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Oral history interview with Grace (Laney) Derrick

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TITLE	Oral history interview with Grace (Laney) Derrick
INTERVIEWEE	Derrick, Grace (Laney)
SUBJECT	Great Depression; World War Two; Montigue Stevens, Latter-Day Saints
Browse Topic	Agriculture Education Family and community Military and war
DESCRIPTION	Grace (Laney) Derrick talks about her Mormon ancestors and growing up in Luna, New Mexico.
INTERVIEWER	Luger, Jay; and Jones, Lenore
TYPE	Sound Text
Material Collection	Oral Histories of Luna, New Mexico
RIGHTS MANAGEMENT	Property of Alpine Public Library. For reproduction permissions, contact us at 928-339-4925.
DATE ORIGINAL	2010-10-26
Time Period	1880s (1880-1889) 1920s (1920-1929) 1930s (1930-1939) 1940s (1940-1949)
ORIGINAL FORMAT	Oral histories recorded on digital media with transcriptions.
DIGITAL IDENTIFIER	index.cpd
Date Digital	2010-2011
DIGITAL FORMAT	MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) DOC (Microsoft Word)
File Size	1057 Bytes
DIGITIZATION SPECIFICATIONS	Oral histories were recorded on an Olympus WS-6005 Digital Voice Recorder.
REPOSITORY	Alpine Public Library. PO Box 528, Alpine, AZ 85920. www.co.apache.AZ.us
Full Text	Grace (Laney) Derrick Luna, NM Interview: October 26, 2010 Grace Derrick is a matriarch of Luna, and is the great granddaughter of William and Harriet Laney who were original pioneers and homesteaders that came to Luna in 1883. Grace’s father was one year old when his parents came here. Both grandparents’ families came across the plains with the Mormons to settle in the West. They lived in Harrisburg, Utah for a while, then came to Luna to ranch and to carve out a new life in the wilderness. They lived in Luna until they died. Grace was born here in 1929 and has spent much of her time here. We asked Grace about her schooling, about her parents, about life here in Luna in the early days, as well as some of the stories and experiences she cares to share with us. In her own words: My parents, Albert and Edith Laney were cattle ranchers. They ran anywhere from hundreds of head down to thirty. We had a ranch seven miles north of Luna, where the Alvin Laney’s and Paterson’s live now. Later we lived in Luna proper so we children would be closer to the school. There were six of us children over time. I have two brothers and three sisters. Alvin Laney is my brother. Schools I started school down at our ranch. We had a little school and we boarded a teacher. There were two more families that lived there, and sometimes three. We had to have at least eight children in order to keep the teacher, and I went through the fourth grade there, then I went to school here in Luna. When we had to give up the school out there, (they called it the Dillon School), we had to move to town to go to school. I was in the fifth grade. So we went back on the ranch in the summer and moved back to town in the fall when school started. The house I am living in now is the one my folks built in 1940 so we could live here in the winter. I was eleven when we moved to this house, but before that we lived out at the ranch. There were other families there: Ace and Effie Reynolds lived there for awhile, Jennie Knowlton and her family, and John and Edna Snyder and others. I went to High School in Reserve, New Mexico (25 miles away). They had a school bus when I went. I have heard that the first children that were hauled over to the Reserve High School were loaded in the back of a stake bed truck. The road was so narrow that you couldn’t pass a car. A man named Webb Thompson was driving the truck and when they came to a real sharp curve they asked all the children to yell, so if anyone was coming and was going to meet them right on the curve, they could hear the truck coming. I have raised four children here, Karen is the youngest. My son has a house here, he stays here when he can, and another daughter lives in Show Low. So they are close. They went to school here in this building [the Community Center]. We used to have the school here. At one time there were 70 children that attended school in this building. There aren’t that many children that live in Luna now. Childhood Activities I had chores to do on the ranch and in town which included carrying in the wood, gathering eggs, feeding the pigs, straining the milk, and washing dishes, which were innumerable. The Frisco Hot Springs were down the creek two or three miles from the ranch. In the summer time when it was warm enough we’d go down every Saturday for a bath, and take a picnic lunch. That was always a good time. We could walk that far or we could ride. We did lots of things that were fun. We rode the milkin’ calves, which was a no-no, but we did it anyway. The first car that I remember we had was a 1928 Whippett. And then I remember the next car, it was a ’34 Chevrolet, and it had brakes. And my mother was going to try it out to see how it went, and she came to this little canyon. The old car had a little bit of brake and if you smashed it clear to the floor it would slow it down just a little. So in the Chevy she smashed the brake to the floor and we all flew to the front of the vehicle. We didn’t get out much to other areas like Alpine or Nutrioso. We went to church conference in St. Johns quite often. We lived out at the ranch so when we went to Luna we were going to town and we went to visit a lot of our cousins and uncles and aunts who lived here. There were friends I played with when we went to school. Self Sustaining We raised a garden. In fact we raised nearly everything we ate. We had cows so we had milk and cottage cheese, longhorn cheese and butter. My mother canned a lot of vegetables. We canned corn, green beans, and peas, everything we had in the garden. We had a cellar where we put the squash, it would keep all winter. We would bury the carrots in sand so they kept good all winter, same with the turnips and the cabbage. I remember my dad planting cabbage in rows and when they took them from the garden they pulled root and all, so the cabbage had a long root and only the root was sticking out when you got it buried. So then you could just pull up a cabbage. The house was up on the hill a little bit. I know my mother couldn’t get irrigation water up there and so we had to walk a ways to get to the garden. Probably a quarter of a mile, but what was a quarter mile in those days? We didn’t have any problems with the animals eating the garden that I can remember. There were no elk, the deer were quite plentiful but they did have hunting season. People did kill venison when they got hungry in the summer time. I can remember Daddy coming home with a little venison in a flour sack. They’d hang it out in the hot sun to let the outside of it just dry, just make a tough rind on that meat and then at night they would leave it out so it would cool as much as possible. Then the next day they’d cut it with a knife and dress it. They put it in the cellar. You know that would keep for weeks, if it lasted too long then my mother would can it. We did all kinds of things to keep us going. Everything was just fine. My mother made most of our clothes. I remember the first washing machine we had. My, that was a novelty. It was in the late ‘30s. It had a wringer and it had a gasoline engine. When you started the thing it was so loud you couldn’t talk to each other. We had to have an exhaust pipe to the outdoors. Some people had their washing machines outside because of that. We had ours in the kitchen, and we drained the water outside of course. Gee whiz it was nice, we loved it. Just got the clothes clean and you didn’t have to wear all the hide off your knuckles. Our clothes were made at home. Well once in awhile we had something bought. You couldn’t very well make denim pants for the boys, but you could make shirts. I had a few store bought dresses. I remember I had one when I graduated from the 8th grade. Yeah, everybody worked hard, and we may have to do it again soon. I didn’t help with the cattle because my mother thought that that was no ladies job. I did get to ride horses as much as I wanted to. My Parents My Dad was 20 years older than my mother which was quite unique. I was so surprised when I found that out because he was much more playful than she. He joined in all the games and made us stick horses and all kinds of things to play with. But then my mother had a lot of hard work to do. My Dad did hard work too, he plowed with a hand plow behind a team, all that kind of thing. Shucked and shelled corn. He had a callous between his thumb and finger and it cracked, and he couldn’t get it to heal no matter what he did. Then I remember one day he told my mother, I’ll help you with the wash today. So he rubbed the clothes on the board and he had his hands in the water for a good part of the day rubbing the clothes and rinsing. He helped all the way through the laundry. When he was finished, he had soaked his hand so much that he could put a needle through the callous. Then he took a needle and thread and sewed it up and it got well. My dad just loved his cows. It just amazed me how he knew his cows. Maybe he’d send me out to bring the calves in and he’d say on your way did you see old Dolly? I didn’t know if Dolly was there or not. She looked like all the rest of them to me. Oh, if she had a puckered horn, or she was a little more pumpkin colored, or red, or they had something quite distinct I knew. In fact we had an old pumpkin colored cow and that was her name, Pumpkin. Otherwise, they all looked alike. They all had a white face. At one time he had three or four hundred head. But that was before the Depression hit. About the time he died I don’t think he had over 50 head. Kept them right there in the meadow in front of his place where he could look at them. When he got to be 90 years old he couldn’t ride his horse. The Depression Luna during the “Great Depression” was just like it is now. Luna doesn’t feel the depression. It’s depressed all the time. Everybody is happy to be here and we’ve learned to do without. No, Luna doesn’t feel the depression. Isn’t that something? I do remember my folks telling me about when all the banks went broke, and my dad lost all the money he made that year selling his cows because he put it in the bank. So that was hard. He couldn’t pay his bills so he went bankrupt. I think that was 1933. That part was hard, but they were used to getting by and making nearly everything they had. They made quilts, sweaters, knitted socks. Course they had to get the material from somewhere. The economy during the depression from about 1928 until up in the ‘40s was tight. People here didn’t have any money. But they weren’t used to having a lot anyway. Luna usually didn’t notice the recessions we’ve had through the years. World War II World War II was such a terrible time. I had two brothers go to the Navy, and of course we were really concerned about them. But I believe they tell me that in all the wars Luna has participated in not one soul was lost. Not one man was killed. Isn’t that something? And my uncles went to World War I from here. In 1943 you couldn’t buy anything, not even a car. Chevrolet and Ford turned their factories over to making jeeps and that kind of stuff for the war. Unless you were a doctor or somebody who really needed a car badly you couldn’t even buy a second hand car, or tires for one. We had an old car but it didn’t run because we had no tires for it. Sugar was rationed. It was hard to can the fruit without sugar and it didn’t keep as well. Shortening and any kind of lard was rationed, and shoes too. But you know what, we felt like we had to win the war. We had no idea that the President just decided to have a war. It’s kind of what happened, really. People sacrificed to win the war. Yes they did. We had victory gardens. Course we had a garden all the time anyway, a victory garden didn’t make any difference to us, but the people in the city did plant. Why victory garden? Oh, it was just that if we did our part we would win. And then we had that silly daylight savings time, and I think it is dumb. I’m so tired of that, and they want to make it longer still. Now we have seven months of daylight savings. In the war time they did it so you could work in your garden, gives you extra daylight hours in the evening. Local Stories [A lot of tales about Montigue Stevens interest the locals. See Interview with Alex Paterson for more details.] When Montigue Stevens came to this country from England he bought some land and he wanted some cows, so he agreed to buy cattle from all the ranchers around. If they had cattle they wanted to sell to him, they were to bring them to him. So he asked my dad to help him count the cattle. There weren’t too many fences of any kind at that time. They were driving these cattle in and they were counting them, and finally my dad said he noticed the same cows were coming around again. All his life if he’d ever seen a cow he knew that cow again. It didn’t matter what kind of cow it was, if it was just a calf he’d know it when it was grown. But Montigue Stevens didn’t know and I suspect he bought several cattle twice. That’s all of the story as far as I know. The Outlaws and the Drought There is another story that’s quite interesting. Along about that same time (I think my Dad said around the turn of the century) the people had settled in here and there were several families. Pretty good little congregation and they held dances and parties and enjoyed it very much. But this was a kind of country that was good for the outlaws to hang out in as well. So every time they had a dance or a party some of these ruffians would show up and they would be drunk, they would shoot things up a little, really annoying the people here. Every time they had a church meeting, someone saying the prayer would ask the Lord to send the unruly element away. So in a few years they had a really bad drought. Some of the people’s wells went dry, and there was no water in the Frisco River. My Dad said that the outlaws and ruffians that were giving them such a bad time left. They didn’t have any water either. So he said you want to be careful what you pray for. Our friend Grace passed away this January, 2011 about 3 months after this interview.
Sort Order	04030

TITLE	Transcrilpt of oral history interview with Grace (Laney) Derrick
INTERVIEWEE	Derrick, Grace (Laney)
TYPE	Text
Material Collection	Oral Histories of Luna, New Mexico
RIGHTS MANAGEMENT	Property of Alpine Public Library. For reproduction permissions, contact us at 928-339-4925.
ORIGINAL FORMAT	Oral histories recorded on digital media with transcriptions.
DIGITAL IDENTIFIER	Grace (Laney) Derrick.doc
Date Digital	2010-2011
DIGITAL FORMAT	DOC (Microsoft Word)
File Size	1733632 Bytes
DIGITIZATION SPECIFICATIONS	Oral histories were recorded on an Olympus WS-6005 Digital Voice Recorder.
REPOSITORY	Alpine Public Library. PO Box 528, Alpine, AZ 85920. www.co.apache.AZ.us

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