JM: So what did you do after that?
LN: I stayed retired,
JM: Just retired
LN: And then I just got odd jobs around until I was about.
JM: Your family was raised by then.
LN: Yeah, I was 70, 71.
JM: Oh yeah, time to retire.
LN: Yeah, it got down to where we couldn’t sell enough to pay the lights, let alone the rent. So I had to close out. There wasn’t no way. And then the big chain grocery store put us out of the grocery business too. I quit in ’81 and the grocery in about ’83.
JM: So, that was about 24 years ago.
LN: Yeah, I was born and raised right here. You’re sitting about where I was born. (Laughs) Ninety years old.
JM: Good roots here! Deep roots! You haven’t moved other than going to the Mediterranean, really, or to Europe. You didn’t live anywhere else.
LN: Europe on that. No, that little house up here and here, I tore the old home place down and built this in ’45. It’s been here 45 years.
JM: Wow, that’s great. That is amazing to me to live so close. Just an adjustment I guess.
LN: Now I don’t, I don’t fit. I’m just an old man sitting here. (laughs)
JM: Well at this age, you’re supposed to be, you know! And you’re active in the community. I’m sure through your church, are you?
LN: I go, yeah.
JM: I know Moylen Owens. I interviewed him last year and he told me about you. He said I needed to interview you. He’s got such great stories of your childhoods together, all your shenanigans.
LN: (Laughs) Shenanigans that we done!
JM: He sounds like he was pretty gullible though. Let’s see now, Hilda Lewis lived here, around here somewhere.
LN: Well, you know where the, down there, the Kentucky Fried?
JM: Oh, that’s right!
LN: In there, that’s where Hilda was born, right there on that corner. They tore the old house down.
JM: Oh, did they?
LN: Where the restaurant is?
JM: What’s it called, the High in the Pines, something like that.
LN: That’s where Hilda was born.
JM: And so the Mills lived across the street and the Owens over here. Who else lived around here?
LN: The Stocks over here
JM: The Stocks
LN: And the Whipples were up on the other side of the road. Yeah, there were only about 28 families here when I was a little boy.
JM: Twenty eight. And now the Ellsworths were down here. And everybody was related to everybody.
LN: The McNeils
JM: McNeils
LN: On my side was the Nikolauses, Mills and McNeil.
JM: And then nobody married a Reidhead, huh? When did the Reidheads come here? Were they after you?
LN: No, they were here before.
JM: They were before you.
LN: They lived over in Linden before they started moving into Show Low.
JM: Do you remember? Did you do anything to do with that, what was the name of that, Chlarsons! Chlarson Sawmill?
LN: Chlarson? No we’d just buy lumber from them and they would give grocery orders to their workers and stuff like that, Chlarsons.
JM: Because they built houses for their sawmill workers, right?
LN: They did a few, yeah.
JM: A few? I know that place that nursery, the Green House? They said that was a house that was built for the sawmill.
LN: Yeah, for the sawmill workers, yeah.
JM: So, when you worked in logging you weren’t in the sawmill, you were just in the woods. And then you did some hauling for them as well.
LN: No, I didn’t do any hauling.
JM: Well, you said about going down to Phoenix that time.
LN: No, I just went down with them, a guy taking a load of lumber.
JM: With them, I see. So you spent your earlier years in the woods itself.
LN: Yeah, that’s all I knew was woods, and dry-land farming.
JM: And dry-land farming
LN: Plowing with a walking plow and a team of horses. Over every inch with a walking plow – I plowed all this land here and up here.
JM: Now what did you do with all, you said you grew a lot of grain. It wasn’t for yourself. Did you sell it?
LN: Dad sold it to Whiteriver.
JM: To Fort Apache?
LN: Fort Apache, yeah. We’d take it there. I can remember a time of going with a 25 pound sack on each side of my horse, riding across the mesa down to the gristmill that was in the creek.
JM: Oh, in Show Low Creek?
LN: Yeah
JM: Where was that?
LN: Down there, close to the White Mountains, you know, below Shumway, or this side of Shumway a little ways.
JM: Wow, that was a long ways.
LN: On the Creek there. It had enough water in those days to run a gristmill.
JM: Is that Silver Creek? Called Silver Creek?
LN: Yeah, Show Low Creek. No, Silver Creek runs into the Show Low Creek.
JM: Yeah
LN: Silver Creek is just a big spring.
JM: Okay, it was one of those. There was a community there wasn’t there in those days? Do you remember?
LN: Not much there.
JM: Not much? There was some ranching, some sheep.
LN: There were some ranches, yeah. Bourdon? Bourdon Ranch. Yeah, we were there. We used to call that White Mountain Lake Daggs Reservoir.
JM: Daggs Reservoir, yes. He was the sheepman, wasn’t he?
LN: Yeah, and cattleman.
JM: Wasn’t he to do with the Pleasant Valley War? I think he had to do with that down there in Young.
LN: I don’t know.
JM: I think his name is pulled up in that history. So then you went to school here and so you would go out to Linden and out around to get to the school.
LN: Yeah, we went down through Linden and out down by Taylor.
JM: Did you like school?
LN: Oh, pretty good
JM: Did you? What was your favorite subject?
LN: Oh, just all of them.
JM: Liked them all.
LN: (Laughs) I never was too good of a student; I played ball a lot.
JM: Oh were you? What kind of ball?
LN: Basketball
JM: Basketball, I thought, you’re tall. You could do that.
LN: Yeah, I had two colleges come after me two years and I didn’t take them up on it. (Laughs) The University of New Mexico and Flagstaff came after me.
JM: You didn’t do it though, huh?
LN: Huh uh
JM: Why didn’t you do it?
LN: I didn’t want to stay in school.
JM: Oh, and leaving home
LN: Leaving home. I’d never been out of Show Low.
JM: Uh huh, Well, who knows what would have happened, huh?
LN: But they came here one time. He stayed, came in to see me and I was in bed. He stayed until daylight. Tried
JM: Tried to get you to go, huh?
LN: Yeah, that was the second year. They offered me better than a scholarship, but I didn’t take it. I ended up okay.
JM: Yeah, there’s always those options in our lives, you know, that we can do or we can’t. As long as you’re happy with how your life was.
LN: I probably wouldn’t have ended up as good as I am now.
JM: Who knows where you would have ended up? You might have ended up right back here.
LN: Yeah, might have been. I don’t know where.
JM: So you’ve seen Show Low really change.
LN: Oh man, yes. It used to be a friendly town, with good neighbors. Well, they’re good neighbors now, you just don’t know your neighbors. Like mine up here, I don’t even know their names. It’s my own fault.
JM: People don’t stay as long anymore.
LN: I introduced myself to them up there but I forgot their name already. Ah, it used to be there, all of us kids would get up here on Church House Hill. This downtown chapel, and play games every week. We’d start yodeling. One would yodel to come in to get us started. They’re there, and we’d all gather up there on the hill, girls and boys, everybody. There wouldn’t be very many, about 25 or 30 of us.
JM: Was that when it was the church there, was the church there, or was it before that?
LN: Oh yeah, way back before that.
JM: When it was the White House there.
LN: Yeah, after the White House.
JM: After the White House, because it burned down
LN: It burned down.
JM: And so it was just empty there for a while.
LN: Yeah
JM: When did they build that church?
LN: Oh gosh, when I was, this church here, it would be back in the ‘50s.
JM: Oh, that late. So it was just empty for there all that time. wow
LN: Yeah, it was. They built another big one, then tore it down and built this one.
JM: Oh, I see. .
LN: It was a big long brick building
JM: So that was where all the kids played.
LN: Yeah, that’s where they danced, they did everything, you know.
JM: Community place. But the school always stayed up here on the hill?
LN: Yes, uh hum. Yeah, the school was there on the hill all the time, close to home.
JM: Yeah, and then they built the other one across the street. When did they build that school?
LN: Oh, that would have been back in the ‘70s.
JM: Oh, that late? Oh, so everybody went to Snowflake for high school until.
LN: My daughter was one of the first ones, youngest daughter, graduated from Show Low.
JM: Oh, what year was that?
LN: That would be up in the ‘60s.
JM: That’s kind of amazing that such a town would have to go so far to go to school.
LN: Yeah, that’s where my dad had to go, down there too. But they’d have to, him and Almon Owens, Moylen’s dad? They rented an old place down there, an old chicken coop and fixed it up to stay in when they went to high school.
JM: Oh, my gosh!
LN: When they went to high school.
JM: So they wouldn’t have to go back and forth all the time.
LN: The only way they had back was a horse, an old horse and buggy. Riding horses.
JM: Sometimes the weather was bad. Somebody I talked to or maybe it was in an book, they just boarded their daughter out, you know, in Snowflake so she could go to school. But Moylen talks about how he had to get up early and do chores before he’d catch the bus. You probably had to do the same.
LN: I lived right here on the corner and we’d have to get up early enough to go milk the cows, you know, about 3 to 4 cows, feed 15 to 20 hogs, and be back before you caught the bus at 7:15. You’d have to be up in the dark and when you came home you’d have to do the same thing.
JM: Same thing. And then you’d took the cows across over here to pasture.
LN: Yeah, out where the airport is was the town pasture.
JM: All this before you went to school in the morning.
LN: Yeah
JM: Amazing, and you being the oldest boy, you got to do the majority of that, I’ll bet.
LN: Yeah, for a while I did. Yeah, that’s uh. I feel sorry for the kids nowdays. They don’t have nothing to do. That’s why they’re hard to handle sometimes.
JM: They lose contact with the earth, because they’re indoors watching TV all the time.
LN: Like my grandkids of today, the young ones. You have to fight them like the devil to even help you in the house. I think that’s why so many of them are into trouble.
JM: Oh yeah, bored. And I think, I know Moylen tells this little story about how he had to go out and find some calves in a storm and stuff, but on the way home that’s when he decided he wanted to be a cowboy. It’s like when you’re out there working in it that you get a sense of identity. You know, you feel like you belong and you’re needed, and you see yourself. Where if you’re always watching TV you don’t see reality. You don’t find your place.
LN: It’s hard to find your place covering yourself, you know. You didn’t have, you know, your folks didn’t get after you. “You do this,” “you do that.” You came in, you knew you had to do it. Without saying a word you changed clothes and go do your chores, and come back and study if you’ve got time and don’t fall asleep.
JM: Right, and your rewards were simple pleasures.
LN: Just simple.
JM: And so we fight this complex world, when what we need is simplicity in our lives.
LN: Our kids can’t get together and have fun because the Law thinks they’re on a drunken party.
JM: Right
LN: We tried to get, had ol’ Jim Bryant, the last time, tried to get him back and run, you know, have cookouts and play games and stuff. They were on the spillway on the Show Low Lake up here. And here comes sirens from Lakeside and Show Low up there, thought they were on a big drinking party. He got them out twice and that’s all. He says there’s no use. So it started downhill from then, as far as getting your kids together and having a good time as a ward, or as a group.
JM: You probably need to tell people ahead of time that you’re going to be doing something somewhere. Everything is done in indoors, you know. People don’t go outdoors.
LN: Heck, when we were kids, we’d get together and have taffy pulls, make candy, Dutch ovens, you know, like up here on the hill. There used to be a lot of pines.
JM: Moylen said there used to have rodeos up here.
LN: Yeah, right up here on the schoolhouse hill, just the old cars in the open, you know, have rodeos, yeah, up here.
JM: Everybody would practice on somebody’s
LN: (Laughs) calves
JM: Calves or horses (laughter.) Did you, you said you did rodeo, didn’t you?
LN: No, I didn’t. I didn’t do much when I was a kid, but I did with my boys.
JM: With your sons?
LN: Yeah, with my boys. I started roping and going to
JM: That’s when they were up here around at this corner
LN: Yeah,
JM: For Fourth of July things?
LN: Yeah, up here on the hill, then go to the other neighbors in the towns, you know, and rope with them.
JM: Did you go down to the Reservation and rodeo with the. . .
LN: No, I never did go down there.
JM: I hear they used to come up here and do it, so.
LN: Yeah, the old chief would, Baja? He’d come and park here up on the hill, where they used, you know about where the library is (now Police station) where the road is about where you start over the hill. They’d come up there in their wagons on the Fourth of July and park there. And then right here there used to be two pine trees. They dug a pit there, and he’d come down and help them barbeque right here, right here in front of the house.
JM: What was his name that? Was that you that? Who was it? Let’s see, Moylen told me that somebody did that? Who was it that did that? Bourdon?
LN: No, it was my Dad, and Whit Ellsworth and Almon Owen.
JM: and who?
LN: Moylen’s dad and Whit Ellsworth and just some of them old . . .
JM: Whit Ellsworth, who’s that?
LN: That’s, you know, have you heard of Marly Ellsworth? They’re up there where they’re building that . . .
JM: Okay, that Ellsworth that’s up there. So and I heard, and he said that somebody used to make ice cream. Hansen, I think he said,
LN: Yeah, Hansen
JM: would come down and make ice cream.
LN: Yeah, they’d get their ice from the lake up there in the wintertime and put it in sawdust?
JM: Uh huh? And it would stay even on a day like this.
LN: Yeah, up into August, the first of August here, they’d still have ice.
JM: Wow, it must have been colder weather in those days.
LN: Oh yeah, we used to go up in the creek up here and get our ice at the flume, they called the flume, where the irrigation ditch had the flume across the top. We’d go out there and back our wagons out there on it.
JM: Cut it
LN: Cut it by hand and put it in there.
JM: Did you store it too?
LN: Yeah, we had it up here where the Steak and Race is, we had a place there that Dad built. Got the sawdust from the mills
JM: To cover it up
LN: About ten wagonloads would make it.
JM: This house wasn’t as big then, I’m sure.
LN: Oh, no, it was just three bedrooms then. When I was 17 years old they added two more bedrooms on it. That’s the house out back. No, I, and then we built all of this, a new roof. Then we had another family come in that broke down and needed some money, so I had them drywall it.
JM: Hum! That’ll work.
LN: So, I got her done for about $400 cheaper. It cost me $22,000 to build this house.
JM: Wow
LN: It would now cost you over $100,000 to do it.
JM: Over $200,000
LN: And I wouldn’t trade it. For all the new homes that I’ve been in, between the $400,000 and $500,000 homes, I wouldn’t trade this straight across.
JM: Yep, you get to see everything going on in town. Now, I understand that they’re thinking of moving the City Hall up here to the new library. It’s going to be a little more crowded. Well it is the old part of town.
LN: Yeah, this is, right here. You take from Owens Street to Whipple, Whipple to there is the old part of town, right here.
JM: So, I live off of Whipple on the south side, there’s a pasture next to me. Do you know who owned that land? That wasn’t part of your land, it would have been, because it’s south of Whipple Road, between Whipple and Woolford Road.
LN: South, that would have been the first one to own that would be Penrod, then two or three other guys bought. Penrod’s was the first one back here. There was Brewer, was the one where you’d be.
JM: He owned a sawmill too, didn’t he?
LN: No, there was a Brewer here that had a sawmill, but that was one of the older people here. He owned that other place where you’re at.
JM: Do you know if they grew anything there?
LN: Oh yeah, they farmed it.
JM: What did they grow?
LN: Corn, they’d have wheat, corn, beans, and pinto beans.
JM: Good to know this, what to plant!
LN: Yeah, that’s about all you can raise on it.
JM: Yeah, it seems to be prolific for weeds. Sunflowers
LN: Sunflowers would really be. That one that’s up farther was my Granddad McNeil’s place, Grandma McNeil. That road that goes around that makes the circle around?
JM: Woolford?
LN: Woolford. When you get out here, the one that takes you out back to Whipple Road. That on your left where it crosses, where the full stoplight is -- on that side is McNeil.
JM: They have some horses up there. Yeah, before you get to Sierra Pines.
LN: Yeah
JM: So that was McNeils
LN: McNeil’s, yeah. And the Mills was on this side here where these houses are right here, was where my Grandpa Mills lived.
JM: What did he do for a living?
LN: He freighted. He was a freighter.
JM: So in those days you pretty much, you either worked, if you were going to work, you were going to work in the timber industry or you worked in freighting.
LN: Freighting, that’s it.
JM: That’s about it, or the . . .
LN: Sawmills
JM: Or the . . . mail route.
LN: Mail route
JM: Yeah, because Butler did that. Hal Butler’s father did a mail route too, probably the same mail route.
LN: Yeah, it would be the same one.
JM: Or you had A.C.M.I. or, you know, some sort of store like Woolfords had the store too
LN: Woolfords, and Ellsworths had the one up on the corner, and across the street was the Penrods, the hotel.
JM: So it has always been a town that was dependent upon the road that came through to Fort Apache, and there were some hotels or grocery stores were pretty much to service the local people or the people coming through.
LN: All there was in those days was sawmills, freight and cattle.
JM: And cattle.
LN: Lots of cattle.
JM: Lots of cattle, and everyone had their own milk cows
LN: Their own milk cows
JM: And Moylen Owens for a while had a dairy, I guess. But mostly it was just raising cattle and selling them. Selling them either to Fort Apache or shipping them up to catch the railroad to go east or west.
LN: Yeah, especially when the railroad came in to McNary they had a place out here, corrals and stuff.
JM: Belle Siding?
LN: Belle Siding
JM: And there was another place, oh, over there by Silver Creek again. What was the name of that place? Anyway, there were pens there. Now you worked with the LDS farm, too, didn’t you? What was the name of that? Did I get that right?
LN: When they had gardens?
JM: Was it gardens? Where they had cattle, a ranch?
LN: Oh yeah, I worked out on the Church Ranch
JM: Church Ranch, yeah. So what did you do there?
LN: I just helped them round up and ship.
JM: So you pretty much left the cattle to do their thing, and then once a year you’d go round them up.
LN: We’d just go check on them. The guys that was over them would have to check on them and then when they needed somebody to round them up and move them from one pasture to another, that’s what I’d do. I did that for over twenty years.
JM: Wow, so there would just be a call that they needed people to come and round up.
LN: Yeah just a call, all free gratis.
JM: Did you guys make any special, I mean, you just did the job and then you came home?
LN: Yes, and once in awhile they’d have somebody bring out something to eat, you know.
JM: I was wondering if you were into the Dutch oven cooking. It seems like you hear that people around here did a lot of Dutch oven cooking. That would be fun.
LN: Oh yes, that’s good eating.
JM: Yes. Yes. We’re thinking about doing one of those for the Museum as a fundraiser this summer over at Moylen Owens place. You might hear about it later.
LN: Yeah, I’ve talked to him about it.
JM: I think uh, who’s doing it? Louis Rawlings is going to, I think is going to head that up.
LN: Yeah, he kind of fell for that Dutch over stuff when he first came here, you know. He’s in on it now. He’s a good biscuit maker.
JM: Well can you think of something else I need to ask you about? That we haven’t touched on?
LN: No, its uh, hum.
JM: So you didn’t do any hunting. Did you do any fishing?
LN: Yeah, I fished.
JM: Did you do a lot of fishing? Where did you fish at?
LN: Just out here at Mormon Lake, just out east of town here, and down here in the creek, and then up on the rivers on the Reservaton.
JM: Did you ever go to Hawley Lake?
LN: No, I never did go to Hawley Lake.
JM: It’s a little farther up the road there, and so there’s lots of little lakes around here. So what did you catch? What did you catch here?
LN: Mostly catfish. Down here in the creek you’d have them ol’ catfish, the little ones, Steelheads? They didn’t get very big, carp and suckers down here in the creek.
JM: Yeah, more fun to do than to eat.
LN: Yeah, but Mormon Lake was the fishing hole, them ol’ yellow-bellies? Cats! Man, when we’d go out to get our cattle, you know, to milk in the evenings, we’d bounce out there on the horse, and we’d have our old willow poles stuck out there in the cedars. And we’d catch us half-a-dozen to a dozen catfish and put them in a gunnysack and tie them on the back of the saddle and come home, bring our cows with us.
JM: Make a good day of it? Did you have to clean them, or did you make your mother?
LN: No, we cleaned them. She’d have them, we’d have them for breakfast.
JM: Breakfast fish
LN: Yeah, have them for breakfast, if there was any left over. We could eat one or two apiece.
JM: Not real big ones, huh?
LN: No, they only got about so long. Yellow bellies, we used to all call them.
JM: I don’t know what that would be.
LN: Catfish
JM: Well, it sounds like a fun life.
LN: We had lots of water in them days. The rains would take care of a thousand head of cattle, where now it would a hundred. And all the cowboys are gone. There’s only what, two people now? Larry Whipple and Elroy Ellsworth are the only two that’s got cattle left.
JM: Oh really? Elroy Ellsworth does too.
LN: That’s in Show Low. There are more people that have got cattle down in Taylor, more cow people, the Flakes.
JM: And that’s where the rodeos seem to be now too, in that area.
LN: In Taylor, yeah, that’s where it is now.
JM: Not a lot of horses either, just the horses you see out here on the meadow.
LN: Not many horses left, but that’s the only ones that have got cattle anymore. I don’t know if any of the Rhotons in Lakeside have got any cattle yet or not, I don’t know. Most all the range that way now, clear back to Porter Mountain, are all bought up for subdivision land.
JM: Oh really? Yeah, I know there’s a big development going on I don’t even want to know about. So, did you ride around a lot out there when you were kids? Out there by Porter Mountain?
LN: Yeah, quite a bit, yeah, not quite as far as Porter Mountain, but close.
JM: Well, okay, that’s about all I can think of, unless you can think about something else.
Oral Histories of the White Mountains
