Memoir Monday, Dec 27 1960

This has been going on weekly since a bit before the holidays last year. After wading through some 52+ Memoir Mondays, do any of  you want to keep on? I suppose I can as it is not a really taxing project but some of them seem so boring to me! It is a bit harder now to find new photos to illustrate some of the narratives too but again, none of this is really 'new' to me.. Like been there and done that, long ago and often far away,but  ...  So shout out if  you are feeling 'been there and done' that too and I will try to find some other area to address so as to  keep my blog alive. For now here is two days after Christmas in 1960, my second effort at the third year of high school. 

Dec 27, 1960

Well maybe I do have quite a bit to write today—different from what I intended no doubt, but I wasn’t bored much. I decided to go to Flagstaff after all. I got nine items in the mail. A Christmas card from ‘renn, five new letters and replies from Judy Crouch, a Texas gal and Warren Burdett, a sailor from California. He sent some pictures. He is not a bad looking guy.. At least I had something to keep me busy while the folks visited the friendly loan company. We came down the new Black Canyon Highway which was just recently completed. It is a very pretty scenic drive and quite enjoyable. We stopped along the way and picked up a sizable load of wood. We heard this morning that there is a storm coming and of course we don’t want to be cold. I wrote five letters tonight. If I don’t get some money I’ll never catch up on writing. I keep getting new ones. That’s what gets me—and at least half the letters sound real nice. I’ve gone over the  eighty mark now When will it end? I really don’t know. Well it is fun anyway. If I had time and the money I would answer every single letter I get but I just plain cannot afford that. I’ve spent over $2.00 on postage already. Well if I narrow down to about fifteen permanent pen pals I guess it will be worth it. At least I am getting to choose from a real wide range. I dreamed about the “Rifleman” last night—he was big as real and natural too. I’ve hear dreams are almost always in black and white but sometimes I dream in color too. Not always but sometimes.  Well it is 10:00 PM. I guess I’ve got to call it quits pronto and sack in for the night. There’ll be another busy day tomorrow. Darn—my vacation is more than half over already. What am I going to do? I’ll simply die when I have to go back to school. I’ve got to fix my hair yet and also study my chem. Ooooo, I think I’ll quit! Love ya, G

I didn't mention the weather here but if memory serves it was colder and often more rain and snow 60 years ago than it is today.Winter  break ran from a few days before Christmas through the day after New Year's generally. December 27th was  a Tuesday then.

I was deep into the still-new pen pal routine at this point and it was still exciting to open the mail box and pull out a bunch of new letters. I  never  knew when one would turn out to be "someone special." A few of the guys did-- for awhile-- and a few of the girls have stayed friends for many, many years.  .

I was no longer regularly watching the TV westerns but actually kept a crush of sorts on Chuck Connors for several more years.  Was that dream in color? I have no idea but I do often have parts of dreams  in color even today. They'er like someone photoshopped a mix-up!

The new stretch of I-17 from the Verde River at Camp Verde up to Flagstaff was very scenic. It  still is and has changed very little except in places along the roadside over the many years. I came down it in September in a fierce rainstorm. Ordinarily I enjoy driving it and the grades and curves do not faze me as I learned to drive on mountain roads such as 89A over Mingus. That lat trip it was slick though and mostly poor and  limited visibility plus dodging the semis and motor homes made it an adventure. Of course in 1960 I was not driving and I am sure my Dad was at the wheel of our white Ford pickup.

Chemistry was my nemesis that year. Parts I had no trouble with but the formulas and valances gave me no end of grief. I just never quite got a sound understanding of how all that worked. I am sure Mr Clark did his best to make it clear to me and the other students but some of us were just dense or dunce I expect, me included! He was a good teacher IMO but a bit cantankerous at times!

It had been a welcome respite to go back to school after "the Mule Year" that I took off but I also was bored a lot and fretted about being locked up in a virtual juzgado so many hours a week.It was like a job in many ways, and I had to get used to that a few years later and learn how to fit what I wanted to do around the edges of what I had to do to afford even a reasonable life style.I soon found being grown up was not all it was cracked up to be. Sadly there were no other options!

For spits and giggles, two of me in this era.  I honestly cannot believe I was ever that young!!! I think the first was my drop-out year school pic and the next after I had started back but both undated. I seldom smiled in photos, BTW. Did not like my teeth. 

Monday Memoir Dec 20, 1958

 Back to my Sophomore year. Mostly I did not have a lot to say unless I got off on some tangent! So much of life was really quite routine. I was so far out of step with the usual 'teenage' stuff that it wasn't even funny! Right at this point I did not have a huge crush so that limited things to talk about!

Dec 20, 1958

Got up early. Did the chores. Vacation!! Ya hoo!!  Spent the morning stacking wood, working on corrals etc. Old Charley came by. He said he’d seen Charles Ortmann who said he sure wanted a picture of Tina. I’ll have to see if I can’t get him one. Mom got some groceries and mailed off the Burro story. We sawed quite a bit of wood. Did the chores. Perhaps we’ll ride over to Bryant’s tomorrow and perhaps go to Prescott on Monday. Guess I’ll say adios.

School was mostly b-o-r-i-n-g at this point and so vacations were eagerly anticipated even if mostly there was more work at home than 'fun' stuff. I was used to it by now and so far the cowboy girl routine was not too onerous. Getting to ride, especially on my mare who was now pretty well trained and rarely intimidated me although she was quite tall and very energetic, was always a great thing..

Charley Bryant was a local character and a close friend of our family. He was definitely a 'horse whisperer' and my main mentor in learning first how to ride and do things with a horse or mule and later to break and train them on my own . He did not drive a car so rode most places he went although his wife did drive and they had an old car that they used. He had many great stories of his younger days some of which certainly colored my later fiction.

Charles Ortmann was the man I had originally gotten Tina from as an eight month old filly early in 1956. At the time I got Tina, he was working for Duane Miller out on the DK Ranch to the east of the valley but by now was around Cottonwood working for various people we  knew. He was a peculiar cowboy having once been a concert violinist of some renown. Why he left that profession I never knew. He did not seem to have any injury that might preclude playing a violin  but had obviously changed careers. Well, classical music was not competing well with rock 'n roll! He did come by a time or two and I gave him a photo or even several but he never seemed pleased with them. I am not sure what he expected! And I am not sure if he still owned her mother or not. I do not recall mention of her in those days.

At this point Dad was sort of making a living as a writer, mostly stories of men's' outdoor magazines  like Field and Stream and Sports Afield. I dimly recall a tale that had burros in it but the specifics are long gone. I do not think it sold but I am not sure. By now we knew another sibling was on the way and it soon became essential to have a better source of income! Baby brother Alex was born May 17, 1959.

Photos: This was in summer 1957. Charley Bryant and me; I think we were going to the Sedona Rodeo. Next is Tina and me about the same time;she was in training and using a hackamore bridle instead of an iron bit in her mouth. Next is Charley again, on one of the houses he trained for a local wannabe cowboy. and finally Tina  as a mature mare, probably 8 or 9 and carrying her first colt. She was 16  hands(16 x 4 to get inches or 64" high at the withers). For reference I was 68" at that time or 5'8" . She weighed about 1000# in good shape and had a lovely red-bay coat.

Monday Memoir, Tues Dec 13, 1960

Some days are just b-o-r-i-n-g. A good part of that first semester back in high school was! A few other Dec 13th's I looked a were no better! But still a day in the life  of...with some names that take me back.

Dec 13, 1960 Tuesday

I guess I should have written more yesterday but it was late and I was tired. School was just ordinary today. Nothing much happened. I got one letter from a guy in the navy—A 6’3” hunk of a Texan who wrote a real nice letter. I did the chores early and we went out to the pasture where we did the chores and got a nice bunch of wood. Old Bill Nelson helped us. Dad went to a town council meeting which was something of a fiasco. I wrote a reply to my new beau and did two history reports. Sam Steiger has offered to sell us fifteen registered mares bred to his Appaloosa stud for $4500. My new guy’s nickname is Sonny. Well, if I live through tomorrow I’ll get a vacation on Thursday. I was going to go to Prescott but I will get to go to Flag. I reported on Anya Seton’s “The Winthrop Woman.” which is one of my favorite books. I’ll buy a copy of it someday. Adios, Gaye

This new pen pal was the one I have mentioned before, Alfred Rydell. He was nice looking and basically a nice guy but kinda dull, really. He left the Navy to work for the Quarter Horse legend Art Pollard. When he  only stayed there a couple of months and went back to the Navy, he lost any attraction for me. I was not going to be a Navy wife!! No way!!

Bill Nelson was a local guy, an old fellow who camped up in a corner of the Tavasci Dairy adjacent to our pasture out behind Tuzigoot for a bit. With winter coming on he needed a home.  Turned out he was a good western artist, not quite the Remington and Russell caliber but good. He was homeless and struggling and he hocked several paintings with us to secure a loan Dad made him to get back on his feet. I hated to see them go back but he paid it off faithfully. 

Sam Steiger had a place out near Granite Dells, east  of Prescott . He was a local character and semi-politician. He was a livestock dealer, a rodeo announcer and --well, you kinda had to watch him as he was a real wheeler-dealer! We did not buy those mares but got some from another man a few months later.

A "vacation" ' with a free day off from school was always cool and I liked to go to Prescott or Flagstaff, especially if I had a dollar or two to spend--which did not happen every time by any means. This close to Christmas, I might have though and looked forward to some gift buying. 

Anya Seton was always a favorite author. She did wonderful well researched historical novels and was very instrumental in firing my desire to become a writer myself.  She spent much time in New Mexico growing up around Taos--quite an artist colony in  those days--as the daughter of  Ernest  Thompson Seton, the eccentric naturalist, writer, and semi-founder of the Boy Scouts in the US. That was motivated by his friend William Baden Powell who started Scouting in England. Since my Dad did some of that as well--no scouts though--I felt a kinship to her. I think I read every one of her books and got a few in e-book form a couple of years ago to re-read.

No Pix. I don't have any very relevant and posted one of Al Rydell before.

Memoir Monday, Dec 6,1959

By this time, I had dropped out of high school for a year. In between many cowboy girl tasks there was a lot of other work. We used a wood stove to heat the house in cold weather--and it was colder then--and got a lot of fire wood plus fence posts and corral rails on Dad's mining claims up on Mingus. 

Dec 6, 1959 Sun

No vacation today, We spent the morning getting ready to go up to Mingus to get wood. I wanted Mom to go and let me stay but no deal. Well, at least RE didn’t come by while I was gone (not that I expected him to.) We left about eleven and spent a long and weary day getting both the trailer and the truck full of wood. I positively exhausted myself. We got a tremendous load and  got safely home with it. I am grateful for that.

It is funny how life files you down and how it will hurt you worse if you fight it. If you find your own little groove or slot that fits you, you slid along rather painlessly. I am inclined to fight tooth and toenail. Somehow I sort of feel I was “meant for better things” but I guess that is pure fallacy.

I just hope I’ll get another chance with RE, He does not exactly fit all my fancy plans but he does fit a lot of my specifications. There isn’t a day pass that I don’t think of him. I want him to be my friend and more than that. I can just hope for another chance. Au revoir, G

Work--that was the "subject" I studied for the short year away from normal school from about 1 Nov 1959 until 1 Sept  1960, that and guys LOL  We cut a lot of firewood and often got it in either the big  F700 Ford flatbed truck that was our hay and livestock hauler or in the pickup with either the open rack farm trailer or the horse trailer dragged behind. Dad wielded the chainsaw and Charlie Mike and I usually did the drag and pack mule work to get it to the vehicle(s) and loaded. Mom usually got to stay home and take care of Alex, then just May-Dec old. I didn't mind being the baby sitter but did not do that often. The Allen Spring Road which was the shortest route up there had frequent washouts after the Mingus fire in 1956 so getting around some sharp inside curves could be a bit iffy at times. A safe trip was thus a relief!

RE was  my current heart-throb--more or less. He worked for the project of putting in the gas lines for El Paso or was it Southwest Gas? Anyway natural gas came to the Verde that summer and fall and he drove a tractor for the digging and filling of the ditches. I had several nicknames for him as I did for most of  my fancies but his name was Richard Edwards and for awhile we did not quite date-I was not allowed--but kind of got a thing going.Oddly the folks never raised much Cain about my talking to him and even him coming by a time or two to 'visit' with me in the early evening--between chores and supper. However no happy ending to this tale--happened just a few days after this point. For a long time that seemed to be the story of my life...looking for love in all the wrong places as the old country song went. My darn "romance addiction" was slated to do me in!

Not many pix--a sketch I did of RE and the yard-swallowing woodpiles in one of Alex taken that winter. Most of the wood was supposed to be for fixing up "the ranch" down south of Bridgeport but eventually ended up in the wood stove to heat the house. Charlie Mike and I hand sawed and split a lot of it, carried it in, took out the ashes...  Yeah, we studied work. And the last, a couple of years earlier as it shows the Jeep pickup and not the Ford but on the same road and an example of the washouts. Somebody had lost a muffler--not us. Drag an 18' trailer behind a truck over that? Whoa! Too much fun. This was in the middle of a tight u-turn, too.