Digitized by Tom Duffy (Aug. 2000)

Very little is known about the early life of my father, John Skeen. His mother died when he was a youngster with what was called at that time "Quick Consumption." His father remarried but my dad was not very happy with his choice of a wife. In fact my father never had the opportunity of going to school during his growing-up years. My granddad, Thompson Skeen, owned and operated a grist mill as well as a poor and rocky small farm. People came with their grain and the mill would make flour out of the wheat or corn meal out of the corn. The people who brought grain to my granddad's grist mill would frequently bring their lunches. One man was the envy of my father, who was a small hungry lad, because he would bring sandwiches not only covered with real butter, but also with a generous amount of sugar spread over the butter.

When my father was about seventeen years of age he made one trip from Missouri to Texas with cattle over the famous Chisholm Trail. Evidently, he was not too happy with the trip because he made only the one trip. After he was twenty-one years of age he decided that he needed to learn how to read; so he went home and agreed to pay for his board and room while he learned to read and write. He finished the second reader in a few months. He felt that this had given him the basic equipment for learning to read, so this was the end of his formal education.

In about 1875 my father, John Skeen, left Missouri to seek his fortune in Colorado. This was before there was a railroad in Leadville so my dad purchased four horses, harness, two wagons and a saddle and started hauling freight from Colorado Springs to Leadville. He used a jerk line which he operated from one of the wheel horses. Two incidents will give some idea of how the freighters spent some of their spare time. One evening the men in the boarding house were talking about how well their horses could pull. Dad had a horse named Old Seal and according to my father Old Seal was a tremendous puller. He was relatively small for a work horse. After each freighter had told about his favorite pulling horse the men decided to test their horses. Someone suggested that they hitch each horse to an empty box car. Each driver tried to get his horse to pull the car, but none of them did succeed. Then my dad hooked Old Seal on to the box car. By this time all the drivers were laughing, but my dad just spoke to Old Seal who just leaned into the collar. Old Seal didn't know what It five feet eleven inches tall and weighed about one hundred seventy pounds, but he was very quick and strong. In fact, I think that my dad showed considerable promise as an athlete when he was a young fellow. For example, he could stand still and broad jump over eight feet. He said that he had never lost a foot race. Of course there is no way to evaluate the competition he had in these little Fourth of July races.

My father bought a few cows in Silverton. He drove the cows on horseback and my mother drove the team of horses that pulled the covered wagon containing their supplies and very limited household furnishings. The trip went very well except for one major incident according to my mother, but minor according to my dad. It was necessary to ford a river. My father first drove his cattle across the river, which was no easy thing to do. The cows didn't want to cross, but after much yelling he managed to get them across the river. Then he went back and brought my mother and the wagon across the river. Needless to say, my mother got concerned when the wagon began to flat down stream and the horses had to swim for a short distance. But my dad having been in similar situations before knew that his horses could be trusted to pull them out of the river. My dad admitted later that he did get slightly concerned when one of the horses started to flounder. That was when he jumped in to straighten the horse out. The rest of the trip went very well.

When my folks reached Paradox Valley a few families had already homesteaded some of the best farming lands in the valley, but my father was not interested in farming. He was Interested In finding a winter range for his small herd of cattle. He talked to a few of the settlers and found that the second massy up the Dolores River was unclaimed, so he did whatever was necessary to lay claim to this massy. They called the process that he used to lay claim to this massy a "premption right." This was in the period just before the use of barbed wire. Anyway, the range that is still called Skeen's Massy on the forestry map was recognized as belonging to my father, John Skeen.

My folks "camped out" for awhile until my dad could construct a log cabin. It was spring and early summer. Except for an occasional rain or wind storm my mother said that she didn't mind the inconvenience because she knew that it was going to get better. Ada, my oldest sister was only a few months of age. But my folks looked back upon this period as one of the happiest in their lives. My dad especially had many very happy memories about those times. After completion the cabin was about fifteen feet wide and twenty-five feet in length. The cabin had a dirt floor and a fireplace at one end of the building. One would assume that a dirt floor would be very difficult to keep clean, but my mother said that she was very surprised at how hard the floor became. Each morning she would sprinkle water over the floor and then sweep it.

After my folks had finished moving into the cabin and had finished making the corrals and a small pasture for his horses my dad went to work to build drift fences of trees, logs and sagebrush. Of course much of the mesa had a natural barrier of sheer cliffs.

From 1880 until 1900 there were seven children born into this family, consisting of five boys and two girls. Ada was the oldest child. She was followed by two boys, George then Claude. Jessie was the fourth child and she was followed by a boy named Andy who died with scarlet fever in the early 1880s. Alvy was born in 1896, Roy was born in 1898. All these children except the first child and the last one were born without a doctor being present. But for each birth there was an experienced neighbor lady present who was familiar with the essentials. My folks lived in the small cabin with the dirt floor for only three years. This meant, of course, that George was born in the log cabin. Then my father took up a homestead on Turkey Creek Massy, and according to the law of the Homestead Act he had to live for four months of each year on the homestead. This was done during the summer months. During the winter months my folks made arrangements to live in the house in Paradox Valley.

In the early part of this period my father decided that he needed a summer range so the grass could grow during the summer on his massy near Paradox and he could winter his cattle on this massy. After spending some time looking over summer ranges he finally settled on Turkey Creek Massy which was located between Telluride and Ophirloop.

My dad took up a homestead about three or four miles from Ophirloop. He built a log cabin on this homestead near a beautiful spring.

My father soon found a ready market for his beef steers and the milk that his range cows would produce over and above what was needed by his calves. My father built a set of pole corrals and each late spring when they arrived on Turkey Creek they would round up the cattle in the corrals. Then they would separate the calves from the cows and put them in a small corral. Then they would turn the cows out. When it came time to milk the cows it was merely a matter of turning out each cow's calf and milking her as the calf sucked. Of course the whole family helped from six or seven years of age. After the cow became accustomed to being milked, the person doing the milking would put his head in the cow's flank, hold the milk pail in one hand and milk with the other hand. As a usual thing the milker would plan to rob the calf of only half of the cow's milk. Then they would turn each calf out into the larger pasture, but each mother was turned into a holding corral. This plan not only made sure that the cow and calf were kept separate during the night but it also kept the corral where they milked the cow cleaner. This plan worked very well. The cows would eat during the day and the calves would eat during the night. Each morning George and Claud, had the job of delivering the milk to the mines. This they did with a saddle horse and a pack horse with to ten gallon cans strapped to the pack saddle. They received forty arid fifty cents a gallon for the milk. My dad also supplied the mines with meat. He soon found it necessary to build a slaughterhouse in which he could dress out his three and four year old steers.

My dad had a serious accident while we were still living in the log cabin across the river from the little settlement called Ames. He was starting to work on the slaughterhouse corrals and he needed a load of poles from the Milk Ranch. Fairly early one morning in July he hooked up a team of horses to the running gears of a wagon and started for the Milk Ranch. When he reached the ranch he immediately started to look for the trees that would produce the poles that he needed. There was a beautiful stand of spruce trees on the Milk Ranch, but he wanted trees that would make poles eight to ten inches in diameter. It took him all day to cut the trees, trim them and load them. In fact when he finally finished cutting the trees with an axe, trimming the trees of limbs and loading them on the running gear of the wagon, it was starting to get dark. So he climbed on top of the load of poles and started down the narrow mountain road. When my dad was part of the way down the mountain he knew that he would need to "hug" the bank. It was so dark that he could not see the large rocks that had rolled down on the edge of the road. As he went over a big rock he fell from his perch on top of the load of poles and as he fell the right front wheel ran over him. The horses ran away. 'They soon broke away from the wagon that ran into a tree. The next morning someone found the horses standing on either side of a large tree close to the road and about one quarter of a mile from where the accident occurred.

My father was knocked unconscious, but after lying there on the edge of the road for about an hour or so he regained consciousness and pulled himself together enough to crawl down the mountain. Now the San Miguel River had so much water in it that he couldn’t wade across the river. There was no bridge across the river but he managed to crawl across a log over the river. When he crawled up to the cabin my mother helped him into bed. He slept for a couple of days. When he finally woke up he said that he had a hard time breathing. But he did not have a doctor look him over. The family were fairly certain that he must have had several broken ribs. In fact his back had the imprint of the wheel of the wagon for several years after the accident.

My father received fifteen to twenty cents a pound for these grass fattened steers. These three and four year old steers dressed out from six hundred to eight hundred pounds. My dad started out with several milk cows that were largely Durham or Milking Shorthorn and Holstein crosses. However, he soon found that these large rawboned cows did very well in the summer and early fall months but they didn't do so well during the winter months, especially if there was some snow on the ground for several days. Each year my dad figured on losing a few head of the oldest cows. He claimed that this was cheaper than trying to feed them hay. He often said that he had fed less than a thousand dollars worth of hay during the twenty-five year period he ran cattle in Paradox Valley. He soon found, however, that the white faced Hereford cattle were better rustlers than the Holstein cross. Therefore he introduced a few Hereford bulls into his herd. He also kept as bulls each year a few of his best calves. As a result of crossing these three breeds his herd looked distinctively different from the other herds that were largely white faced Hereford with some Texas long horn cattle crosses included in most of the herds.

Of course, this open range method of raising cattle required some supervision. In other words it wasn't a case of merely turning the cattle loose on the range for five or six months and then staging a fall and a spring roundup and expecting a 100% return of the herd plus the increases. My father would leave home for a week or ten days especially during the winter months. Sometimes he would take a pack horse and other times he would take his provisions on his saddle horse. In getting ready for a trip on his range he would take an empty flour sack and put into the sack a mixture of flour and baking powder. Then he would take some bacon or a slab of salt port (he called it sow belly) and some coffee. For bedding he would take two or three blankets under his saddle or on the packhorse. Then when night would overtake him he would place hobbles on the packhorse if he had one. Of course he would camp near a spring so the horses could have water and he could have plenty of fresh water for his cooking. After turning his horses out to graze he would build a campfire out of dead sagebrush. Frequently he would carry a small quantity of pitch that he had picked up from a pine stump. This pitch would enhance his campfire starting. Next he would cut off three or four pieces of bacon and put it in the skillet and start it frying. Then he would put water in his coffee pot and pour in the coffee. He had a rule of thumb method for making coffee which he maintained was superior to any method. He always put the coffee water on fresh from the spring and added the coffee immediately. Then he would let it come to a boll three times, removing the coffee pot each time it came to a boil. By this time his bacon would be ready to eat so he would remove the bacon from the skillet and put it In his tin plate. Next he would open up the flour sack and pour water from his tin cup into the top of the flour sack and mix his bread which he would cook in the skillet he had cooked the bacon in. As soon as the bread was cooked he was ready to eat. After supper he would get one horse, remove his hobbles and tie him to a tree. Sometimes he would take a small quantity of oats along for his saddle horse. Breakfast was a repeat of. the same thing. He did not bother with lunch.

What would or could a cowboy find to do that would take him away from his family for several days at a time? In the late fall and early winter it was frequently necessary to see that the cattle would get on the good grass. At the same time It was necessary to drift the cattle back if they were straying from Skeen's Massy; and it was advisable to drift any cattle that didn't belong to my dad in the direction of their range. Then occasionally it was necessary to patch up drift fences. Since my father followed the plan of leaving the bulls with the herd the year round he might find a cow that was having trouble calving. Of course as spring came this problem was much greater than at other seasons of the year. This was due to several reasons. In addition to the fact that spring is nature's time for bringing forth the young was the additional factor that the cows frequently came through the winter rather thin. Thus they were not giving much milk and the green grass on Turkey Creek Massy in the spring was not very rich in the feed that prepares the cows for breeding.

Another reason why my dad found it necessary to spend lots of time on the range especially in the spring when the grass was starting to green was the fact that the cows would eat only green grass and try to make out on it. Since the cows would sometimes get real full from eating too small a quantity they would get weak. Then they would go for a drink in the water holes. Some of them would mire down and my dad would have to throw a rope on them and pull them out of the mud.

By 1900 several families had moved into Paradox Valley. There were several families with children so a school was started. Five members of the Skeen family we're among the pupils In the winter of 1900-01. In keeping with most schools in small communities the parents working with the teacher arranged a Christmas program. Unfortunately there was a new family in Paradox Valley that attended this program with a sick child. They assumed that this child merely had a bad cold, but it turned out to be black diphtheria. Many of the children who attended this program came down with this disease. There was not a doctor within fifty miles of the valley. As a result many children died. In fact, my dad heard about some medicine in the drug store in Moab, Utah about ninety miles away, so my dad rode a horse to Moab. When my dad arrived in Moab he found only a small quantity of the medicine was still available. My dad took this back and turned it over to my mother who had been the nurse for the five children. There was only medicine enough for two children. My mother had to decide which two should have the medicine. After much soul searching she decided to give it to the two girls because she reasoned that the girls were weaker than the boys. But as a result two of the boys died only two weeks apart. Their names were Claude and Alvy.

My parents found that It was necessary for them to bear the brunt of this tragic event themselves. For example, my father had to tear the boards off the barn to make the coffins. My mother was embarrassed by the fact Claude did not have a suit, so they dressed Claude in a new dress Jessie had. Of course my folks did not blame the neighbors for staying clear of them because of the danger of catching or carrying this dreaded disease. Ada, Jessie and George survived the attack of diphtheria, but it weakened all three of these young people. But my folks had to move the cattle to the summer range when spring came and George tried to do his share of work in moving the family as well as the cattle. After the folks had been on the old homestead (the Milk Ranch) for about three weeks George caught a bad cold which soon put him in bed. Later his illness was diagnosed as La Grip which seemed to be similar to the flue of 1918. But George seemed to be on the road to recovery when Mother baked a mincemeat pie. It smelled so good that George begged for a piece of pie and immediately he went into convulsions and died. Another factor that contributed to George's death was that the Milk Ranch was over 9000 feet In elevation making it very difficult for a sick person to breather normally. George was buried in a small cemetery below Ames. Then in 1902 my grandfather, Thompson Skeen, was buried in the same little graveyard. The loss of three boys in one year was almost more than my parents could bear. Following George's death my folks left the old Milk Ranch and moved down to Ames. My father bought one of the two houses that were left in Ames.

The second house in Ames had already been purchased by Uncle Tom Blackburn in the late 1880s or early 1890s and Aunt Mary had spent a number of winters in Ames before my folks moved down from the Milk Ranch. The two houses were only about a hundred yards apart. This was convenient because the men worked together in milking cows and in butchering the steers for the mines. In fact, for several summers my dad peddled meat to the housewives living in both Ophir and Ophirloop. This was a job that my uncle seemed to enjoy more than my dad did. So by common consent my dad took on the job of selling the meat to the mine because he didn't mind dealing with men in the mines. He also did much of the riding on Turkey Creek Mesa In looking for three and four year old steers that were fat enough to kill.

The three families consisted of Blackburn, Silas Skeen and John Skeen frequently had picnics during the summer. For example, there was one Fourth of July picnic that stands out. Frank Blackburn went up to the snow line and got a couple of gunny sacks of snow and we made some delicious strawberry ice cream. Aunt Mary had wrung the heads off from three fryers that she had raised. My mother and two sisters had prepared potatoes in a new way which was about our first experience with French fries. They also prepared some kind of salad. Aunt Molly brought a large cake and some pies, so we all had a feast. After dinner was over and the dishes had been washed and dried the women folks and the children found a great deal of enjoyment looking through a new contraption, a stereoscope. My mother had just recently acquired this thing that gave depth to scenes. She must have had fifteen or twenty pictures. They included many beautiful picture of castles, horses and kings. There were two or three pictures of historical significance, but the one that interested me most was a picture of two children, a boy and a girl, standing in the snow in the woods. As a youngster I used to look through the stereoscope at the poor unfortunate children and tears came to my eyes.

The men folks gathered around the corrals where my cousin Walter was attempting to break a wild four or five year old horse to ride. In fact, this horse came from a herd of wild horses that were running on our winter range near Paradox Valley. As Walter, with the aid of Frank, attempted to put the saddle on this horse and cinch it up the other men were watching and expounding on how to break horses, and my dad said that there were two different ways of breaking horses to ride. It seemed that Walter held to one theory and my dad held to the other method. Walter believed that the way to break a horse is to get on and let him buck. Then when the horse stopped bucking the rider spurred him and let him buck. In other words the rider takes all the buck out of the horse. My dad on the other hand believed in the method that was really the reverse of this method. The rider worked with the horse gently but firmly. First after breaking the horse to lead, the rider put the saddle on the horse and turned him loose in the corral with the rein fastened fairly loosely to the horn of the saddle. After making a few desperate jumps to get rid of the saddle and the rider the wild horse 'seemed to give up. So the men who had been whittling away on sticks decided to put their knives in their pockets and go back to the ho .use. Uncle Silas hitched up his team to the small wagon, loaded his family in it and started home--which he hoped to reach before dark. Thus came to an end a typical Fourth of July pioneer family picnic of the early part of the 20th century.

Another family picnic that stands out in the memories of every one who participated in it took place the following summer at a hot springs several miles down the San Miguel River from Ames. The man who owned the hot springs had dug out the spring back into the mountain forming two or three tubsi in which warm water ran. My dad soaked for some time in the tubs going from the warm water to the tubs that were much warmer. He thought that the sulphur In the warm water could cure his rheumatism.. I remember that I enjoyed going in the cave with him when he would go in for a good soaking. In fact, the bathing every day for several days did seem to help my dad's rheumatism. I am sure that the three families brought plenty of food, but I can remember only one dish that was furnished by Aunt Molly. That was a dish of pickled. beets. They struck me as being unusually tasty so I made myself sick from eating too many pickled beets. As a result of this experience I couldn't eat beets for a number of years. But otherwise the experience of camping out was enjoyed by everyone. And the bathing was enjoyed by most everyone. As we were packing up to go back to our homes it was agreed that this event was to become an annual affair. But this outing took place over seventy years ago and it hasn't been,repeated. There are only two of the people who participated still living.

Another event which we all enjoyed was a fishing endeavor. We were living about a hundred yards from the San Miguel River which had an abundance of trout. For this occasion Walter Blackburn, who was about eighteen years of age and his brother Frank, about two years younger, rigged up several gunny sacks with a barrel hoop in each sack. They didn't have any difficulty in getting all the fish that the three families could use. The fish made an interesting change from beef, particularly from the hearts, tongues, livers and brains. I still enjoy brain scrambled with eggs, heart and tongue and fried liver. They soon found that the best place to get the fish into the sack was in the small streams that flowed into the larger river.

I mentioned in the introduction to this story that the West was settled by people who were more interested in the plow, the axe and the crosscut saw than the gun. In other words, the most of the people who settled the West were more interested in settling differences by peaceful negotiations with their neighbors rather than by the use of firearms. Most of the people who settled the West came from law abiding communities and they were anxious to see law and order established in their communities. Of course there were occasionally exceptions to this trend. The event that I am going to relate is one of the exceptions. In fact, this is the only case where my dad was a witness in the twenty-five years that he ran cattle in southwestern Colorado.

This event took place in the fall of 1904 and the spring of 1905. It seems that a farmer by the name of Pitts claimed that a mesa close to his ranch belonged to him while a man by the name of Bill Young thought differently. So in the fall of 1903 Bill and a hired hand drove a herd of cattle onto this range. They drove the cattle right by Pitts' ranch onto the range which Pitts claimed. After Bill and his hired man had delivered the cattle up on the range they rode by Pitts' place on the road to Bill's home. As they rode by Pitts' corrals which were close to the road they noticed several men in the corrals. They assumed that the men were working on the pole corrals. But Bill and his hired man had just ridden by when the men in the corrals started shooting at them. Bill said later that they leaned over their horses and spurred them into a run. After they had gone several hundred yards they assumed that they were out of danger and straightened up in their saddles, but this was a mistake. Both Bill and his hired man were
shot in the arm.

We lived about two miles down the road from Pitts' ranch. The hired man came to our place and my mother and two sisters dressed the wound and sent the young fellow on his way. Bill went to the neighbors for help.

But Bill never did press charges against Pitts and his gang particularly, however, he did carry a grudge against Pitts and his gang. Bill especially had it in for one of Pitts' bunch by the name of Charlie Wilkins. Evidently Bill believed that Charlie was the one who shot him.

The next spring my dad hired Charlie Wilkins to help him round up the cattle for the ninety mile drive to the summer range on Turkey Creek Mesa. My dad and his helpers had barely started the cattle down the road when Bill Young rode up. Charlie Wilkins saw that Bill meant business so he got down from his horse on the side away from Bill Young. But Bill was determined so he drew down on Charlie. My dad yelled "My God, Bill, don’t shoot. Charlie doesn't have his gun out of the scabbard." But Bill shot Charlie. As Charlie crawled down through the sagebrush Bill said, "Take care of him boys, I'm going to Norwood and give myself up." Charlie died a short time after the shooting.

Bill's youngest daughter; who was about fifteen years old was in our home when word came that Bill had shot Charlie, revealed some of the feelings that Bill's family had when she said, "I hope he dies." Eventually Bill was given a preliminary trial and my dad was the chief witness. Bill tried to get my dad to say that he shot Charlie Wilkins in self defense, by my dad refused to lie even for a friend. Then when the final trial was held we had moved to Texas. My dad thought that the court might insist on his being at the trial, but the courts had a record of my dad's testimony. Anyway, Bill Young was found guilty and spent some time in the state penitentiary.

Two events took place In the winter and spring of 1903 that involved my cousin Walter Blackburn. He was baching in a ore room cabin about one hundred yards from our home.

Now, Southwestern Colorado made an excellent place for men who had fallen afoul of the law or for desperados (as they were sometimes called) to hide from the law. This was true for several reasons. In the first place it was a huge country and it was not very well settled. A person could ride for days without seeing anyone. Furthermore, the people who lived there were out of touch with the outside world since the people got their mail every two or three months. Likewise the office of the sheriff was badly understaffed. Usually the county sheriff just didn’t have the time to spend looking for a desperado.

However, the case we're turning to next is an exception to the last statement. In other words, the sheriff in Montrose, the county seat of Montrose County, did catch up with a young fellow whom the sheriff was taking back to stand trial for a crime. Night overtook them and since the sheriff knew Walter the sheriff asked Walter if they could spend the night in his cabin. Of course Walter was pleased to give them food and lodging for the night. After supper was over my dad and I went up to Walter's cabin to hear the stories. After we had been there about two hours we heard the most blood curdling screaming we had ever heard. We all ran out of the cabin including the sheriff and the prisoner. My two sisters and my mother met us about half way. As soon as they could catch their breath they explained that they were sitting around the table when a man who had slipped into a bedroom opened the door into the room where they were. But just as soon as he heard them scream he disappeared. There were about three inches of snow on the ground making it easy to track the fellow. Evidently there was another fellow with him holding his horse for a quick get-away which they succeeded in doing. There was a full moon shining on the snow making it almost as light as day. The men looked for the fellow who had crawled in and out of the bedroom window but all they could find were the tracks that he made in getting to his horse. Of course we never knew why the intrusion, but my folks said that they believed that the man who entered through the bedroom window was merely trying to scare the women so that they would run outside and attract the sheriff thus giving the prisoner a chance to escape. Why the prisoner didn't try to make his "get-away" remains a mystery.

The next event that stands out in my memory happened in the sprinfg of 1903. All the men folks smoked either Bull Durham cigarettes which they rolled themselves or a pipe. On several occasions I had smoked either cedar bark or grape vines. I found that one could easily imagine that one was smoking a cigar when one lit up a grape vine. One day I was visiting my cousin Walter and I asked him for some real tobacco to roll in a cigarette. But Walter replied, "I have something better than a cigarette." And to my temporary delight he took a pipe down from his mantel and filled It up with tobacco. He then gave It to me with some such remark as "Here, smoke this and it will make hair grow on your chest." So I smoked the whole pipe full of tobacco. Needless to say that I became sick immediately, so I went down by the barn. In the meantime Walter alerted my father to what he had done and my mother came out to the barn where I was and asked me why I was so white and I answered, "Oh, I am just a white kind." I still remember how humiliated I.was. I was humiliated not so much from being caught smoking as I simply wasn't man enough to take it. Although that smoking event took place seventy-f'ive years ago last spring I still don't care to smoke. I don't suppose Walter ever fully realized what a blessed event that really was for me. Financially, for example, It has saved me in the last seventy-five years hundreds of dollars.

In the fall of 1903 I had an experience which I will never forget. My dad had decided to move the family to Paradox Valley before he moved the cattle. He had an old white horse which was over twenty years old. I talked my folks into letting me ride Old Punkins. After all I was nearly five years old and I had worn a pair of my dad's worn out cowboy boots all summer, part of the time of course. My folks assumed that half a day would be about all I could take of boney Old Punkins. My dad believed that the way to teach a youngster to ride was to put him on a horse bareback and my mother agreed because there would not be any stirrups for the child to hang up on. Anyway, my dad lifted me on to Old Punkins just before we left Ames and much to the surprise of everyone I rode him all the way to Paradox Valley, a distance of ninety miles. In fact I gained so much confidence that I would hold him up until the folks in the old covered wagon would get out of sight and then I would make Old Punkins gallop to catch up. It took us three days to make the trip from Ames to Paradox. One night we camped on a green area next to the San Miguel River, but the second night we enjoyed the Western hospitality of some friends who insisted that we sleep in their clean and warm beds and eat a delicious supper and breakfast with them. I can still remember how much I enjoyed these campouts. Mother would make biscuits and cook them in a dutch oven and Dad would fry steak and make some coffee and my sisters would fix some fried potatoes. Of course we all enjoyed these campouts when the weather was agreeable, but when the weather was disagreeable camping out could be rather hectic. So it was always a delightful experience to stay in the home of friends. As I recall they would never accept any money for these overnight stops. As a youngster 1 thoroughly enjoyed the period of time between supper and bedtime. We would gather around the heating stove or the fireplace to hear the stories that the men would tell. There was one story, however, that was so gruesome that even my dad didn't care for it. It seems that the man in whose home we were staying did have an old bachelor friend who lived two or three miles up on the mountain in a poorly constructed log cabin. Usually this old bachelor would stop by every few days on his way to town. But once he didn't stop by for over a month's time. So our friend got concerned about him and decided to go to his cabin to find out what was wrong. When he opened the cabin door he was greeted by a terrific odor. He went over to the poor fellow's bed and found that he evidentally had died in his sleep and the rats had eaten most of his flesh. Then he continued to describe in gruesome detail the next steps he took to put the poor fellow in his grave. Each time he told the story it seemed to become more gruesome than the time before. Seemingly he forgot that he had told us the story before. In fact my parents arranged our subsequent trips so we could stop at the home of another friend and thus avoid the gruesome story. But most of the stories were very interesting.

In the fall of 1905 I had another unforgetable experience but for quite a different reason. Our family had moved into the small town of Norwood. My folks had bought me a new pair of jeans, or overalls, and a new tablet and pencil, and they started me to school. But I didn't care for it from the start. First, I was a green country boy and these town boys tended to gang up on me. For example, the very first day big second grader who seemed to be twice my size snatched my pencil. But he couldn't have been much bigger than I was because I was nearly seven years old and I have always been large for my age. Then when I tried to recapture the pencil the fellow who had the pencil at the
moment would throw to another member of the gang. I kept saying, "I want my pencil, I want my pencil." I spoke in kind of a southern accent and some of the larger boys claimed that I was saying, "I want my pants off." Needless to say that this was a disturbing experience for a green boy who had never had the experience of playing with boys. My experience had been with adults and older teenagers with one exception. I did play occasionally with three girl cousins. As a result of the pencil experience plus the fact that the first grade teacher was a young lady who had just completed a normal school course with emphasis on phonics. Now I knew most of the letters of the alphabet; but the many sounds that this inexperienced teacher gave to us the first day was too much for me. So after two or three days of these weird sounds I became one of Norwood's youngest dropouts. The next year there was an older, more experienced teacher in the first grade so I passed into the second grade at the end of the year.

In the spring of 1904 I went on my first cattle drive. It was certainly an unforgettable experience. The very first night it rained and snowed. I slept with my dad. Of course, true to cowboy tradition we slept on the ground. We had a large quilt under us and two quilts and a tarp over us, and of course we slept with our clothes on. But we had miscalculated on the best place for our bed. During the night the water ran down by our bed and enough of it got in our bed to soak our clothes. The next morning I stood as close as I could to the campfire , but I soon found that I was in the way of the men cooking breakfast. After breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon and camp bread we saddled up our horses and started on our six or seven day long trip to Turkey Creek Mesa.

It was a cold, blustery day and some time in the middle of the morning my dad rode up to me and asked how I was getting along. "Fine, Dad," I replied, because I thought that if I told him how really cold I was that this would be my last cattle driver. But in about an hour or two my dad returned to find me shaking and blue from cold, so he wrapped me up in an old buffalo overcoat and then put me on the calf wagon. That night, very fortunately for me, we stayed in the home of a friend. Just as soon as the hired man driving the calf wagon pulled up to the corrals where he could unload the small and weak calves I rolled off the calf wagon and went to the bunkhouse where there was a nice warm fire burning in the heating stove. I had been in this warm room and close to the heating stove for only a short time when I began to tingle all over my body and I turned sick to my stomach. One of the men recognizing my symptoms took me outside and rubbed me with snow. I soon recovered but, I did have a bad cold the rest of the drive.

Thee next morning I was riding a horse named Barney. He was really a work horse that we rode only occasionally. I was trying to help my dad cut out some cattle and I tried to turn Barney around rather sharply. The ground was still frozen and slick so old Barney slipped and fell. My dad thought that I would have a broken leg, but I cam through the ordeal without even a bruise or scratch.

My uncle, Tom Blackburn, saw old Barney slip and fall with me and he suggested that I ride one of his horses called Leggs. Uncle Tom maintained that Leggs was one of the most sure footed horses he had ever owned. To prove his point he mentioned the fact that Leggs had gallopped across a railroad trestle in front of a train. My dad agreed to the trade. It was very simple to make the trade because my cousin Walter was driving a small herd of horses and burros to the summer range and he had put them in a corral near where the cattle had been kept over night. I couldn't say when the drive was over that I had enjoyed riding old Leggs because he was very lazy. I found it difficult to get him out of a walk. I really think he was accustomed to being motivated by the use of spurs, and I didn't have a pair of spurs.

The reason Walter had a few head of burros along with his horses was because he used burros to pack ore from the mines to the smelter. My mother claimed that my dad was responsible for bringing burros to that part of the country and my dad didn't deny it. In fact he soon had so many and they were almost worthless unless they were broken to lead and to pack. In the early 1900s my dad made a deal with a man to drive a large herd of his burros to the mining country of Alaska, but my dad never did hear from the fellow again. My father said that there were several things that could have happened to the fellow. He could have been killed by Indians or robbers, or he could have drowned trying to ford one of the several rivers that he had to cross; or he could have sold the burros and kept the money. Regardless of what happened to the rider and the herd of burros my dad was glad to be rid of this many animals from his range. My dad rather held to the idea that the poor fellow became discouraged with the long trip from southwestern Colorado to Alaska and sold or traded the herd.

During the summer of 1907 my dad rounded up all his two, three and four year old steers and sold them to a buyer (it seems to me) for five cents a pound. It also seems to me that the buyer and my dad had agreed to make the transaction on the basis of the live weight rather than the dressed weight. I also believe that it is safe to assume that they had agreed to estimate the weight. In this way they could agree not to consider shrinkage.

During the summer of 1907 my dad and my Uncle Tom agreed that my uncle Tom would buy my dad's cattle for $22.50 a head and my dad agreed to "throw in" the calves. During September Uncle Tom and my dad had the job of counting the cattle. They finally came up with the figure of 225 head. I got in on considerable riding that summer, particularly when dad was gathering the steers. I remember one time which shows some of the risks cowboys have to take. We had ridden all day and had found about twenty steers that we were driving down an old road toward the old 14ilk Ranch where my dad had a holding pasture when all of a sudden something spooked them. About half of our small bunch of cattle went over the side of the mountain. It was so steep I thought that the steers would be unable to stay on their feet, but the steers had no sooner gone over the side of the road than my dad spurred his horse over the side of the mountain. As he rode down that steep slope in an effort to turn them back on to the road I held my breath because I was sure his horse would go down with him. But fortunately he was riding one of the best saddle horses in the country. She was about five years old. Her mother was a very good saddle mare but her sire

was a very well bred race horse. Anyway my dad was successful in getting ahead of these steers and turning them back on to the road. My dad didn't say a word- as he left the road but just as soon as he was sure he was in front of the cattle then he sounded like three or four cowboys. In other words, he made full use of his strong voice which had been made strong by many similar experiences over the years.

One day, it must have been about October 20, 1907, my Uncle Tom and my dad dressed up and went to Telluride so my Uncle Tom could borrow the money from the bank to pay try dad. He borrowed just slightly more than $5,000. My mother sewed a pocket on the inside of her corset and she carried the money for several months.

Another thing that got our attention happened in a good size town in Western Texas. Most everyone on the train had their windows opened and as the train rolled to a stop at the depot, there was a swarm of barefooted children that cam up to the windows trying hard to sell their food consisting of Chili, hotdogs, wieners, and numerous real hot, Mexican dishes the names of which I can’t recall. Judging from their dark skin most of the children were dirty and some of them had large sores on their legs caused as we learned later from scratching mosquito bites. Most of the children were not allowed on the train; only a few of the better dressed and older youngsters were permitted to go up and down the aisles to sell their products. Curiosity finally got the better of one member of the family and she purchased one of the "hot" dishes and we all sampled it. WOW! Was it "hot"! We couldn’t understand why people would deliberately burn out their insides by eating such "hot" foods. The first thing that my dad did when the train pulled in to the depot in Fort Worth and stopped was to reclaim his cattle dog "Old Collie" who was leery glad to see all the members of the family and, of course, we were glad to see him. Then we picked up the variety of packages, bags and suitcases and started to look for a hotel, passing up the opportunities to ride in a great variety of horse drawn vehicles, we hadn't gone over a block until my dad spotted a small hotel. The management said it would be OK to keep "Old Collie" in my folk's room so my dad rented two rooms on the first floor in this old two or three story ramshacklety building. By this time we were all very warm. By the last few days in October the weather was quite cool in the mountains of Colorado where we had just core from, but it seemed to us that this weather was very hot for this time of the year. There was a restaurant In connection with this hotel. The person who showed us our rooms was careful to explain that they served very good meals and they were cheap. We assumed that the reason he stressed the cheapness of the meals was because he thought, judging by our general appearance and remarks that my dad had made, that we were short of moneys Had some characters in Fort Worth or even in this hotel known that my mother had $5,000 cashed away in her corset even Old Collie couldn't have prevented us from losing all our money, especially since we slept with all the windows wide open on the first floor because of the extreme heat.

When supper time came we were all very hungry and anxious to try the food. I can remember only one item served that.night and that was the soup and It stunk. I pushed my bowl of soup aside. Brother jokingly asked me why I didn't eat my soup and I said that I was going to let it cool. Needless to say all members of the family did likewise.

The next morning we were all up early and Dad went out and rented a house. It was located in a low rent district near the Trinity River and a negro district, but within one block of a grocery store and two blocks of an elementary school where I entered the second grade. We continued to live here during most of November and December when we moved to a ten acre truck.or vegetable farm rented from a man who was a banker in Fort Worth with the name of Mr. Harding. It seemed almost like a miracle that my dad should rent from a banker who soon convinced my dad to put his money in the bank instead of attempting to hide it some place in or near the house in which we were living. So all my dad had to do when he decided to leave Fort Worth was to go into the bank and ask for a money order or draft and he could carry this piece of paper without any fear of being robbed.

The first thing that had to be done in preparation for the planting season was to prepare the hot beds and the cold frames. Both the hot bed and the cold framewere very easy to prepare. 'The hot bed consisted of a six or eight inch board in front and two twelve inch boards in back. And at both ends it was necessary to saw the boards diagonally, of course, in order to make the front and back match. The front and back were six feet apart and each bed was twelve feet long. Then two by fours were placed inside all four corners and the boards were nailed to these two by fours which were extended into the ground about fifteen inches. Then the hot beds were excavated to a depth of
two to three feet and this hole was filled with horse manure and covered with two to three inches of good soil. Then canvas was spread over each hot bed and cold frame. The only difference between the hot bed and the cold frame was the fact that the hot beds were excavated. As soon as the hot beds were ready Dad broadcasted cabbage and tomato seeds in them. Then in about three to five weeks when it became apparent that the plants were husky enough to stand the shock of being uprooted and moved to a new location all members of the family cooperated to get the job done.

We found that there was much hard work on a vegetable or truck farm. Sowing, transplanting, weeding, hoeing, picking and arranging in baskets or bunches all called for hand work and much Of it required stooping. Perhaps it wouldn't have seemed like the work was so hard had the financial reward been greater, but, I can remember my dad going to the farmers' market at four o'clock in the morning with a wagon load of nicely prepared vegetables and coming home with less than ten dollars.

The first year we were in Texas it rained and rained; in fact, it rained so much that all the low spots in the garden became merely puddles of water remaining for days sometimes after a hard rain. As a result the total output of the ten acres was reduced. The second year just the reverse happened. It was a very dry year. We even "rigged up" a barrel on a sled for hauling water to the small plants and the ones that had been recently transplanted. Sometime during the latter part of August of the second year my dad came home from a very unsatisfactory trip to the farmers' market and announced that we were leaving in a few weeks for Washington. We were all very happy with the decision to leave Texas although I had enjoyed the two years very much. For example, I had enjoyed working in the field hoeing or ".run and get" for my dad and mother. And then at the close of the day my dad and I would go down to an old swimming hole in the Trinity River. My dad was surprised that he could still swim after being away from swimming for over twenty-five years. He soon taught me how to swim. My mother and sisters never went swimming because the water looked too muddy and the mosquitoes were entirely too friendly, but my dad and I stayed under the water as much as possible. Then when we finally did get out of the water I am certain that the mosquitoes speeded up our dressing about one hundred per cent.

Another experience which I recall with very fond memories was attending the two room elementary and ninth grade school which was about two and a half miles from our home. There were two teachers in the school and there were children in every grade. Therefore, the teacher of the four lower grades decided to do some consolidating by promoting some children and demoting others along some time in January by means of an oral reading test administered individually. When it came my turn to read the teacher selected, with some help from the testee, "'The Charge of the Light Brigade." Since I had memorized the poem while attending the second grade in Fort Worth I didn't have much trouble making it into the third grade. At the end of that school year I was passed into the fourth grade. Another experience which I learned to enjoy was choosing up sides and playing baseball. Since I was just learning to play I was usually one of the last ones chosen and my sister.Jessie was one of the first, but I didn't let it bother me. Jessie could frequently hit a home run plus the fact that she was a very good looking girl and the leaders were usually older boys--while I usually "fanned out" and after all I was only a third grader. I really considered myself fortunate to be selected at all. Usually there were three our four children who were not selected. Then there were watermelons! Watermelons from July 10th to November 1st. Near the end of the season two friends and I went through the patch, broke open a number and ate the hearts.

Then on the other side of the ledger there were these things which made leaving Texas an interesting and welcomed adventure. The mosquitoes which caused each member of our family except my dad to have chills and fever about once a month; the extremely hot weather during the summer and in winter the what was called at that time "Northerns" which really were cold winds coming from the north rather suddenly. Of course the temperature didn't drop as much as it seemed to, but usually we were not prepared for a sudden change in temperature. Then during the spring and summer months there was the fear of cyclones. For example, one summer day we were hoeing in the garden. There was a very dark cloud in the northern sky. 'The hired man called our attention to the formation of a cyclone. At first it appeared to be some smoke going high into the sky but then, as we watched it, the smoke began to form into a cone and to whirl around. It looked like a huge whirlwind. It didn't do much damage, but it did knock three or four box cars off the track. However, it "broke up" before it had gone very far. Most Of the homes along White Settlement Road had storm cellars which all the members of the family would go down into whenever it became evident that a cyclone might be coming. On four or five occasions all the members of our family were driven into our storm cellar, but each time it turned out to be only a very strong wind.

Other negative experiences that we had during the two years since we had left Colorado were these. My mother had to undergo surgery for the removal of gall stones and appendix. 'These are not considered serious operations today, but I remember a very anxious two weeks until she returned home. Sometime later my oldest sister, Ada, had to have an appendectomy. This was the third or fourth attack that she had experienced, but she recovered very quickly. Since my folks had never heard of health or hospital insurance these two operations ate a hole in my dad’s bank account. Then the folks lost their Milk cow with milk fever and Old Collie died from being poisoned. He was an excellent watch dog and just a few days after he had died we lost a number of chickens.

When it was time to leave my folks had everything packed in our two trunks and in wooden boxes. It was fortunate that we were over two hours early for the train that would start us on the long journey to Ellensburg, Washington--the town my folks finally decided upon, because when Dad went to check the baggage he found that two or three of the boxes were too large to meet the specifications. So we had to go to store after store until we could find four wooden boxes of the right dimensions. Men my folks had to unpack the two largest boxes and pack their contents into the four smaller boxes. They barely had time enough to complete the job, complete checking the baggage and get on the train before It pulled out of the depot. The trip north was quite uneventful except we had a long layover in Kansas City where we had to transfer to the Great Northern Railroad. When we went to check our baggage again they found something wrong with it, so my clad had to find some boxes and again had to repack one or two of the boxes. This time he plenty of time to get the job done because we had several more hours of waiting after he had completed the job of meeting the new set of specifications. I really had not realized that I was homesick for the mountains with their evergreen trees, but as we approached the foothills of the Rockies, somewhere in Montana I would guess, for the first time in two long years I saw a pine tree and tears came to my eyes. I had a feeling like we were returning hone. Home with its sparkling spring water bubbling up out of the ground fresh and cold. Home with its cool nights and freedom from the malaria producing mosquitoes. Yes, I was truly homesick for the mountains.

After being five or six days on the trip we were very glad to reach Ellensburg, Washington. My dad had about decided to go back into the cattle business and the country around Ellensburg looked fairly promising except for one thing. In walking around town he saw too many sleds of various kinds including the large bob-sled of horse drawn variety. This meant lots of snow during the winter. Then he talked with people who tended to verify his conclusions. Therefore, after instructing us youngsters, particularly with respect to spending money, then my dad and mother caught the train for Seattle. They left Ada in charge of the money and they left enough money for two meals each day for four or five days for each of us. But it took them a couple of days longer than they had anticipated. It meant rather "slim pickings" and some worry and anxiety the last two days we were left on our own; but all was quickly forgiven and forgotten when our parents arrived with the good news that they had purchased a suitable home. This place which they had purchased for $2,250.00 consisted of two acres, partially cleared and the remainder had many first growth fir and cedar stumps from 31 to 5 feet in diameter. In addition to the fact that the place was partially cleared with berries and a few fruit trees planted, there were a fairly good two bedroom house and several well constructed outbuildings consisting of a hen house, rabbit hutches, a large woodshed and an outside toilet. (in fact, my folks never lived in a house with running water, telephone, nor did they ever own an automobile.) The place which they had purchased was just eight miles from downtown Seattle near a small town called Foster which was located on the old interurban street car line sometimes referred to as the old third rail because the electric power for running the street car was carried in a third rail. Evidentally Dad had given up the idea of going back into the cattle business and had about decided to settle down to clearing the stumps off the place and to planting some more fruit trees and berry bushes.

About November 1, 1909, I enrolled in the fifth grade in Foster--having been promoted to this grade the last day I attended the little country school on the White Settlement Road near Fort Worth, Texas. Much to my surprise the school furnished all the required books. In fact the year and a half that I spent in the fifth and sixth grades turned out to be a very fine educational experience. The two teachers that we had in the fifth grade were excellent teachers. About the middle of the fifth grade year the first teacher resigned to take a position in Alaska. She was very well liked by everyone. She succeeded in getting several of us boys interested in friendly competition in learning facts particularly in geography and arithmetic. She was followed by another very fine teacher who had been teaching in the sixth grade and it seemed to us in the fifth grade that she expected the members of the fifth grade to measure up with the sixth grade. But it turned out to be a very fine educational experience as did the three months that I spent in the sixth grade the next school year.

Along about the middle of December Dad came home one day from Seattle and said that he had seen some of Bill Young's gang watching him from across the street. Therefore he was going into hiding and if we expected to see him alive we would need to cooperate by not telling where he really was. He said. "Tell them that I am on a business trip to Renton." For the first several weeks he hid in the attic which could be entered by means of a small ladder. He slept with his clothes on and on the bare boards in the attic except he did have two quilts. Since I was the only one who could carry a tray of food up the ladder it was my job to feed my dad at least twice each day. At first he would never venture out of hiding; but he stayed in his hideout in the attic twenty-four hours each day. Then one day he came up with the idea that he should change his hiding place. So he put on one of Mother's dresses and went out to the hen house where he found a place with an inside.

For a week or two we believed that he actually did see some of Bill Young’s friends in Seattle. Dad was sincere in his belief that "some of Bill Young's gang were out to get him" as he expressed it because he refused to lie in order to save Bill from serving time in the penitentiary. Evidently we all came to the conclusion that Dad was having a "mental crack-up" due, we thought, entirely to the murder of Charlie Wilkins where Dad was the only witness. Even though we had discarded the idea that we might have an unfriendly visit from Young’s gang we nevertheless continued to go alone with my dad because if we didn't we were afraid that he would think that we were on Bill’s side. Several months had gone by and Dad was becoming more disoriented daily when Mother had a brilliant idea. She remembered that some old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Pitts, from Colorado, were living near the town where the State Hospital for the Insane was located.

After an exchange of letters Mother determined that we were not only welcome to visit in their home but that Mr. Pitts said that he would personally help Mother take Dad to the hospital. We were surprised that Dad didn't raise any serious objections to making the trip or going to the hospital. He went willingly. In fact my dad had reached a second stage in his hiding. For months he had insisted that he stay in hiding twenty-four hours each day, but one day he decided that he would go into hiding, only at night while he was sleeping. Daring the day he finally decided that he could protect himself. As he visited with Mr. and Mrs. Pitts the first day after we reached their home he seemed quite normal, but then when evening came and it started to get dark outside Dad insisted that they let him sleep in the attic. Then about an hour after we had all gone to bed Mother was wondering, "Did Dad have enough covers to keep him warm?" So she asked me to check with Dad--which I immediately attempted to do. In order to reach him it was necessary to remove a board and as I pulled on this board it made a noise which scared Dad and he let out the most "blood curdling" yell I have ever heard. This horrible scream awoke everyone who was asleep in the house, Mother and I explained as well as we could what had happened. Everyone was badly scared and breathed a sigh of relief when he or she heard what had actually taken place, but still there must have been in the mind of each person the thought that there was an insane man in the house and we were all sleeping under the same roof.

The next morning after a rather sleepless night everyone was anxious to take Dad to the State Hospital. I stayed at the place to help with some farm work, but, of course, Mother went with and Mr. And Mrs. Pitts when they took Dad to see the doctor in the state insane asylum. (This was the name commonly used at that time to indicate the hospital for the mentally ill.) The doctor said that Dad was suffering from paranoia which was a very hard mental Illness to deal with; but the doctor gave Dad some pilu which caused Dad to relax and to sleep. This trip seemed to be the turning point in Dad's complete recovery. It would be impossible to say which-element in the trip was the key or the most important factor. The elements were: the trip to the hospital, the visit with old friends from Colorado, the visit with the doctor with his quiet bedside manner and medication which made it possible for Dad to sleep all night for the first time in months. Or could the remedy been due to the fact that Dad's mental illness, like the common cold, had to "run its course"?

A close look at Dad's illness reveals these significant factors: shrinking bank account was the cause of considerable worry, (he always, abhorred the idea of having to go to the poor house in his old age), another source of worry was the murder of Charlie Wilkins, a man helping my dad drive cattle, by Bill Young, an old friend. The third factor which was probably the most important factor was that Dad was undergoing the "chance of life" which takes place in men as well as women. Most people can make the necessary adjustments to the physiological and psychological changes that are taking place, but once in a while the stresses and strains of life are such as to cause an individual to make a poor or an unsatifactory adjustment to life--this mental illness is called involutional melancholia.

Sometime during the early part of the summer of 1910 my father and mother decided to make a business trip back to Colorado. Ada had been working in a logging camp for well over year. In fact she had met and married Fred Renslow and sometime during the year they stopped working at the camp and started working for a bachelor farmer. Therefore, they were unavailable for any help while the folks were in Colorado. Likewise, Jessie had the job of keeping house and working in the grocery store while the grocerman's wife was seriously ill. This period when Jessie was to be away from home occurred at the same time Dad and Mother were to be on their trip, but they were sure that I could take care of everything. This included setting our old milk cow that hadn't been "fresh" for over two years and a two year old heifer. When the folks left on their trip they gave me only two instructions: to keep the house in order including washing the dishes daily and not to go in swimming. All went well until two days before the day they said that they would return home. When my folks showed up two days early they certainly spoiled my plans. I had planned to spend one day in cleaning the house and the next day in washing dishes. Soon after the folks had left I had found that it was too much of a chore to start a fire to heat the dish water every time I used a bowl for corn flakes and strawberries--my chief diet while the folks were away. On the other hand it would be easy to imagine my mother's reaction to a large tub full of dirty dishes including all the bowls on the place. Furthermore, neither my dad or my mother were too happy with the fact that I was away when they arrived home. The reason they were especially disappointed and unhappy with their eleven year old son was because he wasn't home because he had gone swimming-a thing which my folks had specifically told me I couldn't do. I partially redeemed myself when I told them that I had sold the cow and heifer.

My folks read in the paper about Central Oregon as being very productive, expecially the parts of the country that had been brought under irrigation. So they decided to sell our newly acquired home and move to Central Oregon. They had no difficulty in selling the place for $2500 cash. Then after making arrangements for Jessie and me to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Pritchards, friends of Jessie, until they could find a suitable place to live my folks "caught" the train for Redmond, Oregon.

Soon after January 1, 1911, we had a letter from the folks indicating that they were renting an 80 acre farm in a section of the country called Powell Butte about eight miles east of Redmond. The next morning after we had arrived by train the evening before, my dad had made arrangements for the young man -who owned and operated the dray and delivery business in Redmond to take the four of us with all of our baggage out to our new home. The house had four rather small rooms, consisting of two bedrooms with no closets, a kitchen with a hole in the roof for the kitchen range stove pipe but no shelves or cupboards and the fourth room was to serve as a front room and a spare bedroom where I was to sleep until we could get my tent up. The house was really a typical homesteader's shack with the cracks in the single walls that let in the cold, dirt and dust. But Mother never complained. She always accepted the things as they were and then tried to make improvements as time went on. As far as I was concerned personally, I enjoyed everything about this new country, the freedom that seemed to be in the air everywhere, the fact that now I could work along with my dad in milking cows, planting potatoes, shovelling dirt in and out of the ditches, the fact that now I can sleep in a tent the year around and the fact that just west of the house was the Old Dry River Bed, a geological wonder of Oregon. But more important to me was the fact that the river's rock cliffs and small caves made excellent homes for cottontail rabbits, which when served with hotcakes made a delicious breakfast.

With so many rabbits in the area my dad soon decided that I should have a gun, so he went to the second handstore and purchased for less than $5.00 a Stevens twenty-two single shot rifle. The gun had a hammer with a weak spring. As a result it would sometimes backfire. In fact the last time I shot the gun from my shoulder it backfired and singed my eyebrows. As a result of this experience I held the gun at arm's length whenever I shot it. One day my dad saw me target practicing and he asked me why I didn't hold the gun up to my shoulder, so I told him about the gun's backfiring. Then he said, "We'll take care of that." 'The next time he went to Redmond he took the Stevens gun and came home with a new Remington twenty-two repeater. I am sure that over the next ten to twelve years I killed hundreds of rabbits with this gun. However, occasionally it was possible to destroy the pest, the jack rabbit, without the use of a gun. One such occasion happened the last of February, 1911, when six to eight inches of snow fell during the night. The folks had purchased a very good team of five year old horses, harness and wagon for $250 and Dad was anxious to try them out. So we went rabbit hunting in the area west of the Old River Bed with only a stray shepherd dog that had adopted us a few days before to catch the rabbits in the snow. 'The dog was quite adequate for the job. As a matter of fact I was able to outrun several jack rabbits in the snow. After driving around unhampered by fences for two or three hours we decided to go home with over half the wagon box full of rabbits. We skinned and dressed out most of the rabbits. The folks tried cooking the jack rabbits. They fried them, they boiled them, but we couldn't eat them so we fed them to the pigs.

Jessie found life very uninteresting on the farm so she secured a job waiting tables in Redmond and left home permanently, except for short visits which we all appreciated very much. Eventually Jessie married a man by the name of Fred Rodman who was drowned while hunting in December 1929. Then Jessie met again and married Dave Rogers, an old friend she had known many years before. They certainly made a great couple.

When the folks found that Jessie was not going to be needing the extra bedroom they invited Ada, Fred and Corinne, their baby girl, to come and live with us. Things went quite smoothly most of the time, but occasionally Fred would have spells when he would be very argumentative and hard to get along with. Later we learned that such behavioral changes were typical in the behavior of alcoholics, especially in the more advanced stages of alcoholism. But when Fred was not in a moody spell he usually was quite congenial, agreeable and easy to get along with. For example, each Sunday morning from about the middle of February until about the middle of May of the year 1911 Fred and I would leave the house soon after breakfast, spend the day hunting jack rabbits and coyotes and returned home tired and hungry but happy--especially when we saw the fine meal Mother and Ada had prepared including Ada's cream pies. I couldn't have asked for a better hunting partner.

Soon after we moved out to Powell Butte my folks inquired about the school situation. They found that the closest school to the Cook place which my folks had rented was in Redmond 7 1/2 miles away. Therefore they decided that I would stay out of school during the winter and spring of that school year and help with the farm work. Then I could start to school in Redmond at the beginning of the fall term and by continuing through the year I could "catch up" with the work that I had missed. In the meantime my dad would have time to buy me a saddle horse and a saddle. It became evident that I was going to need a horse to ride as the herd of milk cows grew larger. For example, my folks went to Redmond where my dad purchased three Holstein cows that had been shipped from the Wallamette Valley. It was up to me to drive the three cows from Redmond to Powell Butte on foot. My folks came along behind the small herd and its driver. Although the afternoon was quite warm, it had rained that morning and there were puddles of water that hadn't quite dried up yet. I got so thirsty that before I had completed the drive across this stretch Low Desert that I lay down and drank from one of these commonly called the puddles. Not long after that dad came home from town with a horse and saddle. The horse was a Cayuse in appearance as well as disposition. He was a smooth-mouth and dad thought he was between 12 and 15 years of age. He was stiff or "stove up". For example, one day I had my lunch tied up by the horn of the saddle and he smashed it. His last fault was the fact that he was a "switchtail." Dad paid $25 for the horse and saddle and he served very well as our saddle pony for two or three years when Dad sold him to John Tuck, a neighbor for $25.

When school started in Redmond the first fall we were in Powell Butte I rode my pony in from the Cook place over the 7 1/2 miles of Low Desert to attend class. Then after school was out about four o'clock I untied my pony from a juniper tree I had selected because it was just across the street from the feed store where we traded and far enough away from the school that children would not bother him. When I left the school in Foster before Christmas my teacher, Miss Weir, promoted me to the high sixth grade since I had spent more that two months in the sixth grade. Then when I started to school in Redmond the next fall all the sixth graders looked so small I promoted myself into the seventh grade where there happened to be two or three boys almost my size. Then about the first of December my teacher, Miss Grey, asked me if I would like to move into the eighth grade class; she said she had discussed the promotion with Mr. Thompsom, who was the superintendent, eighth grade teacher, and I believe that he taught one or two subjects in high school. She said that they both agreed that I should have the opportunity. Of course I agreed and I continued in the eighth grade until Christmas when Dad said: "Son, you have made your grade this year, why don't we keep you out during the winter and spring so you can help with the ranch work?" I found this quite acceptable. I was getting tired of riding to school anyway. It took one hour and fifteen minutes to two hours to make the trip one way. Furthermore, my dad had just completed renting a 320 acre ranch for three years which he hoped to make into an alfalfa and grain ranch, but it was quite obvious that there was a lot of work to be done on the place; fifty acres had to be cleared, ditches had to be made, and we found out when the grain and alfalfa started to come up that most of the ranch had to be fenced with rabbit wire because jack rabbits had moved into the sage brush areas surrounding most of the ranch, by the hundreds. In addition to all this work that needed to be done during the first part of the first year there was a barn to be built. Dad had agreed to furnish the labor and Mr. Garrett, the owner of the place had agreed to furnish the lumber. When the barn was finished it was 48 feet wide and 50 feet long. The large center section of the barn held about 50 tons of bay. On one side there were stanchions for 14 or 15 milk cows. On the other side there was room for several horses. As soon as the barn was finished we went to work clearing the sage brush off fifty acres with a sage rake pulled by four horses. Dad had purchased a small team that could be ridden as well as doing lighter work like pulling the new two seated large buggy called a surrey, with a permanent top and curtains for both sides and the back. The folks used this lighter team to haul cream to the creamery in Redmond once a week, but they were also used when it became necessary to use four horses on a job. Dad knew how to adjust the four horse evener so the lighter team of horses would pull a lighter load than the
heavier team.

All of us seemed to realize from the beginning that if this place was to become a producing hay ranch many hours of hard work were going to be necessary. We worked from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. with an hour and a half out for lunch, seven days a week, and, of course, it was necessary to milk from 10 to 26 cows, separate the milk, and feed the calves and pigs the skim milk before breakfast and after supper each day. We followed this heavy schedule for some time, but finally Dad found that we could accomplish just as much, if not more, by resting one day out of seven. Occasionally Dad would attempt to cheer us up a bit after a really hard day when we felt that we had accomplished a lot by saying: "Well, boys we didn't do much today, but we will give it 'hell' tomorrow."

The Garrett place was at the end of the ditch. The first year we had a lot of trouble getting our share of water. Ed Williams, a neighbor who was a graduate of Harverd Law School, thought that it would help all the people at the lower end of the ditch to bring the Ditch Company into the courts. So Mr. Williams arranged such a trial in Bend and he took my dad along as a witness. When Dad was on the stand the lawyer for the defense evidentally thought he had my dad when he asked him the question: "Mr. Skeen, how do you know that you are not getting your fair share of water if you cannot measure water?" Mr. Williams said that the court room was tense because the people felt sorry for Dad. But Dad's reply even got a chuckle from the judge: "Hell man I got sense enough to know when the ditch is dry, and it has been 'damn dry most of the summer."

When October came of the first year we were on the Garrett Ranch, I enrolled as the only eighth grade pupil in the Houston one room school. The teacher Miss Edna Morris, had someone in each grade from the first through the eigth grade. The teacher soon found that it would be advantageous to all the pupils in the school if she would give some special attention to the one in the eigth grade so he could take the State Examinations and, if he should pass them, the school and the teacher would be relieved of one whole grade. Well, I passed, not with scores as high as I would have liked to make; but as Dad said, the important thing was that I had passed. Dad also said that now I could help with the farm work without worrying about my school work. As a matter of fact, I had already started doing farm work without worrying about my school work when Mother brought the letter containing the good news that I had passed out of the eigth grade. I was standing on a load of manure which I was hauling from the barn to the garden getting it ready for spring plowing. This letter from the Office of the State Department of Public Instruction, J.J. Churchill, indicated that I was now ready for high school. I well remember the enthusiasm that I felt about starting to school in the oldest, largest and best high school in all of Central Oregon, The Crook County High School, located in the big town of Prineville.

When September of 1914 came I started to prepare for attending high school when Dad dropped a bomb into the middle of my plan by stating that he couldn't afford to send me to high school. Besides he believed that high school was a waste of time. He went on to say that Mr. King, one of the most successful business men in Prineville, had only a third grade education. Mr. Tom Houston, a neighbor with whom we had traded work during haying season, convinced my dad that I should have the opportunity of going to high school. Then Mr. Houston went one step further and found me a job of working for my room and board on Mr. Ayres' dairy ranch. I stayed with this job until Christmas vacation when Dad suggested that I ride horseback to high school. Mr. Ayres expected at least five hours of work each day I was in school. In addition he expected me to haul hay on Saturdays and Sundays. We had three good saddle horses including a three year old colt which needed to be broken. By riding a fresh horse each week I found that I could make the trip of ten miles including a mile-long grade just before one reaches Crooked River in one and a half to two hours.

Continuing to ride to and from high school from the first of January until the last of May I finished my freshman year of high school and I was looking forward to riding home for my second year when Tom Houston made us a proposition. Tom's oldest son, John, was ready for high school and Tom knew an elderly widow, Mrs. Zell, who owned a large lot that had room for her home as well as a cow barn. Now, Tom sugested that he could furnish the hay if we would furnish the cow, and Mrs. Zell had agreed to cook for the three of us if Skeen and Houston would furnish all the groceries. This we agreed to do and this arrangement took care of my second year in high school. Of course, occasionally I would ride a horse to high school and sometimes when I would be planning to stay in town until Friday after school I would ride my horse on Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning to the top of the long grade, when I would dismount, tie the reins securely to the saddle horn, and head the horse down the road toward home, hoping he would make it there safly.

Three non-school events or happenings were significant my second year of high school. The first thing that happened two to four times each week after school during the winter months was the fact that I stopped in at the barber shop and played checkers with a man who had been one of the top players in Portland. I got so that I could win about one game out of every three. This was a real boost to my ego.

The third thing that happened sometime in October, 1915, turned out to be a tragedy. We had traded work with Tom Houston during the past summer, Dad was helping Tom for two or three days. I was staying in Prineville that week, and Fred Ada's husbend, 'had agreed to stay home to milk and feed the cows and feed the horses. Our haying was over and we had 50 tons of hay in the barn and over 100 tons in two stacks about 150 feet from the barn. Fred and a bachelor neighbor decided to go to Redmond to celebrate and they both came home after dark drunk. In trying to feed the horses Fred climbed up in the hay mow with the kerosine lantern. Somehow the lantern got turned over between the hay and the barn. These two drunk fellows were lucky to make their escape from the burning barn. Fortunately, Ed Williams saw the fire soon after it started and he was able to get all the cows and horses out of the burning building. The wind that evening was blowing from the southwest just right to sprinkle both hay stacks with live sparks and burning shingles. 150 tons of hay went up in smoke as well as a new barn and some equipment, including my saddle, chaps and harness. No one had five cents worth of insurance on the building, hay, or equipment. As soon as Ed had driven the cows and horses from the burning barn, he immediately turned his attention to Fred Renslow. Ed was sure my Dad would see the fire and when he arrived he thought it best to have Fred out of sight and out of reach of my dad. Therefore, Ed took Fred on a long walk. I really don't know what happened to Fred after that long walk. I only know that he was gone that week end when I arrived home and none of us ever saw him again.

As an in school activity I represented C.C.H.S. in the Central Oregon Track Meet, held in Redmond. I took second that year in the 440 yard run. I also ran on the winning team in the mile relay.

When my folks lease was up on the Garrett place they had already purchased the Smith 80 acre place where they continued to live until the death of my father in 1923. By doing two years work in one year I was able to graduate my third year of High School in 1917. I spent the next two years helping my dad clear some of the rocks trees, and sage brush from the land that he planned to put into cultivation. However, I did take off about three months in the fall of 1918 when I enlisted in the Student Army Training Corps at Willamette University. The S. A. T. C. was a branch of the army which trained officers for the regular army.

Thus comes to an abrupt end what started out to be a life history of a western family but ended as largly an autobiography of the author.