Interview with
Leland Nikolaus
June 13, 2007
By Joyce McBride
Show Low Historical Museum
Joyce McBride: Good afternoon. This is Joyce McBride of the Show Low Museum and today is June 13, 2007. I am interviewing Leland Nikolaus. Good morning, good afternoon Leland. How are you doing?
Leland Nikolaus: I’m doing fine.
JM: Good! Well, today we’re going to talk about your memories of your lifetime and your perspective of Show Low, Arizona, and how you perceived it to be. So whatever you want to talk about we’ll do that. I’m going to get a little closer to you. So, Leland, you’re not a first generation of Show Low are you.
LN: I’d be a third generation.
JM: Third generation?
LN: Yes
JM: So that means your great grandparents came here?
LN: Yes, great grandfather. He came from Germany.
JM: Okay, and what was his name?
LN: Franz Ludwig Nikolaus
JM: Okay, and do you know when he came?
LN: No.
JM: You don’t know when he came.
LN: He was born in 1858, was when he was born. He came over here on a boat on a stowaway.
JM: As a stowaway, how interesting! So he came here by himself?
LN: Yes, well no, no.
JM: From Germany?
LN: Yes, Badenburg Germany. He was born in ’58 and in what year he came, I don’t know. I have no idea. But he landed in Virginia and worked his way across. The first record we’ve got of him is, I don’t know what year it was or anything, but he come down there to Holbrook and was up on the Butte there by, uh what’s that little town this side of uh?
JM: This side of Holbrook? Woodruff?
LN: Yeah, Woodruff, Woodruff. And he sat up there on that knoll for a while watching the Owens. Clark Owens, that helped buy this country? And he went down there finally and they hired them. He worked for the Owens for a year, and then he got a job taking the mail from Holbrook to Fort Apache. And that’s what he done.
JM: A mail carrier
LN: Yes, a mail carrier. And that’s about all I know of him.
JM: Was he single then, or had he?
LN: Yes, he was single.
JM: He was single, and so he met somebody here?
LN: He met a Laxton, Mary Laxton, and married her. How old he was, he had three children, four children. They had four children, my dad and one girl, Louie, and Frank and Henry – he had the four boys.
JM: And what was your dad’s name?
LN: Joseph William
JM: Joseph William.
LN: We called him Bill.
JM: So did he live in Woodruff when he met and married her? Or
LN: No, I don’t know whether he was in Taylor or Show Low. I don’t know which. I don’t know which one it was.
JM: Okay, so was her family from this area too? Do you know if they obvious migrated down here, but.
LN: Yeah
JM: But are they still here? What was her last name?
LN: Laxton, she was a Laxton.
JM: A Laxton?
LN: Yeah
JM: Okay, do you know his name, the father’s name?
LN: Frank
JM: Frank? Okay, so they got married, and then, when did they move to Show Low?
LN: I don’t know. They lived in Show Low, right here. Just south of us here. Right here where the skating rink is? That’s where their home was, right there where the skating rink is for the City? That’s where their home was.
JM: I didn’t know we had a skating rink.
LN: Yeah, it’s right back here.
JM: Oh, behind here?
LN: Yeah
JM: Okay, so is this the same property?
LN: This is the same property.
JM: Okay, so you had what, 160 acres?
LN: One hundred sixty acres, fronts from here to Center Street.
JM: Wow!
LN: Through there, all of this.
JM: All of McNeil?
LN: All McNeil, yeah
JM: Did it go as far as Owens, to the street up here, Owens?
LN: Yes, it went clear back to Center Street.
JM: From Center to . . .
LN: Down back.
JM: How far south did it go?
LN: Well, about maybe a half mile from here.
JM: Wow
LN: You know where the road is that goes by the big shopping center there.
JM: Yeah
LN: That’s Center Street and we went back there, and when that little shop is there? With vegetables and all, the garden shop?
JM: The Greenhouse?
LN: The Greenhouse. It went back in there where there was a sawmill there in the wash. Reidhead Sawmill.
JM: So that was before the Reidheads had that property?
LN: Yeah, that was way before.
JM: How far south did it go? Did it go to Whipple? To what’s Whipple now, Whipple Road?
LN: No, to Owens Road.
JM: Oh, to Owens Road, okay, and then down.
LN: Yeah, down there and then back to Whipple.
JM: Okay
LN: Or it went down there, and that piece of land going south in there is what we used to call the Flat, so it went up there and back, and then on out as far as the Greenhouse and past that.
JM: Quite a bit of land
LN: One hundred and sixty acres. And we kept it all for years. Dad sold that property to the Reidheads for a sawmill. Then when he got older he divided it up to the kids.
JM: Did you farm on it?
LN: Yeah
JM: Farmland, what did you grow on it?
LN: We grew barley, beans, corn, oats. Yep
JM: It’s hard to imagine.
LN: Dry land
JM: Dry land, that’s right!
LN: No irrigation.
JM: There’s no irrigation ditch there.
LN: Yeah, but not on back. For this lot there’s irrigation, for this lot here. There’s above the ditch. The ditch comes right down through my lot here and across from here down on the bench, clear down to the other end down there. Down from here, it goes from here to Whipples there, almost to Show Low Creek, the pipeline.
JM: So, um
LN: We used to clean the ditch to work out our assessments for digging ditch with a shovel? We, when we were just kids 15 up to 18 years old, we cleaned this ditch with a shovel.
JM: You kept it clean that way, because that was your water. I mean that was drinking water as well as . . .
LN: No, we had wells.
JM: Oh, you had wells. Okay.
LN: We had a well right back of the house here, down here in the wash, 10-½ foot deep.
JM: Ten and a half? That’s not real deep is it?
LN: And they packed the water from here up to the old four-room schoolhouse.
JM: Oh, packed it!
LN: You packed it in buckets.
JM: So that would be up by, that land that we’re talking about includes the Junior High School.
LN: Yep
JM: Did that include the old school that was across the street?
LN: No, no just where the Junior High is now? That was the borderline. This street here (McNeil) was the borderline of our property.
JM: Okay. But still that, right down here on the corner of 9th and Huning, was the main street, wasn’t it? That was the main street, Huning?
LN: Yeah, the one that comes up around, you know.
JM: That makes a jog there by the Owens house?
LN: Yeah there at the Owens, and down to the Library, then turned left and went down to the Ellsworths and then turned right. That was the Ellsworths property, the old Ab Ellsworth property.
JM: That made that jog there.
LN: Uh hum
JM: I see. I wondered why it was there. I saw it on an old map and thought, well that’s kind of . . .
LN: And then it went up to the corner where the first light there at the Sonic?
JM: Yes
LN: It turned there and then that road would go around there through the valley and out to the Country Club?
JM: And that was the old freight road.
LN: Yeah, the old. . . that was the one we went to school on, when we went to high school in Snowflake at the academy there.
JM: Yes, when, where, so your father, what was it, Joseph, you said?
LN: Joseph William, they called him Bill.
JM: Bill? Okay, so Bill was born here in Show Low?
LN: Yes, He was born up there in the house where Reidhead’s old second-hand store is? He was born right there. And the house here where the skating rink is, that was their home. That’s where they were raised right there.
JM: Oh, I see. And so you said he had how many brothers and he had one sister?
LN: One sister and two brothers.
JM: Two brothers, and are any of their family still here?
LN: No, they’re gone.
JM: They’re gone.
LN: I’m the only one left.
JM: The only one left! Wow!
LN: Of that generation
JM: Well you’re the only, from what was in the paper, you’re the oldest
LN: Man left in Show Low that was born here.
JM: That’s amazing!
LN: I’m 90 years old.
JM: Ninety years old, wow.
LN: I was born November 26, 1916. That’s before the cars come. That was before cars. I was about 8, 9, 10 years old before I saw a car.
JM: Wow, well how would they get here, for one thing!
LN: On horses and buggies. I hauled, when I secured a ride, I’d ride with my dad hauling mail from here to Clay Springs. We’d have, you know, a span of mules and a buckboard. To haul the mail from here to Clay Springs we’d leave 7:00 in the morning and get back about 5:00 or 6:00 at night.
JM: All day
LN: All day long
JM: You did that what six days a week?
LN: No, it was only about three or four days.
JM: Three or four days. So your father met your mother here?
LN: Yes
JM: And what was her maiden name?
LN: Mills
JM: Mills! Oh, she was a Mills!
LN: Mills, She was a Mills.
JM: What was her first name?
LN: Maggie
JM: Maggie Mills
LN: Maggie Mills, she lived right over here.
JM: Okay, I was thinking that family was close here.
LN: This property that’s across the street belonged to Uncle Leif Mills. I don’t know where he got it from, but that’s it there.
JM: So, do you know when they got married, what year?
LN: It’d be in about 1915, I imagine, or 14, about ‘14 I guess.
JM: About during, when World War I was about to start?
LN: Yeah, he was World War I.
JM: Was he in the war?
LN: No, he got to Holbrook and the war was ended.
JM: Oh! Good! What a relief!
LN: Uh hum
JM: So, but he was already married by that time. You said that you were born in 1916. So, are you the oldest?
LN: Yes
JM: And how many children did they have?
LN: They had five.
JM: So, what were their names?
LN: There was Fay. I was the oldest. And then there was my brother Lamar, then Fay, then my brother Garth, then my sister Wanda. She was the youngest. Garth and Wanda got all the music talent.
JM: Oh! Yes, I think I heard that, that Garth was a very good musician.
LN: Yeah, and our sister Wanda was just as bad, just as good, or better. Just as good, not any better. The rest of us, my dad was a violinist. Man he could play that violin.
JM: Wow. Did he play for the dances that were here?
LN: Yeah
JM: Did you play anything?
LN: No. I tried but didn’t, didn’t make it. (Laughs) I tried to play the clarinet, but I didn’t make it.
JM: I know that you had, the school had, they say, four rooms and one of them was a music room where people would . . . it seemed like there was a big emphasis on playing music in those days.
LN: That’s when I started during that.
JM: But you didn’t carry it on though.
LN: No. When I got through high school I was through.
JM: That was it.
LN: The teacher said there were musicians and then there were people that could play. I was the one that could play, but I was no musician. (Laughs)
JM: Garth got it all! And your brother Lamar, his claim to fame was he was the first mayor in town.
LN: Mayor in town, yeah, and then he was in the grocery business.
JM: Yes, Nick’s Market
LN: Nick’s Market. Yeah we had that. I learned how to butcher. I got almost as good as he was, butchering. I worked with him. And then we started a Variety store, department store, and I ran it and he ran the grocery part. So that’s uh, we done that for years.
JM: Before we get into that, because I want to spend some time when you’re talking about that. I want to ask you a little more things about your family. So you were born in 1916 and then so you met and married too, right?
LN: Yeah
JM: So you married a local girl too?
LN: Yeah, she was originally from Missouri. Then she come through into Colorado and then into New Mexico and into Arizona. Her brothers were loggers. Her dad was killed when she was two years old. I mean he drowned.
JM: Oh! What was his name?
LN: Oh, I can’t remember his name.
JM: His last name?
LN: Ramsey
JM: Ramsey, okay. So was the drowning an accident?
LN: Stone, Stone Ramsey was his name
JM: Stone Ramsey, was that part of the, because he was working as a logger that he was in the water?
LN: No he was getting a mowing machine, a horse-drawn mowing machine. He was coming across the river.
JM: The Little Colorado?
LN: No, it was one back in Missouri.
JM: Oh back, oh, he didn’t make it here. Oh, I see
LN: No, No. She left. She came out here when she was nine years old, my wife.
JM: And what was her name again?
LN: Ramsey
JM: Her first name
LN: Betty
JM: Betty, Betty Ramsey
LN: Betty Ramsey
JM: And so when did you meet her? How old were you?
LN: I was 27, 26, 27. I met her when I came home from World War II.
JM: Okay, that was my next question. Were you in World War II?
LN: Yeah, I was on the European side.
JM: Oh, really? Did you go back to Germany where your grandfather came from?
LN: No, I never got there. I was farther on the east end, the east side of Germany, down by Holland, across France. Africa, Italy, France and Germany. So then I met her when she was working in the grocery store, down at Snowflake, at Smith’s Grocery Store. That was when I first met her, then met her at the dances and got to dancing with her.
JM: Oh yeah, those dances were quite the thing.
LN: That was the thing for that day, you know.
JM: That’s really how you met people if you didn’t go to school with them. It seems like everybody met at the Snowflake High School.
LN: The high school! Yeah! (laughs)
JM: But not you!
LN: No, not me! I courted her for a year and then married her October 7th in ’47.
JM: And so then you lived here your whole life?
LN: Yes, no, my first home was that one up here at the Day School?
JM: Okay
LN: Yeah, that was my sister’s home, the Day School, and mine was the next one. That was my first home. October the 7th, in ’47 we got married.
JM: And how many kids did you have?
LN: Five
JM: Five. Did I ask you that before?
LN: Yeah, I got five. I’ve got three girls and two boys.
JM: Okay (Laughing) and do any of them live here?
LN: No, I’ve got my oldest daughter lives in Snowflake. She’s a nurse at the clinic. And I’ve got a son, the next one that lives in Taylor. He’s a mechanic, heavy equipment and things. And then my other girl, she lives in Vernon and then one boy in Aura, St. George, Utah. Two boys, and the other girl lives in Gilbert, Arizona.
JM: Well, they’re close then, except for the one in Utah. That’s not bad! That’s really good! You get to see them a lot.
LN: I get to see them once in awhile.
JM: Yes, Father’s Day coming up.
LN: Yeah (laughs)
JM: Okay, we’ve got the family down. So you were here. You remember the Great Depression here.
LN: Yes, Mam, I sure do.
JM: What was it like? What was it like here?
LN: Well, we had the farms and we bottled our stuff, you know, so as far as something to eat, we had it, but we had no money. And it was a tough time.
JM: Let’s see, the only store here was the A.C.M.I., right? At that time?
LN: Yeah, Woolford’s. Well, and then Ellsworths’. Up there where the carpet shop is on the corner right up Huning on the corner on the left? That was a store, and then down where . . .
JM: So across the street. That was like a hotel, wasn’t there a hotel there?
LN: Yeah, a hotel on the other side.
JM: I see, okay
LN: The Penrods.
JM: Yes
LN: The Penrods. But that big one, down, you know where the UPS is? That was the . . .
JM: That was the A.C.M.I.
LN: Yeah, the A.C.M.I. That was one of the first stores that I know of.
JM: Was Woolford running that then?
LN: Yeah, Woolfords, Yes, George Woolford.
JM: So, tough times, no money.
LN: No money. There was just no money to buy shoes or nothing with, you know. You’d go barefooted all summer and have a pair of shoes to go to church and school.
JM: You were like a teenage then?
LN: Yeah, yeah I was a teenager.
JM: Some families had their fathers had to leave to work.
LN: Yeah, my dad had to leave most of the time. He was a logger, a log cutter.
JM: So where did he go?
LN: He went to McNary and Mahoan Rye Fish.
JM: Where?
LN: Mahoan Rye Fish in Lakeside.
JM: Oh, okay
LN: And I helped him cut logs when I was a young guy in the teens. And then I cut logs for Whiteriver when I was 20, 21. I cut a million feet.
JM: Was that when you worked with Ray Butler?
LN: Yeah
JM: At Fort Apache Timber Company?
LN: Yeah
JM: You were in your teens then?
LN: Yeah, No, I was about 20, 21. I cut a million feet there
JM: A million feet! That’s a lot of timber!
LN: That’s in logs
JM: That is a lot. It must have been, the forest must have been thicker then.
LN: Oh yeah, it’s all been cut out. All the old stumps up on the old Ellsworth Hill. There, that’s what I help cut when I was 17, 18, about 18 I guess. That was about 800,000 or 900,000 feet of logs there and on the Reservation.
JM: So you did that most of your early years then.
LN: Yeah, I helped dry-land farm for them you know, and
JM: You helped your father?
LN: Yeah, and then I helped Dad cut logs.
JM: So you were with him a lot.
LN: Yeah, with him a lot, yep, I had a good rapport with him.
JM: that’s good
LN: Yeah, we had, we did all that where the school is now, you know. And where all that 160 acres is out there where the church is, that’s where my brother and I used to raise black-eyed peas to sell to McNary.
JM: Oh down here at this? Oh that Baptist church? Black-eyed peas, huh?
LN: Yep, yeah. We used to raise black-eyed peas there and sell to people in. My brother worked up there and we’d load him up every morning. Brother Lamar, that’s where he started as a butcher up there at McNary.
JM: Oh, okay. I wonder how you, you know, how you start things. What makes you begin one day to start to do something. That was how he got a job working at the McNary?
LN: Yeah
JM: You were probably hunters before that, right? Did you hunt a lot before then?
LN: No, I didn’t.
JM: No?
LN: No, I never did hunt. I’ve never killed a deer or a turkey or an elk, but I’ve cut up hundreds of them.
JM: You know how to do it.
LN: I’ve cut up 100 of them.
JM: Did you grow chickens and things here?
LN: Yeah, oh yeah, chickens and rabbits/
JM: Did you have cattle?
LN: No. We did have, but my dad sold them when I was about 15, 16 years old. He sold out to the Stocks.
JM: Probably when the Depression was happening.
LN: He had a permit. I think he had a permit for 50 or something like that. I can remember the day Orson Hansen came and took them and drove them up off the hill here. It was kind of a sad day.
JM: Yeah, an end of an era.
LN: Yeah, it was the end of an era.
JM: Did you have horses too?
LN: Yeah, we had horses.
JM: You would have to for him to, how long did he continue being the mail carrier?
LN: He must have had it for about three or four years. He finally bought a Ford Model T, ’26, and then he sold his mules a couple years after that. I used to ride with him on the old buckboard, and then with him in the old Model T.
JM: Signs of the times. Oh, Goodness. When was it that you sold that land to Reidhead for the sawmill?
LN: It must have been in uh, around the. He sold it before I come home from the Army.
JM: Okay, during World War II then?
LN: Yeah, just about a year before I got here.
JM: So about ’45 then?
LN: Yeah, about ’45 something like that, ’45 or ’46.
JM: Do you know if Highway 60 was it through here yet? About that time?
LN: No, there was no. If you went to Phoenix you had to go through Whiteriver around that, and come out down at Globe. I was 17 years old before I got to go to Phoenix. I went down with a guy with a load of lumber.
JM: So, that was part of that logging time, huh?
LN: Yeah
JM: How long did it take you to get there?
LN: Oh man, it took us about, let’s see we left at daylight and it was afternoon before we got there.
JM: To Phoenix, wow! That’s pretty good!
LN: Around 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon.
JM: Amazing, a full day!
LN: Some of the corners, they’d have to back up, go around and back up to get around them corners with a truckload of lumber. That’s how narrow the roads were.
JM: In the logging trucks?
LN: Yeah, lumber trucks
JM: And those are long anyway, so it must have been quite hairy.
LN: Old Ford trucks, flatbeds.
JM: Okay, so you went into the War, and when you came out, was that when you, or did you continue logging or did you?
LN: No, when I first come home I worked cement. I finished cement, you know, in houses for floors.
JM: Were there a lot of houses being built at that time?
LN: No, no, just when the first airport deal there, I helped pour the floor for that, for the airport.
JM: Did you work for somebody?
LN: Yeah, I worked for Jim McNeil.
JM: Okay
LN: Jim McNeil, I worked for him. And then my brother and I was on our own. There were a lot of cabins and stuff up at Lakeside? We poured the floors for them. And he started in the grocery business.
JM: Oh, that was Lamar you were with?
LN: Uh hum, and then in ’47 I started with him.
JM: When you got married?
LN: Yeah
JM: So you went into the grocery store business.
LN: You know where Pat’s Place is?
JM: Yeah
LN: We started in, rented from Maxwells across the street where the bank is?
JM: Okay, where the. . . okay
LN: Frontier Bank is? (now National Bank of Arizona) Then over there where Pat’s is, we built that ourselves, Lamar and I. That’s where we started.
JM: And where did you get your food from?
LN: We first got our, when we opened up we got $900 worth from Babbits in Holbrook, and $800 worth of groceries from Schusters, and we borrowed $50 from our uncle for the change. (Laughs) so that’s how we started out.
JM: And you got to be the butcher, huh?
LN: And learned how to be a butcher from him.
JM: Yeah, he taught you that.
LN: And then we were in there, built a store across the street where the back is there? We built a big building there. We started a department store there, a variety store. And then it burned down on me.
JM: Uh oh! How long did you have it?
LN: Oh, about 6 years.
JM: Oh, what did you name it?
LN: Nick’s Variety Store, Nick’s Department and Variety Store.
JM: Okay, so there was a Nick’s on either side of the street. That street wasn’t that wide then.
LN: No, no, and then we went and built the one down on the corner where all the automobiles are now? We built a big grocery store there.
JM: Oh, okay. Down here on the corner of 260 and okay, by the bank down there? Okay.
LN: Yeah, across from the bank.
JM: And what was the name of that place.
LN: Nick’s Market
JM: Another Nick’s Market
LN: Yeah, we kept the same name. It was a big, nice big store and we done well until a chain came in. From Friday night to Monday morning we were through. It was that quick.
JM: Wow
LN: Yep, we hung on for a little bit to try to get rid of our stuff, you know.
JM: What year was that?
LN: I forget what year it is.
JM: I remember coming here and going to Nick’s Market in the ‘50s and so it must have been later. I don’t remember when Safeway came here. I’m from Globe.
LN: I think it was round about the ’50s, in the ‘50s, about ’52 or ’53, in there.
JM: That’s about when that Highway came in.
LN: Yeah, when the highway came in.
JM: That was your demise, because it brought other stores up here.
LN: Well, we had Maxwell’s and Caldwell. Caldwells was in Lakeside, but there were two stores here, Maxwell’s and us, and we were just across the street from each other.
JM: Maxwell’s had a grocery store too?
LN: Yeah, Maury, one of the boys, Artie’s boy. But he finally went out of business. And I went out of business in ‘81.
JM: Oh, in ‘81
LN: It got where there was the department store business and I don’t know, it just got where. And all the, I had a nice fabric store, a real good one, better than you can find now. Then they started buying from Japan and China and everything, and clothes got cheaper than cloth. And so I went out of business. That’s the only reason. I thought as long as there were women that they wouldn’t quit selling.
JM: Cheaper to buy clothes than it is to make them. And you can’t get good fabric anymore either.
LN: No a lot of the fabric I see in the stores is the same kind of fabric I sold. It’s just that old. Yeah, the fabric business, the warehouses and like that, would have a place for fabric four times as big as this house. It got down to where this room would be big enough. And old Ledbetter’s, the biggest one I bought from, served four hundred and some odd customers, within 4 months, was down to 3 or 4. It just went down just that fast. Zippers, buttons, all that kind stuff just quit. You couldn’t even give it away, so a lot of it just went to the dump.
