Sag-Ashus – More of… Am I A Pioneer?
This week, Sag-Ashus shares a second section from the memoirs of his great-aunt Lucy Lucinda Holmsley Rush, who moved from Comanche County, southwest of Dallas, to the desert-mountain country of Southern New Mexico and West Texas in the early 20th century,
For those who read last week’s column, Ole Sag’s great aunt Lucy (sister of Grandma Neely and Uncle Tom Holmsley) had recounted that her father, in the company of three of the older children, had arrived in Weed, New Mexico in a covered wagon. We mistakenly assumed that Lucy was one of the three who had accompanied their father. But on careful examination, it turned out that she had been left behind in Comanche with her mother. Her story continues.
“At Weed, Father bought a store building, put in a stock of drugs and wrote to Mother to sell the home in Comanche County. She, with the three younger children, had remained behind to take care of it. The selling took longer than we expected, and it was the next February, in 1904, when we boarded the train for El Paso, Alamogordo and Cloudcroft.
We had to lay over in El Paso for several hours, and my recollection of the town is that it was quite a frontier town compared to what it is now. (Ole Sag’s note: Remember that this story was written in 1939 when Aunt Lucy lived on Jefferson Street in El Paso with her family.) In Alamogordo we changed cars for the caboose of a log train, the only kind of train running to Cloudcroft.
At that point, I became a pioneer again. We did not bring clothing suitable for Cloudcroft in February and almost froze. My father and ‘Uncle Dan’ Stevens met us there in a carriage. Before making the long drive, we slept in the ‘best’ hotel. Early next morning, as I was bringing two heavy suitcases down a steep stairway, I fell, dropping both suitcases. They, with me in hot pursuit, rolled to the bottom of the stairs. One of them burst open and scattered its contents. My bruises healed, but the suitcase would never fasten again.
We had 20 miles to go before we reached our destination. It seemed more like 40, down a rough mountain road with barely enough wraps to keep us from freezing. However, we finally reached home and a warm fire in a long room built on the back end of the store.
Some months before our arrival, Father, who was 57 and with but one arm, had begun practicing medicine again, this time on horseback because of the rough mountain roads. Those mountains seemed wild at the time, with reports of fugitives hiding from the law and of other bad characters. How my mother suffered, wondering what might happen to Father out there alone, unarmed and on a pony not too sure of his footing! Father’s practice extended for miles around and to every type of individual. One case in particular that I recall was that of a man who had knife wounds all over his body, received in a ‘free for all fight.’ There were no hospitals in that part of the country, and, because of the serious condition this man was in, Father had him brought to our house and took care of him for three weeks. Did he receive any remuneration? Not a penny. I can remember numbers of times, during my early experience, when sick people were brought to the house for Mother and the others of us care for. Mother never complained. This seems to be another point that our pioneer writers agree upon. Everybody helped the sick.
Pay for Father’s services in this mountain region was in produce as often as in money. One rascal, who had a little farm up a rough canyon about 12 miles from Weed, agreed to pay 1,000 pounds of potatoes. He was delivering the potatoes from day to day. In the meantime, we missed part of those that had been delivered, so Father decided he would watch for the thief and caught the man who was paying the debt.
The social life at Weed was in the ‘play party’ stage as described by Helen Ashworth in Play Party in Victoria County. Although I was at Weed only eight months, I learned to play and enjoy “Skip-To-My-Lou,” “Brown Jug,” “Weevily Wheat,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Shoot The Buffalo,” “Miller Boy,” “Cinnamon,” “Dan Tucker” and several others of those old singing games.
Another interest at Weed was the wildlife, which was plentiful. One day two boys came walking down the street with a huge mountain lion suspended on a pole between them. A Mr. Williams shot a deer while standing in his back door. My sister (Grandma Neely), who had a small baby (he later became a deputy sheriff in El Paso County during the administration of Sheriff Chris Fox), stepped into her kitchen one morning to find a young panther on the mantle. He had walked in through an open window from a rock ledge. My sister’s husband, Joe Neely Senior, killed a grown panther with rocks and the help of Jack, a wonderful old dog.
Late in the fall of 1904, we moved to Orange, New Mexico, which was 2 miles north of the Texas and Territory of New Mexico line, 85 miles south of Weed and 90 miles almost due east of El Paso. This move and the few years that followed stand out in my memory as being made up of real pioneer stuff. However, there were no Indians, no buffalo and no bad men. Of course, we moved in covered wagons. The weather had begun to get cold, and after we started a rain set in. The second day out, on Cueva Canyon, one of the wagon wheels collapsed. We mended it with juniper poles and reached Wood’s Tank that night. This was 35 miles from Weed. Marion Smith owned the Wood’s Tank Ranch at the time, and he and his family were very kind to us. We continued our journey the next morning, but in no time the rain was coming down in torrents, penetrating the wagon sheets and making a general mess of things. We had to stop until it was over. I can still see my mother as she tried to make everybody comfortable, even though her own clothing was already soaked with the rain. The country there was barren, and we had little with which to make a fire except the fuel we had brought along. Nevertheless, we finally got dry and made our way to Orange without mishap.”
To be continued next week.
Here’s one from President Ronald Reagan:
“Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
SAG