locked the horses in the shed with the intention of making the Mormons put the fence back up the next day. About dawn the next day, twelve Mormons, including the Bishop, rode up. Surrounding the house, they unholstered rifles and threanted to shoot.My mother put my older sister along with my younger sister under the bed in my sister's room. We had only a single shot .22 in the house. My older brother started out the kitchen door just as my mother shouted to him to get the gun. A Mormon shouted that the first person to come out the door would be dead. If it hadn't been that one of the more sensible men hit the gun, my brother would have been dead when the bullet hit the door .My father was sick in bed that day. The Mormons came into the house and carried him out the door and placed him in the wagon. They intended to take him to Kline for a Mormon trial. My mother loaded my youngest sister and me into the vehicle and jumped in herself. My third oldest brother also insisted on coming. The Mormons tried to stop her from coming with the children, but my mother was pretty hard headed.
When we got to Kline, one of the younger Mormons put a rope around my father's neck, and throwing the rope over a limb, he started pulling. Again a saner man interfered. The next day after a trial before the Mormon justice of peace, they took my father and the rest of us to Durango and put us in jail. Luckily my brother got lose and ran to the lawyer's office from whom my father had leased the land. In a short time, the lawyer took us back home after the sheriff arrested the Mormons for stealing wire. I will always remember the fright that I suffered over the incident. It has taken me years to forgive the men who caused the trouble, but now I remember the kindness that some of the Mormons showed us at various times. Once when my mother had a bad infection in her arm, a Mormon lady who lived on the La Plata River land stayed at our house until my mother was out of danger.

MORMON'S IN LA PLATA COUNTY

2005-06-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

MORMONS IN KLINE, COLORADO href="http www.wadhome.org/lee/chapter_02.html: born 18Aug 1910 in Kline, La Plata, Colorado. He married (1) Clarris SIMPSON 16Jun 1934. Curtis married (2) Fannie RICH. Curtis died 23Jul 1952 in Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona.
lee_group.html Evelyn, Jack, & Snick Lee
Evelyn, Jack, & Snick Lee: Jack Lee was born in Breen, Colorado, in 1917. Evelyn Lee was born in Princeton, Arkansas, in 1918. Their son, Snick, was born in Ganado in 1947. The Lees met in Hawaii when both were in the service during World War II. They moved to L & A Trading Post at Keams Canyon, which they operated for 30 years. Jack's great-grandfather was John D. Lee, a Mormon pioneer who established Lee's Ferry and several trading posts in the 1800s.
Clarence Wheeler was born in Red Mesa, Colorado, in 1927. His grandmother, Harriet Adelta Bingham Wheeler, was a trader. Clarence worked at Smith Lake Trading Post after completing high school. He also worked at Keams Canyon, Polacca, Na-Ah-Tah, and Piñon Trading Posts, among others. He is a past board member of the United Indian Traders Association.
http://www.nau.edu/library/speccoll/exhibits/traders/oralhistories/interviews.html
http://www.library.arizona.edu/branches/spc/david_k_udall/mormon/chapter08.html Account of early Mormons in St John-Holbrook area.
Biography of Marion Johnson
CCCMan, Company 3842, Camp D.G.-9-C, Kline, Colorado & Camp DG-9, Camp Peaceful Valley, Red Mesa, Colorado
http://www.geocities.com/oralbio/johnsonmbio.html?200515
My father Marion Johnson served in the CCC of Colorado. His camp was Co. 3842, Camp D.G.9C Kline, Colorado. He was also at Red Mesa DG9 called Peaceful Valley.
He learned to drive a truck and had the certificate he received. His job was to pick up supplies and drive one of the officers around. They also dug water holes for cattle in the Red Mesa area.
He has a company paper from one of the camps that has all the men's names from that camp in it. (Not known to be a Mormon)
Harold W. Pratt... The Mormon "exodus" occurred in July 1912, when the Mormons were asked to ... this timemet Anna Hendrickson, a missionary from Fruitland, New Mexico), but most of ... helaman.pratt-family.org/kids-harold/harold.htm
LIFE STORY OF CHARLES EI next remember moving to Fruitland, New Mexico. Father took us (Mother, Jasper,... They got this new book that was just out then about the Mormons. ...www.gordonbanks.com/gordon/family/cedean.html –
Life Story of Charles Edwin Dean Moved from Fruitland to Red Mesa in 1907
(Written November 1947 and May 1966)
On May 27, 1908, Redmesa Ward was organized. Married Myrtle Melissa Devenport

Willdens Called by Brigham Young in 1882 to Settle Bluff City ...... lands. Prejudice Against Mormons and Polygamy. ... City. Saints Establish Monticello& Moab Utah, Fruitland, New Mexico and Mancos Colorado. ... www.willden.org/writings/bluff_city.html - 28k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
Saints Establish Monticello & Moab Utah, Fruitland, New Mexico and Mancos Colorado
In due course of time Monticello and Moab, in Utah, Fruitland in New Mexico and Mancos in Colorado, were settled by Latter-Day-Saints, and these were organized into the San Juan Stake of Zion September 23, 1883, with Platte D. Lyman as president. He was succeeded in 1884 by Jens Nielsen as presiding Bishop, but in 1885 Francis A. Hammond was called from Huntsville, Weber County, Utah, to preside over the San Juan Stake, with William Halls as first and William Adams as second, counselor. Many others followed.

Cities Abandoned
In all of United States history, few people have suffered for their religious convictions as did the early Latter-day Saints. Because of the rapid growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and what many contemporary religionists viewed as the heretical doctrine of living prophets and modern revelation, many outsiders viewed Latter-day Saints with suspicion and contempt. During the first two decades of the Church's existence, Latter-day Saints repeatedly experienced the cycle of migration, settlement (including purchasing the lands they settled in), and expulsion. Within the span of 17 years, the fast-growing body of Latter-day Saints moved en masse from the Finger Lakes region of western New York state (1830-1831), to Kirtland, Ohio (1831-1838), Jackson County, Missouri (1831-1839) and Commerce/Nauvoo, Illinois (1839-1848), where their prophet, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a mob. In the dead of winter 1846, the Latter-day Saints once again abandoned their homes and began the long, hard trek to the Rocky Mountains, where they would at last find welcome refuge.
http://www.brownhistory.org/CJ%20Brown%20asf.htm
James Brown, Captian Mormon Brigade. Founded Brownville, Utah later changed to Ogden by Brigham Young.

Bookstore Home Book Display Author Display Contact Author Search Browse Bookstore FAQs
The Apostate

by Luther Butler ISBN: 0-7388-3778-4 (Trade Paperback) Pages: 220 Subject: FICTION / Historical
AvailabilityPaperback prices reflect 15% discount off retailHardback prices reflect 10% discount off retail
Trade Paperback $18.69

Description
All characters not found in historical documents are from the author’s imagination. When a mob shot Joseph Smith, Bishop Lyman Wight was in Texas looking for a new home for the people known as Mormons. When President Brigham Young was elected to lead the group, he sought to form a new colony in California Territory called Deseret. On reaching Kanesville (Council Bluff), Bishop George Miller took a wagon train south to unite with Wight. My interpretation of the characterization of the Latter Day Saints is drawn from several sources.
APOSTATE is a story of hard ships and deprivation. George Miller’s group took off for Texas in the middle of the winter. Lycia Smith (fictitious) had recently lost her husband, Joseph Smith, and their son. The young lady headed for Texas to live in the Lyman Wight colony a few miles south of Burnet, Texas. Ruins of the Wight colony still exist on the banks of the Colorado River.
Those called Mormons were a hardy people who traveled wilderness trails in hope they would find a place where they could practice their religion in peace. Those who came to Texas to found a new colony faced all the dangers of early travelers coming through Indian country. Snow on the ground only made their journey more difficult.
Click here to read an excerpt from the book.

MEMORIES OF ALMA GREER

2005-06-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

Since starting this project I am getting memories from others who grew up in the area. The Greers owned farms and ranches from Red Mesa Colorado to Cherry Creek. This is an E-mail from the poetry writer, Alma Greer who wrote and published a wonderful book titled, BAREFOOT BOYS OF PICNIC FLAT.
Tincture of sagebrush tea.
I MAKE IT OUT OF SAGE BRUSH TENDER LEAVES. IT TAKES AWAY PAIN. LEG CRAMPS. IT ISN'T A ONE TIME THING FOR A CURE. BUT IT DOES TAKE PAIN AWAY TEMPORARELY.
"Do you want to know along the old Morman Trail? Or are you talking about the new road? Do you want to know from the Dry Side road, from our old home place, or the beginning of the road up on the highway? I'm sure Burr will want to know from where to start. He is full of the old Morman Road stories. He always wanted to go down Mancos Canyon to see if he could see the old road that went down to Webber Canyon. So the last time we were there, we went down there on a stage coach. We didn't go up the mountain road. Just down the canyon to where that road turned to go up old Webber Canyon. He had been down that mountain road when he was young. He rode down horse back. My the history that went by our eyes. I could just see the stage coaches with fallen trees
tied on behind, to keep the coaches from running over the horses. From the bottom of the hill, you could see most of the old road winding up the mountain side. I could just see the womens faces as they tried to stay in the narrow coach seat. I could see the bandanas across the drivers faces, keeping out the dust. As well, see the drivers struggling to stay on that high seat, swaying from side to side. Just knowing any time the coach could tip over and they all would go tumbling down the steep mountain side. To be part of the rest of the broken wheels, coaches, and such strung along down the steep terrain. Which have long been picked up by fun seekers of yesteryear. Would make for a great short story as well as a good poem. (*._.*) Alma's husband grew up closer to Mancos than I did."

.

LA PLATA MOUNTAINS

2004-09-26T18:45:00.000-07:00

PICTURE OF LA PLATA MOUNTAINS

PICTURE OF BALDY AND LIZARD HEAD WHERE THE LA PLATA COUNTY CHARACTERS SPENT MANY AN EVENING ENJOYING THE VIEW. SON WILKERSON WENT WITH HIS BROTHERS TO SUMMER PASTURE.

visit for some neat stuff
http://www.zooauctions.com/

The sun sets and illuminates the clouds over Durango as a storm passes through

WOLF CREEK PASS which played a part in La Plata County Series. The Wilkersons came over this pass when coming from Texas. The cattle drivers brought their herds from Texas through here.

Luther Butler's Writings READ FREE

2004-09-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/qsearchresults.asp
http://lutherbutler.tripod.com/Luther Butler's Writings

La Plata County Series, Book One http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=1%2D58348%2D365%2D9

County Dublin and Blood on the Moon

by Luther Butler

County Dublin is the first of ten novels in the La Plata County Series. The reader meets James Butler (alias James Wilkerson) was destined to rule the House of Ormonde in Dublin, Ireland. County Dublin has blood-seeking sharks, slavers, slaves and Irishmen who kill and mutilate to keep James Butler from his destiny. These obstacles drive him to Louisa County, Virginia. It is here he fathers two sons who are destined to travel across the South, until one homesteads in La Plata County, Colorado.

La Plata County Series, Book Two
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=1%2D58348%2D458%2D2

Amite County and Mississippi Woman

by Luther Butler

Luther Butler continues his La Plata County Series. James Butler's (alias James Wilkerson) descendents find themselves caught up in the great American Civil War. Nat who dreams of becoming a soldier in the Southern Army narrates AMITE COUNTY. Eleven year old Nat is engaged in a conflict that tears him and his Black comrade, Charles Ray, from the Amite County farm to a dangerous Yankee prisoner of war camp.

La Plata County Series, Book Three

Indian & Soldiers and Ranchers & Rustlers

by Luther Butler

From Dublin, Ireland to Barbados, to Virginia, to Georgia, to Mississippi, James Wilkerson's lineage marches westward. Son Wilkerson continues to trace the roots of the people who settle La Plata County, Colorado. Two exciting novels make up La Plata County Series III. INDIANS AND SOLDIERS portrays the Cavalry's role in clearing La Plata County of the Ute Indians. RANCHERS AND RUSTLERS brings two retired Indian fighters into the County and into D.H. and Melinda Wilkerson's life. Privation follows the early settlers, but the beauty of the mountains compensates them.

La Plata County Series, Book Four

Homesteaders & Sheepherders and D.H.

by Luther Butler

Son Wilkerson continues the saga of La Plata County Serieswith HOMESTEADERS AND SHEEPHERDERS and D.H. In HOMESTEADERS AND SHEEPHERDERS, the Wilkersons struggle to make ends meet. The Utes are gone, but the sagebrush, pinyon, and cedar still remain to be cleared from the Dryside land. Suddenly, D.H. Wilkerson realizes he cannot make a living on the land he has accumulated so he turns to a large herd of sheep for money. Along with the sheep, death stalks the Dryside land in the form of angry Mormons, Diphtheria, Wallis Yonger, and Swamper, a child molester. Son Wilkerson steps in to help drive the sheep to the beloved La Plata Mountains.

D.H., is the continuation of the story of D.H. Wilkerson as told by Son. Driven from La Plata County by sickness, Son and D.H. wander the badlands of New Mexico and Arizona. Son returns to La Plata County to help his brother, Frank, run the ranch during World War II. Son is forced to grow up during a time when the world is coming unglued. While trying to cope with an insane father, he finds friendship with Duane and love with Dorothy Tuttle.

La Plata County Series, Book Five

I knew a Man Who had Six Sons and Squash Blossom

by Luther Butler

La Plata County Series beloved characters are involved in a tragic crash while flying over Korea! The end of an era is marked with a fire that brings a catastrophic end to the son of the Mississippi woman. The saga that began in a castle in Ireland where James Butler (alias James Wilkerson) was born ends on Son's beloved La Plata River. All is not lost; for out of the wreckage comes the return of a Ute Indian, Squash Blossom's descendent, who hopes to return a piece of the raped land to its native glory

Luther Butler Bibliography

2004-09-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Luther Butler Bibliography

Luther Butler's Bookstore, Novels by Luther Butler

2004-09-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

Luther Butler's Bookstore, Novels by Luther Butler

Alma's poems about growing up in La Plata County

2004-09-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

LAPLATA COUNTY SERIES is ten exciting novels published in five books. LaPlata County is in the southwest corner of Colorado. The author spent some of the best years of his life growing up on land between Hay Gulch and Alkali Canyon where the last six novels in this series take place.
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/qsearchresults.asp
Writing
http://arts.onbloglist.com/index.php?id=lbutler" target="_blank">http://arts.onbloglist.com/img.php?id=lbutler" border="0">

http://arts.onbloglist.com/index.php?id=lbutler" target="_blank">http://arts.onbloglist.com/img.php?id=lbutler" border="0">

Alma's poems about growing up in La Plata County.
A BOY AND HIS DOG Alma L. Greer Mar. 24, 2005

He can hear their hoofs, smell the dust,Along the cow drive at the close of day.He can feel the dust in his throat,And hear the critters pushing along the way.

He can feel the tiredness in his bones,As the day winds down towards home place.He can see the poor dog, tongue hanging low,From wandering cows, giving them a chase.

Yet, the dog never, ever wanders from his job,He’d watch his master’s signals with care.Showing him if a cow had left the herd,Were they over here, or over there.

The boy can hear the cow mooing for her calf,That was tired and lagging behind. But the faithful dog never let it stray,He’d quickly drive it back, and make it mind.

Oh the memory of a boy and his dog,Is a thought to have and to hold. Though time and years have drifted by, Memories still linger, like they were gold.

Thoughts of Bob, told by sister Alma.

THE BEST OF FRIENDS Alma L. Greer Mar. 24, 2005

My brother Bob jostled my memory,Of our long ago yesteryear.Things I had never heard before,Yet, I can see them, oh, so clear.

He spoke of the Cross Over Road,Up near Pine River Dam, it seems.A time when I was so young,It all appears to be in my dreams.

Yet, the picture Bob gave me too see,Was only in his own memory.A story, our Daddy told him about,Now Bob is telling it to me.

It seems grass pasture was real good,So it seemed the best thing for us to do.When we moved our trailer house to Pine River,Daddy decided to take Bessie our horse too.

Now Bob stayed home and batched,After all, he was nearly grown.Why, he was all of fourteen years old,So for sure, he could live all alone.

I can just see that boy in my thoughts,At the beginning of each lonely day.Slop the pigs, feed and milk the cows,Water and feed the chickens, no time for play.

It looks so clear in my foggy mind,But wait one minute, I’m drifting off course,This story isn’t about brother Bob,But Blackie the dog, and Bessie the horse.

It seems like I recall what good friends,-Blackie and Bessie had grown to be.But, since I thought they were both perfect,For sure that’s the way, I would see.

Bob said our Daddy told him, Pasture was luscious and green of course.So he tethered Bessie in the finest grazing,Told Blackie to stay with the horse.

Since they were the best friends ever,It was no job for Bessie’s doggy friend.All day long he guarded his charge,Never, ever letting up on his end.

People drove by the two, and gazed,The tethered Bessie and the dog Blackie. And he stood a strong guard on his horse,So all passing by, could easily see.

Warning anyone, who would do more than look,He was his best friend’s protector and guide.No one had better try to steal his friend,Or, he’d take a hunk right out of their hide. Bob didn’t say how long this lasted,But he did say people would stop by and say.Better not try and bother that horse,Or get in that watch dog’s way.

Their friendship stayed steadfast and strong.All the years we had Blackie and
Bessie.For sure they were the best of friends,My, such a beautiful, fond memory

BlogCatalog">http://www.blogcatalog.com" title="Blog Directory, Find A Blog, Submit A Blog, Search For The Best Blogs">BlogCatalog

http://arts.onbloglist.com/index.php?id=lbutler" target="_blank">http://arts.onbloglist.com/img.php?id=lbutler" border="0" />