Here we go again!
" January 11, 1960 Monday
One of those awful rainy days when you can't do much except sit inside and suffer through it. I spent most of the morning sewing on the machine. I patched several pairs of levis and such. I ironed after lunch until Charlie-Mike came home from school. Then we played baseball out on the walk. The destruction crew was working down at the corner and WW kept standing out on the porch smoking cigarettes and staring at us. He gives me a great big pain. I forgot to mention yesterday that I saw this interesting guy at Safeway in Prescott. He was a solid middle sized guy with coppery hair, tanned and dressed in reel-heeled boots, a Lee jacket and the tightest Wranglers I ever saw on anyone. We listened to a lot of classical music and then finally hit a western program on KFI. Quite a change from Grieg and Dance of the Hours and Beethoven to Ferlin Husky etc. No one can ever say that I just like one thing. I'm not narrow minded anyway. I didn't eat much today. I am trying to obey my father! It's getting pretty bad when the mules are allowed to eat more freely than a man's kids. So long, Gaye."
Okay--definitely some explanation or discussion needed. First this was the year I was out of school, at starting with being banged up badly in a riding accident and then spending the rest of the year working with dad on training a bunch of mules and a few horse that he had contracted for and planned to sell, mostly for 'big bucks' which idea met with moderate success at best. I was definitely totally into 'cowboys' and totally out of people--male type--my own age bracket. I'd been doing an adult cowboy's work myself and was sure I had nothing to offer my contemporaries and they had less to offer me. I had already felt a bit of a misfit and this year certainly intensified that.
Who was WW? I really do not recall but apparently one of a crew that was gutting and reworking one of the more trashed out houses in lower Clarkdale. I think the last folks who had lived there left it pretty well destroyed.
On the term 'levis', that was what all of us to include those my age group generally called blue jeans regardless of the brand. The ones I repaired may have been Sears or J C Penney's or some cast offs from my two male cousins in California that their mom sent for us to wear. I did use brand names in some cases as in describing what the guy in the store had worn. My mom did not sew well nor want to so I took over the machine and made it mine starting in about 8th grade.
The day before we had all gone to Prescott to put an advertisement for Western Horseman magazine in the mail after a big push to get it done and there for a deadline. On the way home Charlie-Mike and I got a lecture about "temperance and self discipline" which made me say dad should have been a "Holy Roller preacher." Lectures were not an unusual thing and got much for frequent and harsh in the next several years. I probably weighed 115-120 at that time and was the tallest I had measured--lost an inch or so later--at 5'7"+ and Charlie-Mike was a skinny nine year old. We hardly ate like hogs but were told we needed to be less greedy. So I almost hunger-striked for a bit. Yes, we did not have a lot of money but that seemed a bit extreme. I was edging closer to some serious rebellion!
The photos: The top one is Trixie. In her winter coat she looked like a fuzzy toy and she had that cute Arabian slightly dished face. I expect her mom was an Arab mare. BTW that is my favorite little saddle she is wearing. It was so light even with the full mule harness attached that I could get it up on the taller ones easily. Trix was barely 14 hands. The next is a photo that probably appeared in the ad we went to mail. It shows Mom holding Blackie and Cinder, Charlie-Mike with Beano and me with Jupiter and Trixie. By the end of that season, Blackie, Beano and Jupiter had all been sold.
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