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.
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