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Chapter Two This period of my life is not so clear in some places. But I will the best I can. My father was badly frozen in the winter of 25/26. At the time we were still living on the same ranch we had been on for several years. Dad was running a logging operation. I don’t know if it was for who ever owned the property or if it was on his own. As mentioned earlier, our family, the loggers and anyone else working on the property all lived in the huge log house. Refer to chapter one. There were no weather stations in those days, suddenly the temperature began falling rapidly and snowfall increasing. Dad must have known somehow that it would get worse. He had several men working out in the woods. He and Murphy (who may have been a boss of some kind perhaps overseeing the logging) went out to find and rescue the men. At this time the mercury had fallen from around Zero to -20 degrees and was falling rapidly, eventually dropping to -70 degrees below zero. I don’t know how long they were out, but they did locate and bring the men back. All of them were badly frost bitten and suffering badly. I don’t know what happened to any of them but Dad. His hands and feet were frozen badly. No doctors or hospitals existed for many miles and I imagine the old Indian Squaw working for us treated them. She had treated me when I was snow blinded and seemed to be a sort of nurse or medicine man (woman) I don’t know how long he was laid up, but after that incident his hands and feet hurt terribly and turned blue whenever they got cold. It was in the spring of 1926 that he decided to leave Montana for a warmer climate. My Mother’s sister Nora was married to a Mr. Frank Davis and they owned and operated a farm in Southern Arizona. It was located about 25 miles Northwest of Douglas (a smelter town) and the same distance Northeast of Bisbee (a copper mining town) Arizona. Both towns were on the Mexican border. It was in a valley named Sulpher Springs (largely a farming/ranching area). This valley and the surrounding mountains played a large part in my life up until WW II. The base of the valley was from Douglas to Bisbee, it extend North to a small town named Elfrida, the roads from both towns met there and one road then continued North to Pearce, on up to Cochise and then to Willcox. Near the North end of the valley was a farming settlement called the Kansas Settlement. The East side of the valley was a mountain range called the Swiss Elms on the West was the Chiricauhas The floor of the valley was an average elevation of 5,000 Ft. This must have sounded very good to my parents. As far south as one could get, had many job opportunities and relatives to provide a temporary home. Dad was an experienced miner and dynamite man and also had considerable ranching experience. He had been a sheepherder and foreman for the Ogalala Sheep and Cattle Company. He believed that the warmer weather would ease his pain. The Trip to Arizona We left Butte Montana the spring of 1926 in a Willy’s Overland touring car. Mom and Dad and us three kids and all our worldly possessions were in or on it. We carried extra gas cans and tires. Spent most nights on the ground and Mom or Dad fixed what ever we ate. There were no paved roads in those days and few if any gas stations. I do not remember where we got gas or food at all. The first thing I specifically remember is that we wrecked the Willey’s somewhere on a mountain road West of Salt Lake City Utah. Somehow we got to Salt Lake, moved into a small apartment and Dad went to work cooking in a restaurant. Before moving to the ranch in Butte he had been hurt in a mining accident and had a bad back and a bad hip that would come out of its socket from time to time. Working in the restaurant on the concrete floors all day was very hard on him. I remember that he would have to crawl from the bed to the bathroom and hold on to things to stand. But, he went to work every day. The only other thing I remember about Salt Lake was that a nearby butcher shop sold bags of pickled pig’s tails. They scooped them from the barrel, bagged them and off we went. They were delicious! I started first grade there but don’t remember anything about it. After a month or two, Dad had gotten the car fixed and located a job in Southern Utah as a dynamite man building a tunnel through the mountain. We moved into a one room shack on a river side and he went to work. Bob and I would fish in the stream and one day he fell and cut his finger badly on a tin can. Mom put kerosene it and wrapped it up. It eventually healed. So much for modern medicine. Some time later we left there and continued on down to the Valley. We arrived at Uncle Frank’s on Thanksgiving day in the fall of 1926 |