Chapter 3 - AFTER JOSE DIEGO

When Dad was alive the three families had lived as one big family separated into three houses. Dad would spend a night with one and then the next night with another.

Everyone was very congenial. I can't ever remember of any quarrels about the family life or among the children. We quarreled like all children do, but not over being three separate families with one daddy to take care of us. The wives got along, I'm sure, real good. I never remember any comments or any arguments among any of them as long as I can remember.

As I remember life in Hop Valley immediately after Dad was killed, it seems like each of the three families kind of separated. The older boys, that hadn't married yet, were in charge of the families. Each one of them had to go to work and run a separate house then. We were kind of separated, not as united as when Dad was there.

The ranch was divided, so each one had their part of the farm to take care of. The boys from each family took care of their part of the farm. We raised corn and potatoes as the main crop, corn being the main crop because about fifteen miles from Pacheco there was a big distillery, which was a good market for the corn from the ranch.

Dad at one time hired his own school teacher and put up a schoolhouse and all of us and the neighbor children went to school in this schoolhouse. After Dad was killed, we grew up, and now, there being no school on the ranch, we had to go to Colonia Pacheco for school. I remember we'd work whenever the weather was good and the crops had to be planted or harvested. The time in winter after the corn was harvested and the crops all put away we had a chance to walk to Pacheco for school. Pacheco was about five miles. We'd walk over on Monday morning or else late Sunday i evening. My brother and I would stay with my older brother ana his wife and family during the week while at school. Then we'd hike back to the ranch Friday night and work over the weekend or ride jackasses around over the ranch to entertain ourselves until Monday morning and then walk back to school. There was not much church activity, being out on the ranch at that time. I don't remember going to any church exercises. We did walk over to Pacheco and go to dances and picnics and the 24th of July celebrations and like that, but otherwise we stayed on the ranch and each family entertained themselves with horseback riding or donkey riding mostly.

It was donkeys that belonged to a neighbor that used to bother us so much that we tried to ride them so much they'd stay away from the ranch. I remember one incident when I was about 11 or 12 years old when the telephone came to that part of Mexico. During a thunderstorm we'd have to disconnect the wire from the house because the lightening would come down the wire and blow the telephone up. This happened a couple of times so we'd just take the wire loose on the outside until the stern was over. One day the wire was laying on the ground and mother told my brother Emer to go out and hook the wire. So he told Mother, "When I get ahold of the ends of these two wires from the telephone you ring this phone and I want to see if the sound will go through while I have ahold of the wires." Since the telephone was right behind the door Mother couldn't see him when he got ahold of the wires. She started ringing the telephone with him holding the wires and nothing happened. Finally she quit ringing and went out. Emer was flat on his back out in the frontyard. He was still hanging on to the wires, or they were hanging on to him and he was completely knocked out.

That gave us an idea about these donkeys that we hact so much trouble with. We couldn't get rid of them and they were always breaking the fence and getting into the corn and we couldn't ride them all enough to keep them out. So we'd ride these donkeys up to the house and hook this wire either on his ear or let him clamp it under his tail and then we'd ring the telephone. It would immediately knock this donkey down like you'd snot him with a rifle. One time was the only time we could ever get the same donkey up to that house. It wasn't long until we couldn't catch a donkey on the place to ride.
The Mexicans got word of this, so they'd ride their horses up and let the horses stand on the wire. It wouldn't knock a horse down but it would scare them. Then the Mexicans would cuss the horses because they jumped. It was a novelty to them since they didn't know what was doing it.

Most of the people I knew were Mormons. I didn't know there was anybody else in the world but Mormons. I remember Pacheco was a town of about 500 people and there was only one man in the whole town that didn't obey the Word of Wisdom completely. He smoked and drank tea and coffee, but of the whole town he was the only one who did use coffee and tea and tobacco, I knew this gentleman, Brother Nelson, out in Arizona years later. One of his boys, with the same given name, was called on a mission. This boy was about ready to be married, so he didn't want to go on a mission. So he changed the letter from "Jr." to "Sr.". When the call got to his father down at the sawmill it was for the senior Nelson. He laid down his tobacco and his coffee and told his boy, "If you want me to go on the mission in place of you, I'll go on the mission."

He went down to Florida and Georgia and completed a wonderful mission. He went there and got all the blessings that this older boy could have got if he had gone himself.

There are many stories of these people that came out of Mexico. It seemed like wherever they went they were respected in the communities where they lived for being honest, church-abiding citizens. I don't know of a brother of mine that's ever been arrested for any reason or any cause, among the whole bunch of us.

Dad had one of those old Edison phonographs, the old cylinder type phonographs. The Mexicans, being a people that liked to dance, came down on Sunday. Mother didn't want them dancing on Sunday but they would come and want her to play the records. When she found out they wanted her to play a record so they could dance she didn't know what to do about it to break this business up. So she put a record on that one of the comedians had made talking and telling jokes. The minute that they got out there and got ready to dance and this man started talking to them through this horn, they disappeared. There was no more dancing or they didn't want to hear any more phonographs. When they heard a man's voice over there they didn't know what was happening. So that was the end of the Mexican dancing by the old Edison phonograph.

As time went on and as us kids grew up and some of the boys got married, they built two or three more houses on the ranch. I remember my brother went out to El Paso to get a wedding suit to be married in. Then, at that time, the revolution broke out. They burned the bridges on the railroad so he was about two weeks late getting back with his new suit of clothes so he could get married. That was Willard. Wallace Gurr was also married in Mexico, then two years later, he went to Salt Lake and they were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. I don't think my brother Willard was ever married in the temple.