Chapter 7     VERMA AND THE GREASE MONKEY

About 1914, while living in Ramah, New Mexico, I was standing on the street corner talking to a cousin of mine when there came a young lady walking by. My cousin told me that that was his girl. He'd met her up in the Zuni mountains and someday he was going to marry her. She ducked across the street and had a little trouble getting through the gate so she just ducked her head and crawled under the fence and ran into her aunt 's house. She was going to stay with her aunt, who lived just a few houses from where I was living. I used to see her come over since we had the only well in that part of town. She used to come over and carry water. I would make it a point to go out and draw water for her and that way we became acquainted. She was about thirteen years old at the time.

I was living with my mother and four sisters at the time. During the school year I went to school and in the summer time I'd get a job working. About that time I got a job working in the Zuni Mountains, my first job away from home. I went to work for a rancher up there who put me out in the field with a bunch of Mexicans to harvest potatoes. These potatoes were spaded out of he ground with something like a pitchfork, a fork made especially to spade potatoes out. He put me to spading potatoes and complained because I spaded out more potatoes than the picker could pick up. So he gave me two pickers and I spaded two rows of potatoes along with one row for the Mexicans who were spading. After I spaded for a few days, he decided I'd be the cook for the gang. Then I went into the ranch and did the cooking until the potatoes were all harvested. I was about sixteen years old at the time I was working in the Zuni Mountains.

Then I went back to Ramah. The Boy Scouts were organized then in Ramah and my older brother was put in as Scoutmaster and I was put in as Assistant Scoutmaster while there. We worked around Ramah for a year then went over to Greer, Arizona to work on a sawmill. I stayed over there about three years before I came back to Ramah. I met Verma, and once or twice in the meantime we visited back and forth. Immediately after that is when I met this Brother Hamblin and went on this trip to Kansas City for schooling. Then I came back and Verma had gone off down to St. Johns to High School at the time, so we were separated for several years. She met other boys and got engaged at that time.

About this time I went over to Fort Wingate and got this job with the government at Fort Wingate. While over there I got into auto racing, fixing up automobiles for racing purposes. At that time there were such a few sports in the country the boys and the men were interested in having these automobile races. So another boy and I fixed up a Model T for a road race from Gallup, New Mexico, to St. Johns, Arizona. While we had this car all ready to go we made a trip down to St. Johns to see how the road was and what speed we could make. When we got back to Gallup we parked the car outside. The next day was supposed to be the race.

The next morning this boy's mother asked us if we'd been out tinkering around the car in the night. We told her we hadn't been around the car. She said, "Well, there were two boys out there tinkering around the car." The next morning we checked the car over. It seemed to be running all right and we went to the start of the race.

It had rained all night and the mud was about four inches deep. We had just passed our second automobile and we were going up a hill, not too fast, when suddenly the car locked in gear. When we disassembled the car we found a culprit had stuck a pin in the differential of the car. It got into the ring gear and broke the ring gear in about forty pieces.

Verma found out from her boy friends in St. Johns that some of these boys from St. Johns had done this. It was years later before we found out who the boy was that actually bragged about putting the pin in the differential for us.

We were living in Fort Wingate and I came over to Ramah on a vacation. Another boy and I came over to Ramah. While at Ramah we found a nephew of mine that told me Verma Nicoll was back in Ramah for the weekend. He said, "I'll go up and get her and we'll go for an automobile ride."

I said, "No, if anybody makes a date with her, I will. We'll go up and pick her up." We went up and picked up Verma and went out on a very short ride. We got acquainted after two or three years of being separated and kind of fell in love all over again. I had been in love with her since the first time I ever met her. I had a hard time convincing her for a while until she got through with her schooling and tried out other dates.

It wasn't too long after that until I made another trip over to Ramah. I had lots of excuses to go over to Ramah from Fort Wingate then. She was up from St. Johns, on this trip, with a boyfriend. She was engaged to this boy at the time. I danced with her several times and this boy got so peeved because I danced with her that he took her home.
Next trip I went to Ramah he was up there from St. Johns to visit her. By this time they had broken their engagement. At this time I had a date with Verma.

I'd gotten acquainted with this little Jewish girl at Fort Wingate. We were engaged at this time. Actually, we hadn't set any date or anything but we were going together and thought we were going to be married. This was until I met Verma again which discontinued going with this little Jewish girl.

I knew Verma’s family very well and had been to the house many times. I never will forget her dad the first time I showed up there. I went to take Verma to Mutual one night, and he said, "What in the hell are you doing here?" I thought he was about the roughest man in the world. For years I didn't know he belonged to the Church. I didn't see him in church so I'd debate whether to go with Verma any more because she was a non-Mormon, or her father was. I didn't know for sure whether to marry into a non-Mormon family or not. But finally, it came around that he was a member of the Church all of his life, although he didn't attend church too much at that time. He was on the freight line, hauling freight, so he was out away from home most of the time.

At one of the races that they had in Gallup a couple of tourist boys came through and they had one of the very seldom seen automobiles in the country at that time, a twelve cylinder Pathfinder. They competed this Pathfinder with some of the finest race cars that were fixed up in Gallup at that time. They would have won the race, I'm sure they had the better car, if it hadn't been for a photographer that walked out in the middle of the roadway to take a picture of the hometown boy as he came by. This Pathfinder and these two boys ran over the photographer and that put them out of the race. After the race, I bought this car and repaired it.

At that time I gave $650 for the twelve cylinder Pathfinder. The motor in that Pathfinder at that time was equal to any of our twelve cylinder motors today. It was really an automobile just forty years ahead of it's time. Gasoline then was $1.50 for five gallons but this automobile would hold twenty-two gallons in the tank. If we could work one month and fill up the tank, then us boys would have enough to do our sporting around until the next payday. We drove it back and forth many times to Ramah and then got rid of it just a little while after Verma and I were married. We decided we didn't need an automobile like that, so we got rid of it and bought a Dodge touring car.

I originally bought the Pathfinder to get the experience of working on different kinds of automobiles, not because it was a fancy car or anything, but because I needed the experience of working on something besides just the government vehicles I was working on at the time.

At that time I was shop foreman on the Caterpillar tractors but I had gotten a lot of experience on all kinds of heavy duty army equipment.

After I first got the job at Fort Wingate I was put on a tractor as a "grease monkey" as they called them. We were supposed to work six months as an apprentice. There were two men on each machine and the grease monkey did all the greasing and all the handcranking to start these tractors.

Well, I stayed just three days as a helper. Then they gave me a tractor and a helper and I was put on as a driver. I drove this tractor for six months and then I was relieved of that job and put in the shop as a mechanic. Two or three months later they put me in as head mechanic over the tractors at Fort Wingate. I held this job as foreman until I transferred to the Indian Service, after the Indian Service took over the old Fort Wingate and made an Indian School out of it.

I worked as a driver and mechanic for them, transporting the Indian boys from the reservation to the different schools around over the reservation, and also taking the Indian boys to the beet fields in Colorado for the summer while school was out.