Consuming the strength of generations, that northeastern New Mexico country still beckons me and should it be convenient, I ask to be taken there in cremated form and scattered along with, as she’s consented, the like remains of my little sister, Janis. Perhaps, scattered there, where we played will address some emotional need in me to return as part of that land. Maybe it could be a private, token memorial of my sister, Janis. Those really aren’t ashes in the cardboard boxes, as the romantics call them, but are gravel like residue of bones that cannot be consumed at a crematorium. Perhaps our cremains can be dumped near what’s left of the tree house I built and then gave her when she asked; or maybe under the other tree house I built for myself and where I ate chunks of cheese and bread, because I’d read a neat story about a kid who built a tree house and spend summers in it dreaming and eating cheese and bread; or maybe the remains can be scattered down on the creek where the horse and ox teams of the Santa Fe Trail immigrants and troops watered. Edwin and Robert Smith know where it is as would Douglass Rice, and Jody would remember. Dan and Karen Bryan are familiar with the layout.
This country lies just before the foothills begin an ascent to the Rocky Mountains to the north and west, leaving the fertile llano de estado (the staked planes of West Texas) to the south and east. A place where Coronado may have traversed, and certainly where the Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa tribes camped and left flint workings for me to find one to two hundred years later. These were the lands where Mexicans arrived with two wheeled carts to trade with Indians in a time before Europeans set foot in New Mexico.
This is a place desolate, but beautiful, where the banks of the deepening ruts of the Cimarron Cut Off on the Santa Fe Trail reveal buried bison bones. Several layers evidence the near extinction of the specie slaughtered to satisfy nineteenth century eastern demand for buffalo robes. In this vast land, wind howled and whipped snow to the eaves of the old house Granddad built. Wet seasons produced tall grass with slight tints of green and fattened cattle bred to thrive in that climate. Dry seasons withered crops and starved cattle and the inhabitants survived or didn’t survive.
Grandma Hartman, formerly Douglass, called the ones who left “quitters”. She called my Dad a “quitter” when drought and the struggle to survive broke my parent’s emotional strength to combat the New Mexican winds, dust and blizzards. Wet seasons and high grain prices in the early 1900’s saw maniacal grabs of land for farming. This left enormous areas of sod broken in a climate to harsh for tillage. Homesteaders and immigrants like my grandfather made unnatural agrarian claims on this land meant for grass.
Bred to work the soil, they eked out livings doing the only thing that was natural to them. Once loosened and in open rebellion during dry seasons, the earth blew away in billowing dust clouds, and sometimes choked the very life out of the people who trusted it for sustenance. Autopsies revealed lungs clogged with New Mexico dirt. Thus, the dust bowl, of which the geographical heart was a few miles east near Boise City, Oklahoma, left the land of my childhood scarred. In the fifties and sixties, we helped mom clean out dirt blown in through the cracks of the house in windstorm after nasty windstorm. The legacy of the early century farming practices lingers into our current century as some land will never recover its former fertility in our lifetimes.
Grandma Hartman, formerly Douglass, called the ones who left “quitters”. She called my Dad a “quitter” when drought and the struggle to survive broke my parent’s emotional strength to combat the New Mexican winds, dust and blizzards. Wet seasons and high grain prices in the early 1900’s saw maniacal grabs of land for farming. This left enormous areas of sod broken in a climate to harsh for tillage. Homesteaders and immigrants like my grandfather made unnatural agrarian claims on this land meant for grass.
Bred to work the soil, they eked out livings doing the only thing that was natural to them. Once loosened and in open rebellion during dry seasons, the earth blew away in billowing dust clouds, and sometimes choked the very life out of the people who trusted it for sustenance. Autopsies revealed lungs clogged with New Mexico dirt. Thus, the dust bowl, of which the geographical heart was a few miles east near Boise City, Oklahoma, left the land of my childhood scarred. In the fifties and sixties, we helped mom clean out dirt blown in through the cracks of the house in windstorm after nasty windstorm. The legacy of the early century farming practices lingers into our current century as some land will never recover its former fertility in our lifetimes.
Surprisingly, a similar mania occurs today in Eastern New Mexico, West Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas and elsewhere as subterranean water, know as the Ogallala reservoir, is tapped to irrigate the same lands that lost its topsoil in the depression and dustbowl era. Vast, prolific fields are watered and wells are drilled deeper and deeper as water tables recede. The reality is that in some unromantic way in a not to distant future, the grass that grows naturally will return and feed a few cattle or sheep. It takes about thirty acres of grass to sustain a cow and calf unit for a year. No wonder “quitters” quit in those desolate years when the price of land, the cost of living and the allure of longer, happier lives put to rest the dreams of early immigrant settlers trained for centuries in the east and Europe to farm the land.
One summer, with mom and Grandma Hartman in the back seat, I was sandwiched between Parker Hartman, my step granddad, and Dad, in the front seat of Parker and Grandma’s old 1953 Chevy coupe. Parker and Grandma had sold the Mt. Dora ranch to my parents a few years before. We toured the back roads north of our house (the one Granddad built) along which the Weeses, Hemphills, Wisemans, Carders, Jones, and countless others abandoned or sold their rock and sod homes and moved with the times to greener, kinder places like California or Oregon. Passing each homestead and remembering the people, Parker finally quoted from Genesis 5, “and he died”. We passed the pile of sandstone rocks which was all that remained of the forgotten Mock place, where on a narrow bed, Grandpa Douglass slept with his arms wrapped around Mr. Mock to prevent him from killing himself. Parker again quoted, “and he died”. Mr. Mock finally succeeded. As Parker chuckled sadly, or quietly mused, we drove on as he and Dad discussed the bible, those forgotten people who’d populated that country and, finally, our ultimate state before God. In the back seat, Mom and Grandma talked about us, the kids; Nellie, Francis, Winnie, Louise, June, Robert, Evelyn, Lorene, Buddy Scott, Marilynn McKelvey, Harry, Mary, well, you get it, all of us Douglass kin. Maybe it was about the last round robin letters. (These were letters where each of mom’s siblings would write a letter and mail the packet on, removing from the packet the letter from the next recipient.) We were known, remembered and treasured.
One summer, with mom and Grandma Hartman in the back seat, I was sandwiched between Parker Hartman, my step granddad, and Dad, in the front seat of Parker and Grandma’s old 1953 Chevy coupe. Parker and Grandma had sold the Mt. Dora ranch to my parents a few years before. We toured the back roads north of our house (the one Granddad built) along which the Weeses, Hemphills, Wisemans, Carders, Jones, and countless others abandoned or sold their rock and sod homes and moved with the times to greener, kinder places like California or Oregon. Passing each homestead and remembering the people, Parker finally quoted from Genesis 5, “and he died”. We passed the pile of sandstone rocks which was all that remained of the forgotten Mock place, where on a narrow bed, Grandpa Douglass slept with his arms wrapped around Mr. Mock to prevent him from killing himself. Parker again quoted, “and he died”. Mr. Mock finally succeeded. As Parker chuckled sadly, or quietly mused, we drove on as he and Dad discussed the bible, those forgotten people who’d populated that country and, finally, our ultimate state before God. In the back seat, Mom and Grandma talked about us, the kids; Nellie, Francis, Winnie, Louise, June, Robert, Evelyn, Lorene, Buddy Scott, Marilynn McKelvey, Harry, Mary, well, you get it, all of us Douglass kin. Maybe it was about the last round robin letters. (These were letters where each of mom’s siblings would write a letter and mail the packet on, removing from the packet the letter from the next recipient.) We were known, remembered and treasured.
Parker Hartman married Grandma after Grandpa was killed. Parker was our living grandpa on the Douglass side, although the family simply called him “Parker”. Formerly an itinerant preacher or a “worker” following the teachings of Matthew 10 as best he and others knew at the time, my Grandma (from old pictures, I’d say she was a desirable chick) captured Parker’s heart and, clearly, he was besotted with her. Rubbing her back long into the night when she couldn’t sleep, (Edwin remembers an ever present chamber pot by her bed less than twelve feet from the bathroom door) taking her fishing and catering to her children. We cousins thought of Parker as our granddad. He was always kind, happy or teaching us the bible or hymns. In his final days in the hospital, Parker was heard down the hall from his room singing “This world is not my home”. His last words spoken to Frank Allen were, “Well, I think I’ll call it a day,” and he went to sleep. It wasn’t until years later that Kevin Smith thought to name a great grandchild after Parker. He named another child, Clayton, presumably after the town, Clayton, New Mexico. I’m not the only person in my family whose fondest memories are tied to the region.
Although Parker taught us love for the scripture, he brought another aspect to the community. Having moved from place to place as an itinerant preacher, he noticed methods which improved comfort of homes. And thus, running water became more common in the homes he visited and he introduced a novel innovation: the cess pit. Formerly, when outdoor toilets were full they were simply moved or another built close by. Suggesting they be built over a hole about four feet deep, Parker lengthened the useful life of the average outdoor toilet.
At Mt. Dora, the home place, the outdoor toilet had to be moved further away from the well house when a foul taste and smell tainted the water. Also, probably a new well was drilled, because the water table was less than ten feet down in this location of the campsites on the Santa Fe Trail or of the nomadic Comanche or Kiowa. Here is a land with vast amounts of water just under a surface that is brown and dry most of the year.
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