So you got married right out of high school?
PE: Yes, about, well we graduated in May and we got married the 26th of July. I went to work on a road job in between Flagstaff out toward Mormon Lake. They was rebuilding that road. And so I bought one of these big tents like the Army used to have and I built a floor and siding, put that tent up, and I called her and told her to come on! My dad brought her in a pickup and he brought a bed and a little bit of woodstove. And we lived in that tent, because I was working right there. I was oiling on a shovel. This big shovel load of trucks, but I was oiling.
All my life I lived where there was plenty of beef, plenty of pigs, plenty of deer, plenty of wild turkeys, plenty of ducks, and we always had plenty. (Laughs) She wasn’t real up to date on cooking, but she knew how to open them tin cans! So we’d have a tin can of corn and beets and string beans. But I never said a word. I was tickled to have her, you know.
The boss, or the fellow that was the operator on the shovel, he had a trailer house and him and his wife lived in it. And they were going into Flagstaff on a weekend to buy groceries and asked us if we’d like to go. I said, “You bet!”
So we went to Flagstaff. We got into the store. I edged her over to the meat counter. I said, “Would it be all right if we buy a little of this?” So we got some steak and that.
Okay, that was on a Sunday because we was working 6 days a week. Monday, come noon the operator left the shovel and went to his trailer for lunch. His shovel would be killed, no motor running because there was places I had to oil and grease while it was dead. Then I had to have that middle motor started to start the big engine and have that going when he come back from lunch. And then I could go to lunch. But I’m going to lunch today because I’ve got steak.
When I got to our tent, she was sitting out by a big pine tree crying. “What’s the matter, Honey?”
“Well, I was cooking that steak on that stove, and it started smoking. And it run me out of the tent and I forgot to take the steak off the stove. When I got back in, the steak was burned up.”
But I said, “That’s all right. That’s okay. Lets have another can of corn.” (Laughs)
So the next Sunday, all the bunch of these guys that worked there down at Mormon Lake where the resort and stuff is at Mormon Lake? They had horses there to rent. All these guys wanted to go ride horses, so her and I went. And she had never rode horses. This feller that owned the horses, he was trying to put everybody, because some of these guys had kids and wives and all that. He’d used about every horse he had, but he said, “I believe that you’re the only one the bunch that sabes these horses.” And he said, “I’ve got a big Thoroughbred there that come off the racetrack, but he was in a wreck and he ain’t right up here. You can’t run him. If you do, he’ll just go nutty, you know.” But he said, “I believe you can handle him.”
So he put her on a pretty dandy little horse. I didn’t know but these guys, when they wasn’t renting out these horses they’d go down there and run races, you know. When she started out the gate, I knew the minute that that horse was going to leave there. I hollered, I said, “Pull him up!” But away he went!
JM: Oh! First time on a horse! Oh!
PE: I thought, oh Dear! Just so she don’t fall off! But I stepped up on this ol’ racehorse that I ain’t supposed to run, but down the road we went. When I caught up with her I reached over and got the bits, and here we are just like this. I pulled him in and she stayed on! But one of the other guys got up. One of them traded horses with her and gave her a more gentle horse. So we got by that deal.
Then it wasn’t long after that, I took her up on the mountain. We were going up on Mount Ord and it had been raining all night. We had a camp up there at Ditch Camp, and we went left out of there the next morning, our youngest boy Flynn was there with us. He was just a tyke. She started up. She went up kind of a bank like that, and this horse slid on that mud and fell over on her. Her first horse was a runaway and the next one fell with her. She is not a bad rider and she gets by with horses, but for no more than she rode, she’s a good rider.
We had a little, young horse here. How many kids did you have? You had five kids on that horse, you and Debbie? Here they come on this little young horse with five kids on it. I thought, “Oh golly.”
BE: That was a good horse.
PE: Got by so, it’s all right.
JM: How many kids did you have?
PE: Okay, we had three sons and our middle son was in the 2nd grade. He come home from school and he told his mother, he said “I’ve got a headache.” So she said, “You go in there and lay down.” So he did.
Was it a week later when he come the next time?
BE: Yes
PE: So we took him to the doctor and the doctor, and then did he send us to St. Johns? Or did we go to?
BE: He sent us to St. Johns.
PE: And this doctor in St. Johns told us, he said, “I have an appointment for that boy in Phoenix tomorrow. You be there with him.”
So we took him to Phoenix and through these professional doctors they found that he had a malignant brain tumor. They put him in the hospital and they told us, they said, “We can burn him with x-ray and it may prolong his life 30 to 60 days, but it is going to be very painful to him. So they operated and they said they had never in medical history removed a brain tumor at the base of the brain where this was. And he never even come out of the operation. So, we lost him when he was 7 years old.
Then we have our older boy Wes, and Flynn, and they both live here by us.
JM: That’s tough. You were talking about working out there at Mormon Lake. What did you do afterward?
PE: Oh, that was just. I cut these fingers off in a deal, so they took me in and sewed them on. And they wouldn’t let me go to work for 30 days because they was smashed. So we come back to Show Low and I got a job. Was that when we went to Bourdon Ranch?
BE: Yes
PE: And we lived there a couple of years and our youngest boy, Flynn was born while we were there.
Then I got a job in town here. Harv Ellsworth had a cement block plant and insulation deal, so I asked him what about a job. He had a house there we could rent. So we moved back into town and I went to work for him building cement blocks and insulating. His boy, Ardell was just younger than I was, but he was the main one. So Harv would go to places like Farmington, New Mexico and over into Colorado and line up these insulation jobs. And then we would load the big truck and go and stay for a week just insulating. When we wasn’t insulating, we was back building cement block again.
Then I went to work for the County. I was driving truck for the County for what, six, eight months, something like that.
Then this job became available for the Highway Department. Arlie Maxwell was the boss out here and so I asked him about this vacancy. And he said, “You bet! Get your lunch bucket and come.!”
So I went to work for the Highway Department and then they took over the road between Show Low and Heber. It was just a dirt road. But they put a crusher out there and crushed a lot of material. And they built a house. They had a piece of property in Aripine. They drilled a well and had a house, and he told me, “If you’ll move out there, I’ll put you on a blade.” So that raised my wages quite a bit. So then, I ran a blade between Heber and Show Low.
Our oldest boy, Wesley, the Heber high school bus would come by our place, and he’d catch it and go to Snowflake to the 5th grade. But he had a grandmother and a grandfather there, if it was too much snow and the bus wasn’t going to run, he stayed with his grandmother and grandfather. Anyway, that was while we was at Aripine.
JM: What was Aripine about? Just for people like that that worked for the Highway or something?
PE: At first, Aripine mainly consisted of two dude ranches. The Turleys had the boys at one place and the girls at another. They got these from New York, she come, wherever. They called them dudes, and that’s what they were, you know. They come out and their parents paid a big price for them to spend the summer at one of these dude ranches. And that was basically what Aripine was.
And then up further this old man a little. And they gave him the job of postmaster for Aripine. Well, we’d get a little mail once in awhile at Aripine. But basically, I was working for the Highway Department.
Then, when our youngest son, Flynn, was going to have to go to the first grade, we moved back to our home in Show Low and put him in school. My boss left me on a blade up on the mountain toward Big Lake and on that road. So, I would blade on that road in the summertime and then in the wintertime, push snow. I had one of the biggest blades they had with a big ol’ wing on it. That snow, I could throw it.
JM: It’s hard to believe it used to snow so much.
PE: (Laughs) Ah, yeah, in ’67 there was 73 inches in that one snowstorm in Show Low. You could not see from one building, you couldn’t see across the street. They just had 2 or 3 holes that you could drive and one-way each way. But that was a tough snowstorm. And then it quit snowing. It snowed for 10 days. It started snowing on the 10th day of December and it started quitting on the 20th.
We had cattle down here that we knew was in bad trouble. Through the State, they went to bringing these big Army bombers loaded with hay, and they’d fly over where these cattle was and kick out a bale of hay for some of them. They done a lot of that out on the Reservation to the Indians.
I know Christmas Day, I was on a pair of snowshoes down there and found about six or eight cattle and got them over to where. We had a, we had found out that there was a big Cat on a truck headed to New Mexico and he was in Taylor. So Larry Whipple and I got in touch with this fellow and asked him if he would unload there where that road goes to Lone Pine.
Then I got on the Cat with fellow and we unloaded it off the truck, off the main road right there where you go over to where the dump is. Him and I went over and I showed him how to go off this old road and go down in to the bottom of the creek, which is down there at Lone Pine. And there a big bunch of our cattle was down in this creek bottom. And they was eating these willows, and some of them were eating willows that big!
But we pushed a trail to them and back up. And then we pushed a feeding ground, probably a full acre, and another trail right off into the creek where they could go to the creek and drink. Every day we took a ton of hay down and fed these cattle. Every day. (Laughs) But, ’67 was quite a!
You probably read that piece that they wrote up about me out at the Church ranch, about this ol’ cow that.
JM: Yes!
PE: You know, somebody wrote that up, but I . . .
JM: I know!
PE: But that ol’ cow is not exaggerated. That’s exactly! Eb Lewis and several of them guys, Reed Hatch was taking care of the ranch out there. This snow of ’67 when we’d find these cattle in these thickets where they’d get when the snow was deep, but anyway, these guys had been packing hay up to her. And she’d run out there.
JM: She was mad huh?
PE: Ol’ Eb Lewis told Reed, he said, “I’ll tell you what! She’s a tiger. She’ll get you too!”
And I said, “Oh, for land sake!”
He said, “Pete, go get her!”
And them guys said, “We’re going to go watch this!”
So we got up there. It wasn’t far where the blade had made a road out of the snow, and it was just a trail tromp to her. So these guys all got behind. Boy, they’re going to watch this. I walked up there and that old cow’s back there in the thicket. Here she comes! Just . . .
I’m not lying to you. I reached and rubbed her head right there.
JM: When she stopped, huh?
PE: I said, “What’s the matter ol’ gal? These guys been bothering you? My Land, I can’t believe you acting that way.” I backed up about 5 to 6 feet and I said, “Well, come on.”
She ran up there again.
I said, “They ain’t going to hurt you. They’re going to help you.”
About the third time, we was out there far enough she could see the road bladed, and here she come. She’d been in that thicket for 10 days, you know. Of course, they’d packed hay to her. But over where the road come off the hill toward the corral, Reed and them guys down there. I just put my elbow over on her hip.
I said, “Is this that ol’ mean cow, Reed, you wanted?”
He said, “I can’t believe it. I know this; you’re the only one that could have done it.
Well, I thought, there was nothing to it.
Anyway, you know.
JM: How long did you have to do that? How long was the snow?
PE: Oh, after a little later, when you could get to a corral to load cattle, I brought 7 cattle up here and fed them right up here. And I own some property right over here, right across from where that car deal is? I owned that piece of property and I put them cattle in there and I fed them every day there. But we still lost several head of cattle.
And then in the month, like I say, Christmas Day I was gathering cattle. And January it never snowed one flake of snow in January. If it had of done, our road would have still been covered up. And every fence where that snow melted, smashed down. We rebuilt fences all over the place.
JM: It was a heavy wet snow then.
PE: Heavy wet snow. But it was quite an experience of taking care of people and traffic and everything. We kept the road open from St. Johns into here. East people couldn’t go through Flagstaff. They’d come in here and we kept the road open down to Salt River and on out. This was the main route for quite a few people traveling.
Later on, Arlie Maxwell was taken out of being the Supervisor and Gearald Johnson was put in Supervisor. He always, him and I run blades together. But when Gearald was put in Supervisor I became his lead-out man, so I took care of the other men and jobs and stuff. Then, after Gearald went out, they made me the supervisor of Show Low.
JM: Did you work with Chet Adams, or?
PE: Chet was a very good hand for me. Chet worked for me at the Highway Department and Chet was very good. I had a good crew, the best crew at the State. They were other of these portions in the State, they’d have a seal coat job or something and they, “Get that Show Low crew to come and do it for you.” Good truck drivers, good operators and everything. So I had a good crew.
JM: Who else worked with you?
PE: Chet Adams, Herman Rodgers, Garth Nikolaus, Jay Birdno. I had about 8 men and they were good, good operators. Oh, Van Holyoak and Ted Brewer.
It was in December, because it was a pretty cold day and the wind was blowing out of the north, although it wasn’t snowing. But these cattle was up here in a pasture far enough up here that it was way past time. They should have been. We go clear down by Lone Pine Dam in the wintertime with out cattle, and that’s where we was headed out of this pasture out here just north of the airport.
But anyway, we had all got together there, and as we generally do, split up who’s going to ride this direction and which. Larry Whipple and I was riding together and we were over on the east side of the pasture. We didn’t go together very long until he split off and said he would be over a little bit to the right of me. So, as I was riding alone, and like I say, the wind was blowing out of the north and it was a cold day. And I just happened to come upon this big buck deer, and he was laying on the south side of a cedar tree in the sun, and apparently asleep because he had his head throwed way back.
I sat there and I thought, “Why can’t never walk up on something like this when its hunting season?”
This ol’ buck never moved, and like I say, I had the wind in my favor. I thought, I think I’ll just scare you, ol’ boy. So I pulled my gloves off and I tucked them down in front of my saddle, and I reached over and I undone my lasso rope. I was very careful. I made a loop and he still hadn’t moved. There was just a little bush between him and me, and I thought, “I’ll just ease up there a little and I might get a little closer before. I know this, the minute he hears me, he’ll come straight up. And when he does, I’m going to charge him.
So I made a little move, and sure enough, the ol’ buck throwed his head up like that, and then he come straight up. He jumped pretty high and I hollered just as loud as I could. Yippee! And down through the trees we went.
And the cedars were not real thick, but they were plenty thick enough, it wasn’t. The further we went the less cedars there was, and one thing I noticed. When he went under a cedar tree, if he went under on the left side, he came out on the right side. I guess, its what an animal does for protection to gain on whoever is following them. But he only done that about twice until, when he went under the left side of the tree, I went on the right side and I was closer to him than he had anticipated. And about the second one of them, I’m within roping distance. I caught him around both horns.
When I did, he just turned back toward me, and he ducked his head and here he come run at me! I thought, “Man, ol’ feller! I guess you’re all shook up. I had to spur my horse up to get out of his way, but anyway. I would jerk him a little and then he’d run at me a little. But anyway, we played.
All of a sudden I thought, “I wonder what I’m doing with my rope around a big buck deer down here by myself? I’ve got to turn him loose, and I’m not going to cut my rope!”
So, then I got to thinking on down, it’s not very far down there, there’s a road that goes into a water tank, and I think I’ll take him down there and tie him up. And so although we’re going to be all day moving these cattle, maybe this evening I can bring somebody down here to prove that I roped a deer. It isn’t every day that anybody ropes a buck deer.
So he’d run me awhile and then I’d run him awhile, and down through the trees we went. When I got down to where this water tank was, they have a fence around it that we could put cattle in there and shut the gate and hold them if we needed to. And although this fence had been there for years, there was a big roll of wire there. And it was smooth wire. So I pulled him up under a big cedar tree. Pulled him right up under it and I went around the tree, and I took my rope off the horn of my saddle and tied it on a limb up here in this tree. Then I got off and went over where this roll of wire was. I broke off a piece probably 12 to 15 feet long, and I came back over to him.
I stood there a minute and I thought, “You know, its going to be all day moving cattle. I do not know whether I can get here this evening and that old deer is going to fight himself all day long. I going to turn him loose.”
He’s still pulling back on the rope and up under the tree pretty good. I worked up to him and I got a hold of him just like I would a bulldogging steer. I bulldogged a lot of cattle. When I got a hold of him and I pulled the rope off the right horn and then, I pulled it off the left. And I thought the minute I turn him loose, he’ll whirl and run to get away from me. So I never thought any more about any danger in turning him loose. I pulled the rope off and just stepped back, and he never whirled to run, he backed up about 6 or 7 feet and stopped and ducked his head and here he come!
He come right up to me and his horns were wide enough that they went right around me. But the eye guards, the horns that are right in the middle, they’re the ones that hit me on the leg. I had Levis and I also had a pair of warm garments underneath my Levis. This horn on the right side split my Levis and this garment deal here . . .
BE: Long johns
PE: and into my leg. It even bled some. This horn hit this leg just head on. And all it ever done was just turn green. He hit it pretty hard. But I’ve still got him by the head. I’ve still got to turn him loose! So, I wallered him around until, just like you would a bulldoggin’ steer. I got his head down on the ground and I thought, “Now, I’m going to give him a push right there, and then I’m going this way!”
JM: You’re kind of on the ground too, aren’t you? Because he’s got you . . .
PE: Well, like I say, I was going to wiggle around to get to where I could give him a shove away from me. And I did. And I made it away from him. But he still never broke and run. He just backed up and ducked his head. So I went on around to my horse. I got on my horse. I rode up to the back of that cedar tree where my rope was tied. I undone my rope and I coiled it up. I come right back around he’s still standing there with his head down.
I said, “Now, ol’ feller! I’m back in the driver’s seat again!”
He just ducked his head and run right at my horse. I had to pull up and jerk a new feet. I knew he could cut my horse, as sharp as them horns! So I jerked out of his way, and I said, “ Well, feller, maybe you’re in the drivers seat then! Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to just leave you alone if you’ll leave me alone. I’m going to ride off!”
And when I rode off and turned back to where I could see, that deer was still standing there humped up under the branches of that cedar tree. He was looking for somebody to hook.
So, I rode on and finished gathering cattle. When I met the other boys, I told them. I said, “I roped a buck deer.”
“Oh, baloney.”
“Well,” I said, “I did! And he hooked me.”
Larry Whipple said, “Well, he never had them pants ripped a while ago.”
So I explained to them that I roped this deer and what I did with him. Like I say, and my wife can verify when I come home, them Levis were split and this leg was cut.”
JM: And I can imagine what she was thinking.
PE: So, anyway, that’s kind of the story of roping a buck deer.
END OF FIRST CD
