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One Hell Of A Ride
These are my memories of a boy
growing up on a ranch in the 1930’s and 1940’s
Jack Holt on the front
steps of the Ranch House on Jones and Jones Ranch in Higgins, Texas
Introduction
It was summer 2000 and I
was visiting my parents Jack and Elizabeth Holt in Reno, Nevada. I was
describing to my dad about a horse I just purchased. He then said hold on, he
went down to his room, came back holding a stack of papers. He then began to
read from these papers and as he spoke, these short stories from his past came
alive. After reading two or three stories, he proclaimed that since his
retirement and sometime before, he would sit down and write some of these
stories of himself as a child growing up. I said, “Dad let me have these
stories”. These are his words and stories from my father Jack Holt.
Grab a beer, sit back in
your favorite reading chair, and enjoy, because you are going on One Hell Of A
Ride.
Steven Lee Holt
Steven Lee Holt
riding Jake and My Dad Jack Holt
ONE HELL OF A RIDE
Growing up in the
Pan Handle of Texas and Western Oklahoma in the 1930’s and 1940’s on Cattle
Ranch was one HELL OF A RIDE.
This is one of my
earliest memories of those times of my Grand Dad Dave McCoy and Grand Mother
Mam Maw Peral McCoy. First lets get
this straight she was not our Mam Maw, she was just my Mam Maw! Anyways that is
what I thought. I guess being the first grandchild spoiled the hell out of me.
But I enjoyed it. Although being Mam Maw’s boy, a lot that I remember was of my
Grand Dad. Grand Dad was a tall heavyset man and always had suspenders on and
always wore this beat up 5-gallon hat. To me he was 8 foot tall and my best
friend. There are some stories that in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s he was
chased out of Oklahoma for rustling cattle.
Grand Dad had a
couple of vices one was drinking whiskey although I thought he drank only beer,
and the other was his grand kids. He really enjoyed us and he was always doing
something with us. He was the foreman of a ranch 7 ½ miles west of Higgins,
Texas.
I was born October
30, 1929 and lived in Arnett, Oklahoma rite smack on the Oklahoma Pan Handle.
Growing up I spent many days on the ranch where Grand Dad and Mam Maw lived.
Beulah, Pete, Mam Maw, Grand Dad and Pat
The family
My Grand parents
had three children Bill, Pat, and Pete, two girls and one boy, can you guess
which one was my mother, well I had an Aunt Pete and Uncle Pat. My Dad and
Uncle Cecil married the McCoy sisters.
The McCoy’s
Dave McCoy (Grand
Dad)
Peral McCoy (Mam
Maw)
Beulah McCoy (my
mother - Bill)
Dave McCoy Jr (we called him Uncle Pat)
Goldie McCoy (we called her Aunt Pete)
The Holt’s
Kenneth Holt (my
dad)
Beulah Holt (my
mother)
Jack Holt (me)
Patsy Holt (my
sister)
Dorthy Sue Holt
(my youngest sister)
The Holt’s
Cecil Holt (Dad’s
uncle)
Pete Holt (Aunt
Pete)
Hazel Holt
(cousin)
Buddy Holt
(cousin)
Top row, Jack, Hazel, and Patsy
Bottom row, Buddy, a friend, and Dorthy Sue
Anchor Ranch or better known Jones and Jones
The ranch
consisted of 26 sections of land or 16640 acres; from one end to the other was
approx 25 miles. The name of the ranch was Anchor but nobody called it that it
was known as Jones and Jones. Two brothers Walter and Evy Jones owned it.
Ranch House
One of the first
things I can remember was looking into one of the front windows of the ranch
house and seeing my mother with a bundle in her arms sitting in Mam Maw’s bed,
I mean my bed, as she got closer to the window, it was my sister Dorthy Sue, I
did not mind having another sister, but not in my bed. The ranch house was in
my mind as a child was the biggest house ever imagined, it had a basement,
three stories, and part of upstairs was haunted, and that is why I slept
downstairs with Mam Maw. The only way I could go upstairs was with someone,
unfortunately the bathroom was upstairs, and I would run to the top of the
stairs, down the hallway to the bathroom and lock the door. The Ranch house
also served as the main location for the ranch’s headquarters where all the
hired hands would meet if needed with Grand Dad.
Jones and Jones Ranch House
Jack, Patsy, Dorthy Sue, Hazel and Buddy where all
born in the Ranch House
Anchor Ranch brand symbol (it was the shape of a
ship anchor)
Foot races
During the summer
around the evening Grand Dad would get us kids outside and have foot races to
the front fence of the yard and back. He always let the smaller kids go ahead
of the bigger kids. I guess the reason I remember the races so good, was that
Hazel and I were about the same size and age, however she would always beat me.
Saturdays
Saturday afternoon
was a special time in Higgins, Texas, for ice cream, a movie matinee, and once
in awhile I would go into the Longhorn Bar with Grand Dad and he would buy me a
mug of beer for a nickel.
Always duck
Riding in the back
of Grand Dad’s pickup was a little scary.
You learned real fast to sit up close to the cab because Grand Dad
chewed tobacco. Sometimes he would yell duck when he spit and sometimes he just
spit.
Dave McCoy
Shocking and cattle feed
Every fall, hay
and maze would be harvest around the ranch. Shocking feed is when you would
take a bundle of hay or maze, stand it up like a little Tee Pee with all the
grainy ends sticking up to let it dry. This was the livestock’s feed for the
upcoming year. When you ran out of this feed, you would feed them what was
called cakes. Cakes you had to buy them
and store them. They came in a big 100 lb gunnysack. We stored the cakes in the
Cake House, which was a big storage shed. Sometimes during the long rough
winters we had to feed the cattle cakes.
My paycheck
There was always
something going on at the ranch and Grand Dad was always giving me a job. One
fall when they were shocking feed, he gave me a job. At the end of the day I would receive Ten cents a shock and the
biggest beer in all Higgins, Texas. The job of day was south of a Booster
Station (a small oil factory), and when we finished our job the bundles of hay
were bigger than me. Well I made fifty cents that day and quart of beer. But I
think Dave McCoy caught hell that night from Mam maw.
Cattle and a feed wagon located on Jones and Jones
ranch
Cowboys
Well they where
the hired hands that work from sun up to sun down. I wish I could remember all
the names of the Cowboys that worked for Grand Dad. Here are some names that I
can remember, Shorty Precell, Lou, and Happy Guthery.
Grazing cattle and Cowboy on Jones and Jones Ranch
Barb wire
During a cattle
drive from Higgins to Headquarters, Shorty Precell and his horse got tangled in
some barbwire. I cannot remember what happen to his horse but his back was all
cut up with deep gashes.
Coyote pup
Now sometimes
coyotes had to be rounded up because they caused a lot of damage on ranches,
but at our ranch we hardly had this problem. Happy Guthery and myself where on
Horse Back checking on the cattle in one of the pastures when we spotted a
coyote pup, we chased that pup until it got tired and laid down. Happy got off his horse to kill the pup with
his fence pliers until I began to cry.
That coyote pup got to see another day because of me. Later when I was a
teenager Happy would tease me about it.
Cattle being feed on Jones and Jones ranch
Doctor George
Then there was
George Donnor. He was not a Cowboy but a veterinarian. Springtime meant
yearling heifers were giving birth and most of them needed help that was
George’s job. He would tie the cow’s head to a post and tie the come-along to
the calf and help the calf out. If something went wrong at birth George would
stick his arm in the back end of the cow all the way up to his armpit, once he
asked me if I would like to help and I said “NOOO WAY”. But what I remember the
most about George was that he smoked Wings Cigarettes, each package had a
picture of a different Airplane on it, just like baseball cards. George would
give them to me and I would use Mam Maw’s Victorla (a wind up phonograph), as
my airfield, boy it would be nice to have those pictures now. There is something
else I wish I had, for years Mam Maw would get the Saturday Evening Post and
cut out the front page which had a different picture painted by Norman Rockwell
and put them in a scrap book, they would be worth a fortune now.
The Jones Brothers
The brothers
Walter and Evy Jones how were the Owners of the ranch.
Walter a big
heavyset man was the boss and handled all the finances, when he came down to
the ranch he stayed in the big room upstairs. Evy was more like a hired hand
and when he came to the ranch he came to work and he stay in the small room
upstairs.
Special Times
Nut Bucket
There were a lot
of special times at the ranch. One of them was branding time. This is when all
the newborn calves had to be rounded up, branded, castrated, dehorned and vaccinated.
Grand Dad did the branding, George Donnor cut the horns off and castration, Evy
did the vaccinated, Cecil and another cowhand bulldog the calf to the ground,
Kenneth (my dad), kept the gas burner running to heat the branding irons. My
job was holding the nut bucket. Mam Maw was busy getting the mountain oyster
breakfast ready, “Delicious”. Not so
delicious was when Grand Dad would wrap a nut around a hot branding iron and
cook it a little bit and then give it to one of the grand kids. You would have
to eat it, with a little blood on it and try not to gag. Each day at branding time Mam Maw would cook
a big meal load it in the pickup and bring it at the pasture where we were
branding.
Poison ivory
Another special
time on the ranch, cutting and stacking the hay for winter. All the ranch hands
would come and help for a week or two. During this time I had to work close by
the meadows down by the creek, which had a lot of poison ivory, which I always
got. Mam Maw would make me wear sort of a muzzle to cover my mouth and nose so
I would not get fever blisters from the sun. Sometimes I was a mess with fever
blisters and poison ivory.
My job during hay stacking
Granddad paid me
.50 cents a day for running a hay rake. This tool would rake the hay in a row
so it could be pickup and stacked. The hay would eventually get put into a
machine called the stacker. The stacker would lift the hay and stack it on top
of each other to make a big pile of hay. Its was powered by two horses that
would lift the hay in the air above the haystack and by pulling a leveler it
would drop the hay on top of the haystack.
Haystacker
One time I was
standing watching Grand Dad running the stacker and two other ranch hands where
at on top of a haystack. Grand Dad told
me to get the jug of water, stand on the stacker with a load of hay, and he
would lift me up to the two ranch hands. About half way up the stacker door
opened up and down I came with a load of hay on top of me. I was not hurt but
scared and crying. All I could hear was Grand Dad laughing. To this day I think
Dave Mc Coy tripped that darn stacker on purpose. He said some how it just
tripped itself.
Dutch supper during hay stacking
Mam Maw would make
a Dutch supper for all ranch hands. A Dutch supper would include all kinds of
cheeses, lunchmeats, crackers, potato chips and beer. This was the only time
Mam Maw permitted beer in the ranch house.
Canadian Rodeo
Not all the
special times were work times. Once a year we would go to the city of Canadian,
Texas for a Rodeo. Canadian, Texas is approx 30 miles east of Higgins, Texas.
The rodeo was close to Lake Marvin on a ranch. At that time it was the biggest
rodeo in the west. What I remember was all the Cowboys and Indians with their
Tee Pees, and all the people coming to watch the rodeo.
Corrals and at the bottom center is where we dipped the
cattle
Catfish Fry
Grand Dad used to
take us fishing usually on the weekends for catfish and perch. He always had at
least half a dozen cane poles that he could tie on the side of his pickup. On the way to our favorite fishing hole we
would shoot a jackrabbit or dig worms down at the creek by the ranch for bait.
One time we caught a bunch of small catfish; instead of eating them we put them
in a pond south west of the ranch house by a windmill, which pumped water into
the pond. Grand Dad said to leave them alone for a year. A year past so we
decide to try this pond we baited the cane poles with jackrabbit and sat there
for a period of time and nothing happen. We decided to go to another pasture
and when we came back to pond both poles where floating on top of the water, I
waded in to get our cane poles along with the fish we caught, to my surprise
they were some big fat catfish, wow what a catch. Well we fished that pond again
and again to see if we could catch more big fat catfish and we never caught
another fish out of that pond ever. I guess only two fish survived.
Bass Fry
The biggest
fishing challenge to Grand Dad was these darn old large mouth bass, that were
located in a place called the Oasis. The Oasis, which was approx southwest of
Higgins, Texas and had a small Lake on it. Grand Dad tried everything to catch
them. He even tried shooting them with his rifle. No Way could he catch these
fish. He had it! One day he got his son Pat, Son in Law Cecil, two Grandsons
and myself. We dug a hole close to the middle of the lake all day long and we
where able to drain the lake. That was it, easy pickens, we caught those bass
along with some catfish and boy did we have a big fish fry, I remember a
picture we took that day with Buddy, we where standing there with a large
string of fish and bare naked.
Grand Dad and his catch
Model A Ford pickup
Driving on the ranch
Grand Dad taught
me how to drive his pickup on the ranch. He let me drive the pickup when we had
to open the gates out in the pasture. After I learned to drive the pickup he
let me loose in the pasture driving the pickup. Sometimes the pastures had
fairly deep holes in them, when I was driving, the pickup would jump rite out
of these holes. I remember Grand Dad
sitting next to me, he would be just raising hell, he would be saying “watch
out for that hole Jack”, “What are you doing”, “Look Out”, and then all of
sudden just start laughing at me.
Scrap Iron
A few years before
World War II broke out and before Pearl Harbor. Grand Dad and I started
collecting scrap iron from the ranch and boy you could not believe how much
unused farm and ranch equipment was on this ranch. The iron was taken apart,
loaded onto the pickup and we drove to Higgins, Texas to sell it. Eventually
they sold it to the Government and Government sold it to Japan. After Pearl
Harbor the Japanese most likely shoot it back at us. During the War when
everything was rationed like gas, tires, and almost all food, we really did not
have worry about food because our ranch supplied beef to Country.
Weather
Then there was the
weather. It was either to hot, to cold, raining, snowing or gusty blowing wind.
But on the ranch it did not matter the livestock had to be taken care of. Wintertime being the hardest weather on a
ranch that included cold chilling temperatures and harsh blowing blizzards, but
you had to feed and take care of the livestock. If the snow was too deep you used a V-Sled . This was a homemade sled shaped as a V, and
had a rope attached to it. You would drive a pickup with the V-Sled tied to the
back of it and make a path. The path is where you would place the feed for the
cattle. The rain was plenty full as well. I remember this old one gallon bucket
that Grand Dad hung on a post at the entrance to the ranch. It rained so hard
one time that had filled this bucket plum up and over flowing from the rain.
During summer if the wind stop blowing well that meant that the windmills no longer
could pump the water that the livestock drank. Grand Dad had a little John Deer
2 cylinder pump that would help us retrieve water from the wells however
sometimes you would spend the whole night pumping water.
After a rain storm on Jones and Jones Ranch
Dust Bowl
One afternoon
during the fall about 4 o’clock, Grand Dad, Mam Maw and myself had been down at
the Higgins Oasis and decided to come home the back way, which would take us
west of Higgins, Texas to the highway.
As we pulled up to a gate that lead to another dirt road we saw this big
awful looking black cloud that was rolling on the ground and reach all the way
up into the sky. We quickly got out of the pickup, Grand Dad put me in between
him and Mam Maw and we all grabbed a hold of this huge sagebrush and boy when
this dark cloud hit us it was winding dusty and black as night. All at once
Grand Dad decided that nothing was going to harm us ever. So we all hurried
back into the pickup and started driving and I can still remember the darkness
that surround us while we were driving. My Grand Dads pickup, which was a Model
A Ford pickup, had a gas tank in the front of the windshield. Well I could
hardly see that darn old gas cap that always shined in front of us as we drove.
When we got back to the ranch house that night I was mighty thirsty from the
dust, so I went to get a drink of water and when I turn the water facet on, the
water was all dark and muddy looking.
That was the beginning of the dust storms of the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Dust Storm
Holidays
Back in the 1930’s
not to many people had money. My Grand Dad however made a good living. Being
the Foreman of the ranch and making one hundred dollars a month now that was
good. Compared to most people who made around twenty or thirty dollars a month,
like the cowboys that worked the ranch from sun up and sun down. Well Grand Dad making that money most likely
made Holidays even more special around that ranch for all the grandkids. Christmas time came and Old Saint Knick
would visit us with handouts of toys and candy. Easter time, now I remember these times. The first Easter I can
remember well Mam Maw told me to go up to the Cake House and look for the
Easter Bunny, I went up there and when I got there, I look everywhere and all
of a sudden my eyes lit up, I found it, a big nest of colored eggs and dozen of
them even. Another Easter was at my Aunt Pete and Uncle Cecil’s house. They
actually lived in near the Higgins Oasis. There were eggs all over and a
special goose egg that had a prize in it that my sister Patsy found.
Kneeling is Earl Pratt (cousin), he was captured by the Japanese in World War II and survived the Bataan Death March, Jack, and Grand Dad holding a toy buggy
Playtime
The ranch house
was built on a slope. On one side of this slope, a small dry creek bed ran
through it with a large grove of cottonwood trees and on the other side a
watery swamp like area. Once in awhile we would play around the swamp and dig
for worms, but only sometimes because the water moccasin snakes nested in the
swamp. The cottonwood trees seem to
lean close to one another at angle so we could climb and jump on them, as if
nature made a natural playground for us. On the slope we would get into truck
tires and roll down in them. There was an old buggy frame that had wooden
wheels and we could ride the buggy down the slope. Some other places that we
had fun at where, the barn had a loft that was fun to play on, the cake house
which stored the feed for the cattle, next to the corrals a water tank stood
that we would swim in, and our favorite place to play in the winter was in the
attic of the ranch house where sometimes an extra cowboy could sleep.
Top row, Patsy, Jack, and Hazel
Bottom row, Buddy and Dorthy Sue
Cowboys and Indians
One day under the
stairs in the ranch house I found an old 30-30 Winchester rifle that was in
good shape. I remember riding horses bareback in the pastures with my rifle
pretending to be a Cowboy or Indian.
Homemade Slide
Usually down at
the barn a haystack was present for the livestock. Buddy and I would climb the
haystacks and slide down them. What fun that was until one day I slid into a
fresh large pile of cow manure. Mam Maw made me go jump in the horse tank fully
clothes.
Turmoil at the corral
Once Buddy and I
was down at the horse corrals by the barn. My Uncle Cecil, had a bunch of
Greyhound dogs. These Greyhounds had a poor little cat cornered, Buddy and I
ran and started pulling the dogs away from the cat before he was killed. Buddy
got a hold of the cat and lifted it over his head. Since I was taller I reached
for the cat and held him higher above the Greyhounds. I guess the cat thought I
was a Greyhound, and I was going to take him to cat heaven. Next thing I felt
was like a sharp pain going through my thumb, that cat would not let go of my
thumb with his teeth. So I put the cat between my legs and held firmly as I
pulled my thumb out of the cat’s mouth while Buddy kept the greyhounds away.
Horse Wagon
One morning down
by the barn I was riding in a wagon being pulled by two horses. For some reason
the cowboy driving the wagon stop by a pile of junk to look at something that
caught his eye. He got out of the wagon
hand me the reins and told me “you can hold on to these Jack”, all of a sudden
some rabbits jumped out of the pile of junk, the horses spooked and began to
ran, I quickly dropped one rein which caused the horses and wagon to circle
this junk pile, final the cowboy jumped on the horses and slowed them down to a
stand still.
Mascot
Every ranch has a
mascot. The majority of the horses where kept in a pasture behind the
barn. They had a mascot. It was goat.
That goat was always gazing with those horses. I think he thought he was a
horse.
Cowboys and their Horses
All Cowboys have
their favorite horses that they rode and worked on. My Grand Dad was a big man and his favorite horse was this big
black purebred called Blackey. Grand
Dad, a Cowboy and myself were out riding when we came to the pond southwest of
the ranch, where we had put that bunch of catfish in it. Grand Dad decided that
the horses should swim across the pond to the other side. Blackey got in the
pond and he just swam in circles around and around the other horses, I believe
he liked it.
My Dad, Kenneth Holt, he is about 20 years old in this
picture
Grand Dads Garden
Grand Dad Always
had a large garden that contained potatoes, green beans, lots of cucumbers and
a little spot where he grew horseradish and boy was that horseradish hot. He
always made me help him pick his vegetables and that was not my ideal of fun.
But going on a wagon pulled by horses with Mam Maw, her daughters Bill, and
Pete (my Mother and Aunt), to a field of corn, and loading the wagon up with
corn, now that was fun, however husking them was not. I remember Mam Maw and
her daughters could can anything including the corn we would gather.
Homemade brews
Well with plums
Mam Maw made jelly and Grand Dad made plum wine. Grand Dad would store the wine
in the basement and sometimes while fermenting, the wine would explode and boy
it would make a mess and smell. Grand Dad could also make a home brew that
would knock you on your butt. Grand Dad, George Donner and myself would go to
this old apple orchard south of Higgins, Texas, gather apples and make this
other brew they called Applejack with an old apple grinder that Grand Dad had.
Try it you might like it
Late fall Grand
Dad would butcher a cow or pig. To cure
the meat he would take the meat and hang it on a pole between two trees next to
the ranch house for the winter. The
cold weather was like a refrigerator for the meat as it hung out in the cold.
Let me tell you “Nothing was Wasted”. Mam Maw had a big black kettle with a
fire under it. She would melt all the skin and fat and make lard and soap out
of it. Mam Maw made scramble eggs with
brains for breakfast. Grand Dad mixed heart, tongue, liver, kidneys, brains,
pigs feet, and some intestines, this is what he called Hogs Head. As long as
you did not now what was in it, these meals tasted good, and again if you did
not know what was in them they would have tasted better.
Fresh butter
Mam Maw could cook
some great meals on the ranch. She
would take the cream off the top of the milk. Place the cream in a crock-pot
with a lid and a plunge on top. You would pump the plunger up and down which
produced fresh butter.
Here are some
of my favorite Meals:
- Fried corn bread patties with fresh
butter
- Fried corn bread patties in a bowl of
fresh milk
- Fresh green onions from the garden
dipped in a pile of salt
Homemade ice cream
Summer time meant
fresh homemade ice cream. If you ever had fresh homemade ice cream you would
know how special this is to a child. Mam Maw would prepare all the ingredients
and Grand Dad would buy the ice, place it in a gunny sack, and bust it up with
a hammer, then place the ice in the ice cream maker. The grand kids job was to
turn the handle of the ice cream maker. Boy it was worth it.
Peral, Beulah, Pat and Pete (Mam Maw, Mother, Uncle Pat and Aunt Pete)
Dryfus Ranch
Dryfus Ranch was
located Southwest of Higgins, Texas, close to the Higgins Oasis. My Uncle Cecil and family lived and ran the
ranch. Grand Dad would tell me these stories of cowboys that rode their cattle
herds through these lands near the Dryfus Ranch. I remember just about west of
the Dryfus Ranch, Grand Dad would show me these ruts and trails that where left
behind from the late 1800’s. His stories would come alive. This was a big trail that the ranchers in
Southern Texas had hired Cowboys to drive their herds of cattle up to Dodge
City, Kansas, to sell them, he explained to me.
The Fire
Near Dryfus Ranch
a big praire fire broke out. Grand Dad and Uncle Cecil went to fight the fire
somewhere. Grand Dad left his pickup. Since they where gone, I thought I could
take Grand Dads truck out for a spin. I got as far as this little gully from
the Dryfus Ranch, and saw this big fire from where I was, I got out of the
truck thinking a could fight this fire. The fire kept getting bigger and
hotter, and was coming up the gully pretty darn fast. I jumped back in the
pickup to get the hell out of there, but the pickup would not start, I panic
and kept trying the starter several times, finally it started, and I drove away
fast. I never told anybody about that and especially not Grand Dad.
Cattle on Jones and Jones Ranch
Buddy’s little black pony
Grand Dad had
purchased a little black pony with spots on his head for Buddy. That little pony was the meanest son of gun
pony in all of Texas. I can remember riding him and all of sudden he would turn
one way and another and next thing you know it, you would be flying off into
the dirt. Not like good old Blackey who enjoyed going riding with you. I always
wanted a pony until I rode Buddies pony.
Jack’s little black pig
I guess Grand Dad
wanted to make sure I had something, since Buddy had a pony. There was a little
wild baby black and white pig that Grand Dad captured down at Higgins Oasis.
The baby pig’s pregnant mother escaped from the Dryfus Ranch and became wild
and had a litter of piglets. Her and some of the litter were never caught. Where I lived there was no room for
Livestock, however my dad made a little pigpen out of an old dump truck bed. I
don’t remember too much about what happen to the pig, but I imagine that he end
up on the butcher block.
Grand Dads Vacation/Retirement
I was a teenager
at this point of my life and Grand Dad retired and moved to a place in Higgins,
Texas. During the summer we went to Gunnison, Colorado for the hay harvest
where Uncle Cecil was working at this time. Before leaving Grand Dad worked on
his pickup. He put up rails in the bed of the truck and then covered it with a
white canvas. We all thought he made a covered wagon for us grand kids. Grand
Dad, Mam Maw, Dorothy Sue, Patsy and myself headed up to Gunnison, Colorado.
Before we left Mam Maw cooked up some beans to take with us along the way. I remember her telling me that these beans
would not cook in Colorado because of the elevation. I guess she was rite,
because when we got into Colorado, boy how high these mountains were,
especially being from Texas or Oklahoma flat lands (Great Plains).
Fifteen Dollars richer
Uncle Cecil worked
for a guy name Mister Allen. That summer I worked on Mister Allen’s ranch,
raking hay and making a total of fifteen dollars for that summer. When he paid
me, he gave me fifteen silver dollars, and boy did I ever feel rich.
The Raft
One summer I went
back to Gunnison, Colorado with Grand Dad, Buddy and a friend of Grand Dad’s
named Dutch Brown and his son. It rain for days so we could not work for
awhile. We ended up staying in an old log cabin located near the Gunnison
River. One day Buddy, Dutch Browns son, and myself built a raft made of logs
tied with ropes. The raft began going
down this calm river until white waters broke up the raft. Well I was the only
one that could swim, fortunately Buddy got a hold of a tree limb, and the boy
and myself had hold of another log. We all made it to safe shores. We were all lucky.
Mam Maw’s Mother and her Grand Mother
Mam Maw’s mothers
last name was Mosley and her Grand Mothers name was Fraser. They both lived on
the same lot of land in Glaiser, Texas, which was about 15 miles from Higgins,
Texas. My Great Grandmother Mosley’s house was a little wooden home, but my
Great-Great Grandmother Fraser’s house was a Dug Out or Sod House. This
consisted of a hole about 4 feet in the ground, and a frame built into the
hole, the walls covered with dirt surrounding the hole with a roof. A mound of
dirt about three to five feet high was visible. It was warm in the winter and
cool in the summer. I remember going inside the dug out and seeing this big
upright piano with a bright scarf on it.
My little piece of Texas
I ended up inheriting
a portion of this lot where my Grand Mothers lived on. Many years later after I
was married and I was raising my boys, we were on our way to Arnett, Oklahoma,
to visit my step mother Martha and my dad Kenneth, we stop in Glaiser, Texas,
and found the lot, surrounded by a fence, one tree on it and the hole was still
there. My boys still remember to this day and they could not believe it when I
told them, that their Great-Great Grand Mother Mosley lived in a little wooden
home and their Great-Great-Great Grand Mother Fraser lived here on this land in
that hole in the ground.
The Ten dollar check
Some time in the
1970’s, I got a letter that contained a ten-dollar check from one of Mam Maw’s
bothers insisting to buy my portion of the lot. He then called me on the
telephone, he began to explain to me that he wanted to move and live on that
land. During his explanation to buy
this land, let me tell you that I was truly ready to give the land to him, that
changed when his wife got on the line and started to give me a hard time, well
I said to her just forgot and hung the phone up. Legally I guess, I still own a
little piece of Texas.
One Hell of Time
Then it happens,
we grow up, we leave, we have our own families, we die, however those fond
memories of the times of my childhood are still there. I can still feel all those fun times and
never will forgot what A Hell of a Ride
meant to me.
Jack Holt
Top row 2nd person Peral McCoy and all
of her brothers and sisters
Mam Maw with grand children, Jack, Patsy, Buddy and
Dorthy Sue
My Mom holding Dorthy Sue, my Dad Holding Patsy and
I am standing
Who is this good looking Marine (Jack Holt)
Jack and Elizabeth Holt’s wedding day
My boys Larry, Jack and Steve
One summer we went to Oklahoma to visit my Dad and
stepmother Martha.
Left to right -Jack, Larry with the jug, Steven and
their cousin Kenny and my dad
I could not
believe this article I found later in life. About 1982 when my youngest son
graduated from High School, I went down to my cabin in Walker, California. It
was raining and I was gathering some papers to start a fire. I notice this
Enquire that had this picture of three men on it. It turned out to be an article
on the Jones Brothers, Walter and Evy who owned that ranch.
Doctor Davis, He delivered Jack, Hazel, Patsy, and Dorthy Sue at the Ranch House in Higgins, Texas.
Jack and Patsy Holt
Left to right - Buddy, Davey Mack, Sonnyboy, Hazel, Dorthy Sue, Patsy, Beverly, Darlene (baby), and Jack. All grandchildren of Dave and Peral McCoy except Vicky who was not born yet.
Dorthy Sue, Buddy, Hazel, Jack, and Patsy.
Front of Anchor Ranch - big family portrait (1930’s)
Front of Anchor Ranch - Left to right - Jack (my oldest son), Carlene or Pamela Sue, Kenny (blue shirt), Janette (behind Kenny), Steven (my youngest son, on the steps), and Larry (my second oldest son). (1960’s)
Left to right - Dorthy Sue, Patsy, Beulah (my mom), Kenneth (my dad) and Jack (me).
Left to right - Beulah (my mom), Jenks Clark (my cousin) and a friend.
Kenneth (my dad), and his horse. In the background
is Dale, Kenneth’s brother.
Left to right - The two adults are Great Grandmother Mosley, Peral McCoy (Mam Maw), and children unknown.
Peral McCoy (Mam Maw)
Dave McCoy (Grand Dad) - 1901 Texas Pan Handle
Picture taken out by the edge of Higgins, Texas, in a pasture called Forbaus pasture. Notice all the dust flying around. This is where this Tornado started.
This used to be the Alamo Movie Theater.
Aerial view after the Tornado passed through Higgins, Texas. - April 9, 1947
Main Street Higgins, Texas after the Tornado, April 9, 1947
Higgins, Texas after the Tornado, April 9, 1947
Historical Facts
Oct. 29 1929 Stock Market Crash
On this day in Oct. 29 1929 the Stock Market crashed and the Great Depression began. Henceforth known as 'Black Tuesday', the day was the worst financial loss in the history of the United States. The culmination of a rapid decline in security prices traced back to overspeculation of the Market in 1924, 'Black Tuesday' effected every aspect of commerce in the country.
Information
gathered from http://www.history.com/
The
Dust Bowls of the 1930’s
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted about a decade. Its
primary area of impact was on the southern Plains. The northern Plains were not
so badly effected, but nonetheless, the drought, windblown dust and
agricultural decline were no strangers to the north. In fact the agricultural
devastation helped to lengthen the Depression whose effects were felt
worldwide. The movement of people on the Plains was also profound.
As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of
Wrath:
"And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas,
New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored
out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty
thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over
the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work
to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to
bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants
scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land."
Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought
caused the Dust Bowl. Plains grasslands had been deeply plowed and planted to
wheat. During the years when there was adequate rainfall, the land produced
bountiful crops. But as the droughts of the early 1930s deepened, the farmers kept
plowing and planting and nothing would grow. The ground cover that held the
soil in place was gone. The Plains winds whipped across the fields raising
billowing clouds of dust to the skys. The skys could darken for days, and even
the most well sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on furniture. In
some places the dust would drift like snow, covering farmsteads.
Information gathered from
http://www.usd.edu/anth/epa/dust.html
COWBOYS
Predecessors of the cowboy date back to colonial times. In western Massachusetts, in the uplands of the Carolinas, in Florida, and across the northern, red clay hills of Georgia and Alabama, cattle-raising societies existed long before the Great Plains had been cleared of buffalo. It was in Florida that much of the protocol involving branding evolved. Yet the cattle industry of the Southeast never attracted national attention. The herders never became heroes. They remained little known and were recognized for what they were - illiterate, unmounted trespassers on the public domain, drifting from grazing ground to grazing ground, trailing their beasts to markets at Ohio River towns or to Savannah or Jacksonville.
The cowboy of myth and reality had his beginnings in Texas. There cattle grew wild with few natural enemies; by the end of the Civil War there were an estimated 5 million of them. It was then that the cowboy entered his twenty-year golden age, 1866-1886, the era of the open range and the great cattle drives.
The incentive was the high price of beef up North, where Union armies had exhausted the supply and the urbanizing East provided a ready market. A steer worth four dollars in Texas was worth forty dollars in the North. The economics did not escape the Texans. Beginning in 1866 they began moving long lines of longhorns northward, with the primary destination being the railhead at Sedalia, Missouri. Indians and farmers who resented cattle trampling their crops and spreading the dreaded Texas fever protested their passage. Outlaws stole the cattle and were not averse to killing the men driving them.
Texans searched for a route with better grass and fewer Indians, farmers, and desperadoes. When railroads inched across the plains, new trails, among them the Chisholm, Western, and Loving, veered westward to intercept them. Cattle towns such as Abilene, Wichita, Ellsworth, Caldwell, and Dodge City enjoyed a brief heyday of prosperity and violence. Later trails headed on north to Ogallala, Cheyenne, Glendive, and Miles City. By 1886 the open-range cattle business had spread throughout the Great Plains and had merged with earlier cattle enterprises in Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California.
Information gathered from http://www.historychannel.com
Here
is the decade Timeline of the 1930’s
1930
The Nazi party places second in German elections,
but Adolf Hitler is kept from his seat in the Reichstag because he is an
Austrian citizen.
In South Africa, white
women can now vote, but blacks are still excluded under the regime that would
soon be called apartheid.
Pluto the ninth planet,
is discovered by astronomers
Virginia Woolf publishes
her essay A Room of One's Own on behalf of
women's rights.
President Herbert Hoover
signs the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, weakening the already failing global
economy.
In American art, Grant
Wood paints American Gothic.
Over 1,300 American
banks fail and unemployment exceeds 4 million as the Depression sinks lower.
In Jamaica, Rastafarians
proclaim Haile Selassie the messiah.
Uruguay wins the first
World Cup for soccer, defeating Argentina, 4-2.
1931
The world-famous Scottsboro affair begins
when nine black men are arrested on false charges at a train stop in Paint
Rock, Alabama.
Now that Nevada has a 6-week residency law
for divorce-seekers, it soon becomes a haven for divorce.
A 34-year-old Baptist preacher named Elijah
Poole joins the Nation of Islam and becomes Elijah Muhammad, leader of the
Black Muslims.
A 27-year-old Salvador Dali paints dripping
clocks into his surrealist classic, ``The Persistence of Memory.''
Chicago mobster Al Capone is convicted of
income tax evasion. In this blow to organized crime, Capone is sentenced to 11
years in jail and a $50,000 fine.
General Motors's Frigidaire replaces ammonia
with Freon 12 refrigerant gas, making refrigerators safe for households around
the industrialized world.
Unemployed Americans march on the White
House, demanding a national program of employment at a minimum wage. They are
turned away.
Japan occupies Manchuria, marking the rise of
Japanese militarism and drawing a hard-line stance from Secretary of State
Henry Stimson.
``The Star Spangled Banner,'' originally
written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, becomes the American national anthem by
order of Congress.
In China, the Chang (also known as the
Yangtze) River bursts a dam, causing fatal damage in the form of floods,
famine, and mass deaths.
1932
Mohandas
Gandhi begins a civil disobedience ``fast unto death'' to protest British
treatment of India's untouchable caste. After just 6 days, he wins
concessions.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pledging a ``New
Deal,'' is elected president for the first of his four terms.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial hits its
Depression-era low, 41.22.
A 23-year-old Harvard College dropout, Edwin
Herbert Land, invents Polaroid film.
Big things happen in the realm of the small.
Physicists Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split the atom for the
first time; James Chadwick discovers the sub-atomic neutron.
Prominent American intellectuals, including
Sherwood Anderson, Erskine Caldwell, and John Dos Passos, publicly endorse the
platform of the Communist party in the United States.
In the United States, the Great Depression
continues to take a heavy toll: in this year alone, 1,161 banks fail, nearly
20,000 business go bankrupt, and 21,000 people commit suicide.
In the film industry, Grand Hotel sports a
grand cast, starring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and John and Lionel
Barrymore.
One of the best female athletes of the
century, Babe Didrikson wins at the Los Angeles Olympics.
The son of noted aviator Charles Lindbergh is
kidnapped and dies in a world-famous affair.
1933
Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of
crisis-ridden Germany. By the end of the year, Hitler has proclaimed the Third
Reich, opened the first concentration camp at Dachau, eliminated all political
parties other than National Socialism, and consolidated his dictatorial rule.
Frequency modulations (FM) permit radio
reception without static. President Franklin Roosevelt begins to record his
``fireside chats'' for weekly radio broadcast.
A federal district court in New York decides,
after some debate, that James Joyce's Ulysses is suitable for publication in
the United States.
Prohibition ends in the United States,
causing caffeinated soft drink sales to nose-dive.
The federal government passes a flurry of
innovative social legislation, providing a New Deal for all Americans.
Spam is invented, ushering in a new era of
processed food and additives. TV dinners are discovered soon thereafter.
Fiorella La Guardia's election as New York
City mayor unseats the Tammany Hall coalition.
American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein
publishes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in which she writes that ``a
rose is a rose is a rose
1934
Nicaraguan General Antonio Somoza kills
guerrilla General Cesar Sandino in cold blood.
General Lazaro Cardenas, elected president of
Mexico, begins a program of agrarian reform, redistributing land and building
the power of organized labor.
The FCC is created to oversee U.S. telephone,
telegraph, and radio communications.
The National Labor Relations Board is created
to regulate collective bargaining between labor and management.
Noted Columbia University anthropologist Ruth
Benedict publishes Patterns of Culture.
Baseball's Negro National League pitcher
Leroy Robert ``Satchel'' Paige breaks Dizzy Dean's 30-game winning streak.
The Dust Bowl hits the United States West,
blowing 300 million tons of topsoil into the Atlantic, devastating farmland in
Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma.
Crime doesn't pay this year. Infamous bank
robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker die in a shower of police bullets near
Shreveport, Louisiana. The F.B.I. nabs John Dillinger, and Alcatraz becomes a
prison.
1935
The Nuremberg laws, enacted by Germany's Nazi
party, make anti-Semitism the law of the land.
Congress passes the National Labor Relations
Act (the Wagner Act), reasserting workers' right to collective bargaining.
Dissidents within the AFL create the CIO.
Irish Protestants in Belfast riot against
Catholics, provoking retaliation from Catholics in the Irish Free State.
The Social Security Act becomes law.
Artists in the newly created Works Progress
Administration are paid to decorate federal buildings.
America's
first public housing projects are established on New York's Lower East
Side.
Persia becomes Iran by order of Reza Shah
Pahlevi.
Italy invades Ethiopia. Hitler publicly
begins to re-arm Germany, creating the Luftwaffe in violation of the Versailles
Treaty. Both totalitarian regimes are beginning to test their strength.
1936
The Spanish Civil War begins, marking the
growing rift between the Fascist right and Marxist left in Europe. Hundreds of
Americans volunteer for ``Lincoln Brigades'' to help fight Franco's
fascism.
In India, statesman Jawaharlal Nehru is
elected president of the Indian National Congress.
Joseph Stalin begins a ``great purge'' to
liquidate his enemies. By 1939, over 8 million are dead and perhaps 10 million
imprisoned.
John Maynard Keynes makes what is, at the
moment, the rather counterintuitive declaration that economic depressions are
unnecessary in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Over
one-third of U.S. families have incomes below the poverty level.
In baseball, Joe DiMaggio joins the New York
Yankees, who win the World Series, 4-2, against the New York Giants.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is re-elected
president.
1937
Hundreds are killed in a massacre in Ponce,
Puerto Rico.
After staging a series of sit-down strikes,
the United Auto Workers win official recognition from General Motors, and
official harassment from Ford.
Troubled by the devastation which followed a
pro-Franco German attack on the Spanish city of Guernica, Pablo Picasso paints
his cubist masterpiece, Guernica.
One of the most influential architects of the
twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright completes Falling Water in Bear Rock,
Pennsylvania.
Amelia Earhart and her aircraft disappear
mysteriously over the Pacific.
Japan invades China. Italy withdraws from the
League of Nations and joins a Germany-Japan pact.
George Gershwin dies at age 38. Hollywood
releases his musical Shall We Dance, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
and featuring the song ``Let's Call The Whole Thing Off.''
The Memorial Day Massacre leaves ten steel
strikers dead in Chicago.
1938
Congress passes the Fair Labor Standards Act,
providing a minimum wage for the first time.
In its most violent display of anti-Semitism
yet, German Nazis attack Jewish people and property in Kristallnacht.
Woody Guthrie takes his one-man, pro-labor
folk music show on the road.
The Dies Committee (aka HUAC), charged with
stamping out Nazi activity in the United States, veers off to police Communist
activity instead.
In the radio broadcast War of the Worlds, Orson
Welles panics Americans who believe that Martians are actually invading
Earth.
The first real ``Xerox'' image is made in the
borough of Queens, New York.
Launching a military aggression that would
only escalate, Hitler annexes Austria. British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain and French leaders make the historic mistake of ``appeasing''
Germany at Munich.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is Walt
Disney's first full-length animated film.
1939
Hitler's Germany invades Poland, which falls in
a month. France and Great Britain declare war. Spain, exhausted from civil war,
remains neutral.
Ho Chi Minh creates the Viet Minh party to
oppose colonialism in the French colony ``Indochina.''
After the Daughters of the American
Revolution (DAR) refuse to let her hold a concert at Constitution Hall on
account of her race, Marian Anderson performs at the Lincoln Memorial. First
Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigns from the DAR in protest of its
discrimination.
Art collector Louis Caldor discovers the
paintings of Anna Mary Robertson. As ``Grandma Moses,'' she becomes America's
most popular folk artist.
President Roosevelt believes that a longer
Christmas shopping season will boost the economy and proclaims that
Thanksgiving will fall on the fourth Thursday of November. This shift is soon
passed into law.
With help from University of Chicago
physicist Arthur Compton, General Electric invents fluorescent Lighting, a new,
efficient form of illumination.
The Trans-Iranian Railroad, linking the Caspian
Sea with the Persian Gulf and built entirely with Iranian capital, is
completed.
Based on recent research, Albert Einstein
writes a letter to President Roosevelt regarding the possibility of using
uranium to initiate a nuclear chain reaction, the fundamental process behind
the atomic bomb.
Gone With the Wind, starring Clark Gable and
Vivien Leigh, premieres in Atlanta. Other Hollywood productions this year
include Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Louis Mayer's The Wizard of Oz.
Information
gathered from http://www.historychannel.com