Helen Louise (Campbell) Drake
- born March 4, 1933
- at D&RGW Hospital, Salida
- delivered by George H. Curfman, M.D.
- married Keith W. Drake
- on August 28, 1959
- in Gunnison, Colorado
Children:
- Kelly Clifton Drake (6-9-1967)
- married Julie Miller on 5-16-1992
- in Grand Junction, Colorado
Grandchildren:
- Stephanie Drake (11-11-1992)
- Jordan Drake (5-25-1995)
Norman Colin Campbell
- born June 3, 1927
- at D&RGW Hospital, Salida
- delivered by Dr. George H. Curfman
Parents:
- Colin Pugsley Campbell
- born January 8, 1896
- at Pugwash, Nova Scotia
- to Ella Lucretia (Pugsley) Campbell
- and Martin Luther Campbell
- Luella Verona (Sage) Campbell
- born December 19, 1902
- at Adobe Park, Salida, Colorado
- to Rebecca Meriam (Alway) Sage
- and Joseph Benson Sage
interviewed September 21, 2003 by Kathy Berg
Transcribed by Phyllis Smoak
This is Kathy Berg from the Salida Regional Library in Delta Colorado interviewing Helen Louise Campbell Drake and Norman Colin Campbell. (Brother and Sister) I’d like to thank you for letting me come into your home and interview you. Ah, the Library does have an entire “Family Sage” book, that is very interesting. And I know you’re both a part of it, but I’d just like to get some, ah, ask some questions about your personal life in Salida. What it was like when you were growing up, things you did, ammm, as far as church activities. I know in those days a lot was centered around the church and the family, I think more so than it is now.
KATHY BERG: So I’d like to start with Norman. And, ah, can you recall some of your first memories of being in Salida?
NORMAN COLIN CAMPBELL: What kind of memories? No, not really. I, you know, I can recall some things, but specifics…….
KATHY BERG: Well, church, family ah…. When were you born?
NORMAN COLIN CAMPBELL: OK, I was, I was born on the 3rd of June, 1927 which was my parents first Wedding Anniversary. So as I grew up, they always, June 3rd was my birthday, so they never got to celebrate their wedding anniversary. And, but ah, I was supposed to be born down at my Grandmother’s house out in Adobe Park at Sages, but Mom had trouble giving birth to me, so Dad had to carry her out, put her in his car and drove into Salida, and I was born in the D & RG Hospital there.
KATHY BERG: The first memories of school.. of different things.
NORMAN COLIN CAMPBELL: Oh, that’s stuff I was trying to think of. The first real,… I can’t say I have first memories of anything like that. I, I can remember the first day at Valley View School where we went. And I can remember a student, Wesley Sneddon who is a 2nd or 3rd cousin, something like that, he was in eighth grade and I was starting. And I had, was afraid to get up and go to the restroom, the outhouse, in other words, and so I wet my pants, so to speak. And so the teacher, Mrs. Schroeder, had Wesley take me aside, at recess and explain to me that when I had to go to the bathroom I could just get up and walk out, I didn’t have to wait till recess and then have a problem.
In the Valley View School was, it varied, sometimes there were only four or five of us going to school there and other times there were like, thirteen or fourteen or fifteen. It was varied. Mrs. Schroeder, I had her as a teacher for several years, first grade through seventh grade. She taught, she taught there a couple more years than that. I think like Wendell Hutchison, I think he had her for all eight years. I heard his brother Jake also had her for eight years. And in my seventh and eighth grade I had Mrs. Driggers as a teacher.
HELEN LOUISE CAMPBELL DRAKE: Well the reason Mrs. Driggers came in his seventh year is because Mrs. Schroeder committed suicide. She had a, I don’t know why, I can remember, I think I was about the second grade, but I can remember going down with my Mother to the Motel where Mrs. Schroeder was. And my Mom went in to talk to her and then we left. And it was that weekend she committed suicide, which was really sad. Our parents were always on the school board and so they were always really involved in the school. And then Mrs. Driggers came down from Leadville to ah, finish the year out and she lived with us on our, in our, in our house. And then after that, ah, let’s see, you (Norman) had, were, you graduated then from the eighth grade. Graduation was always at Poncha Springs. All the eighth graders left. Ah, after Mrs. Driggers I believe there was a Mrs. Brown who used to ride a horse to school. And she had these boots on that were laced up and she would never, they just would drag on the floor. And I thought she, you know , Mrs. Schroeder, Mrs. Driggers, were very attractive ladies.
KATHY BERG: The laces would drag on the floor?
HELEN LOUISE CAMPBELL DRAKE: The laces would drag on the floor. And I thought she should just be neater than that. And, ah, then after that there was a Mrs. Gemmel who was a Presbyterian Ministers wife. Then we had Mrs. Emmerine Paquette and she taught, I had her for several years and the she had to ah quit because she became pregnant. And then I had Mrs. Kennedy. And, her husband was a History teacher in Salida High School, and they had three daughters. Carol was ah, in Jr. High, Doris was a year younger than I am, then Barbara was the youngest one. But Doris and Barbara were at school with, with me. And I can, and ah that’s the sequence of teachers. Now do you remember….I have lots of memories, but ok…….
NORMAN COLIN CAMPBELL: Well, just going back to other early memories. I can remember we went to the Presbyterian Church when it was the old red brick church in the heart of Salida. Ah, we, we’d go to Sunday School and Church usually, but we had no activities for young people at that church. So, ah when we got to be older we went to youth group at the Baptist Church. So we’d go to the Presbyterian Church in the morning and the Baptist Church that evening.
But growing up on the farm… it was a neat farm we grew up on because it was a farm where we produced just about everything we needed. Dad had a small herd of cattle, maybe about 25 or 30; we had a flock of sheep about 250 or so, and we usually always had 4 or 5 pigs and ah, we’d raise, we each had, you know, 5-10 little pigs, so we always had lots of those. And we had a big orchard and this time of year we’d been out picking apples and making cider and all that sort of thing. Mom had a large garden. In fact, she had two gardens. And we would haul in basket after basket and bucket after bucket of vegetables and fruit. We had a huge root cellar which was attached to our house, and we’d fill it up with all sorts of stuff and then the next Spring we’d haul it out and feed it to the pigs. That’s they way it seemed to me, anyway. But, on that farm Dad had a slaughter house, which was quite, which was built by our Grandfather, I guess, and he butchered cattle there and he had a separate one for butchering pigs. Everything was, you know. And, it’s kind of too bad that they don’t still have all, or aren’t able to do that anymore.
HELEN LOUISE CAMPBELL DRAKE: Well, ah, some of the ah, like Mr. Binns from Salida used to came out and……
NORMAN COLIN CAMPBELL: Not Mr. Binns A Mr. Criley who had a meat market in Salida, he would come and almost once a week butcher ah a steer, or whatever, which he then would age there and eventually got sold through his meat market.
KATHY BERG: Do you remember where that was located?
NORMAN COLIN CAMPBELL: It was located between First and Second Street, on, …. near where Gamble’s now is.
KATHY BERG: So on “F” , OK.
NC: On “F” St., yeah.
KB: Any other memories of home, and how your, what your Mother did with all the bushels of vegetables you got?
NC: Well, some of them were stored in straw and that sort of thing. She canned an awful lot of stuff. One year they decided to grow celery. Which was, they got lots of celery and they grew it, we had this trench that was about three feet deep in the garden, and the celery had to be put in there covered with straw and then with soil so that the outer ah stalks would rot. And then along about November or December you start digging this up and you then had to wash all this stuff, and get down to more or less the heart of the celery, which turned out pretty good. But because we were in this cold water all winter long we all had colds that winter. So that was the one and only venture at growing celery. Now, as I was talking I thought of something, now it’s gone.
KB: Ammm, so you did have, you had livestock, you had horses and cattle and everything.
NC: Yeah, everything. Well, another thing, this time of year was butchering turkeys. Mom would always buy a flock, a bunch of turkey pullets which she raised, and they, they’d fatten out real well because we had this huge pinion grove around us and the turkeys fattened out on pinion nuts. But, ah, then just before Thanksgiving we’d kill a bunch of them and Mom’d peddle ‘em around town. Peddle,……she’d sold them around town.
HLCD: Well, she had customers she knew who…….
NCC: And then at Christmas time she’d butcher some more. And, the dairy had milk cows, of course, as we did, and every morning and every evening you had to go out and milk the things. We separated and Mom would, …. well some of the cream was sold or taken down to the depot. And there was a platform there where the farmers brought in their gallon, or there five gallon cans of cream and they’d be put on the D&RG train and taken to a creamery in Denver. Now sometimes they’d be taken to, there was a creamery in Salida on about….. it was “G” St.
HLCD: Well you’d go down hill.
NCC: Yeah. Anyway, sometimes we’d take it there.
KB: And this you would say like is in the 30’s?
NCC: Mostly in the 30’s, yeah.
KB: Because of the big depression.
NCC: Right. And ah Mom sold chicken, ah during throughout the year she’d sell chickens and butter and eggs. We’d take, you know, she had a group of people around town that ah she delivered eggs to. And also, too, we had, she had about of 250 or 300 chickens, and each week she would take a huge crate of eggs to either Binns grocery store or Vaughns grocery store.
KB: And where were these located? Do you remember?
NCC: Ok, Binn's grocery store was on, in the 300 block on “F” St., right next to what at one time was Kosters Insurance, that big brick building. I think it’s a …. I don’t know what it is now.
KB: Hively’s? No that isn’t right …. Across the street from Gambles?
NCC: It’s across the street from… ah from the bank.
KB: I guess I don’t know what was there.
NCC: Well, it was one of the nicest buildings and Binn's was right next to it. And Vaughns was located over about where,…. about 2nd and “G” wasn’t it?
HLCD: I don’t know.
NCC: I think Safeways or City Market or some store like that is there now. But Vaughn’s is torn down.
KB: Ah, back to the farm. Where was it located? Where was your home located?
NCC: OK, it was out about five miles East of Salida,… East…, West of Salida.
HLCD: West of Salida. Highway 140.
NCC: 140 yeah. It’s now owned by the Padovans. They took ah, the NE corner, the airport, they took a big chunk out of our ranch. So now when you driving out 140 you get there and you have to make a zig-zag. And the house was located on the brow of the hill. We had 320 acres. And the house was an interesting old house. It was built by my, great, as far as step-grandfather and step-great-grandfather. The first floor was built out of rocks and into the hillside, so there’s doors and windows only on the south side of it. And then the second story was … and the walls were about two feet thick. And the second story was built out of hewn logs. And then the third story was framed. And, ah, it, it doesn’t sound very good, but it looked pretty.
HLCD: It did, …there’s a picture of it.
KB: Is it still standing?
NCC: No, it burned down.
HLCD: Well partially. (still partially standing)
NCC: It burned down about 15, 20 years ago.
KB: So then you were quite close to the school.
HLCD: We walked a mile.
KB: Yeah.
NCC: We walked a mile to Valley View. Yeah.
And our,… things when we were growing up that we did. We’d go fishing with ah….Dad’d take us on fishing trips up North Fork. And we’d usually go with the Andersons’. The Andersons’ lived a little bit further, oh, a couple miles West of us. And Carl, the father, had a son Melvin who was two years older than me. And we’d ride horses from their place up the North Fork. And, they had a campground up there, where Dad had ah,… they had, they had dishes buried there. And ah, they had a place back in a bunch of trees where all these old plates and frying pans and stuff, and they had a hole in the ground and then they, when they were through camping they’d cover it up with pine needles and that sort of thing and the next time we went up there it was all ready for us. We’d go up there and spend about a week. On a couple of occasions, Mom and Dad, along with Carl and his wife Mable and Melvin, my brother David and I went up there and we spent about a week just camping out and going fishing. An then, you could catch all the fish you’d want. And they, Dad would bring back generally would bring back 100-200 fish, which would be salted down or something like that. We also went hunting with the Andersons. And we’d go back up in the foothills. And we’d stay out for several days, you know, maybe a week.
KB: And this was serious, because it was food for your table
NCC: Oh, yeah. Right. And Dad’d, you know, he always got a deer which we made good use of. But he never went hunting illegally. He never poached or anything like that. It was always strictly by the book.
KB: Then you mentioned your brother David. Where does he fit in the family?
NCC: He’s between us, I think he is. And he has a ranch out West of town here.
KB: So you all ended up back in Delta.
HLCD: Well that was probably my fault, because my husband and I lived here. And, or we, I met my husband here and ah we lived here. And then my folks moved here and then everyone just came.
KB: So, ah, it feels like you have a very close knit family, today. I mean was it always that way? I mean the chores you did, did you fight over it, or were you just typical kids and teenagers, you know?
NCC: Oh, yeah. My brother and I were not the best of friends. Sometimes brothers are and sometimes they aren’t. And in my case, we are not. Were not. But then we had all the chores we had to do, like milking cows, and feeding calves and feeding bummer lambs and feeding chickens and you know……
HLCD: Cleaning out the chicken pen.
NCC: Oh, cleaning out the chicken house. We had a big chicken house. It was about, there were four rooms in it. It was about 70 feet long, I would say, which is where the chickens roosted. Every couple weeks you had to go in there and clean those out. It was a horrible mess.
HLCD: And then he’d spray it with creosote or something. It was a dirty job.
KB: This wasn’t, this wasn’t the fun part of being on a ranch.
NCC: No, No, there were……..
KB: There probably were some fun things that happened.
NCC: Oh, yeah. One of the neat things: our ranch was sort of divided in half by ah these, these pinion, the hillside where the pinion trees all grew. We had this forest of pinion trees almost. It was maybe, went from, well it was a mile long from one end of the ranch to the other end. And then in width it varied from oh, an eighth to a quarter of a mile I suppose. And there were all sorts of fun places to play up there, and we really liked it. I remember going up and taking, building houses and places to play like we were camping. Dad’d had camping and if we stayed at home, then we’d have to go camping.
KB: Uh huh. And what about you Helen.?
HLCD: Well my growing up years in Salida were very, very wonderful. I wasn’t the perfect sister or daughter I’m sure. But I, I look back on my childhood of growing up on the ranch with my parents and my brothers as very pleasant. I really, really enjoyed it. And ah, going back to the ranch, Norman mentioned the hunting. My Mom canned the venison, and ah, because we didn’t have electricity or a freezer or anything
NCC: We did have an icebox. Every Saturday when we went shopping, we’d have to go by the ice house and buy a block of ice to put in the refrig…in the icebox.
HLCD: Umm huh. But Mom canned ah a lot, well they all did, because that’s what we lived on in the winter time. Ah, I believe you were a Junior in High School, Norman, and I was about eleven when we finally got electricity ah over there.
KB: That year, do remember what year that was? Well, when were you born, then we can figure out what year it was.
HLCD: Ah, 1933, so that would have been 194…1943 or 1944.
NCC: We got electricity when I was a Junior, so that would have been in, I graduated in 1945, so probably ’43, ’44, along in there.
HLCD: Mmm huh. And, ah, not only did we have electricity, but we had a well that ah we always used. And Dad put up a windmill about the same time and we had water in the house. So, a lot of the farms didn’t have water in the house. We had electricity and water in the house. We had a big tank above this one part of the house and then when the wind blows ah, then the windmill would pump the water up into this big tank. And if the wind didn’t blow, you know, we just didn’t have any water.
NCC: And this tank was hooked up to a pipe that came down into the kitchen, and it, you could put water into the reservoir on the stove. We didn’t have a regular sink. So it, this cold water that come in it was heated in the reservoir. Now eventually Dad put in a regular kitchen and that sort of thing. But, ah we even had a fireplace in our kitchen, so. Which was neat.
HLCD: Because the house itself was built by our Step, Step-grandfather, about when, 18-- what?
NCC: I don’t know, probably in the late 1870’s.
KB: Where, where the first structure was? And then it was, didn’t you say it was……
NCC: Well, they had, no, it may have been more like in the 1880’s when they built this house. Because they had another house, remember the cabin, where they first lived, while they were getting this other built, I guess.
HLCD: Yeah, they built it as a three storied house.
NCC: Yeah. Somebody asked grandpa why they built it so tall and skinny. Cause shingles was the only thing they had to buy, so they wanted the house built so there wasn’t too much roof.
HLCD: Well, around the house were these old pinion trees. I think they were hundreds of years old, they weren’t the squatty little pinion trees you think of. They were tall. And they used those, those as the logs for the (house).
NCC: No, no. No, huh, uh.
HLCD: Didn’t they. No? Oh, I thought they used those big pinion trees. No? Ok.
NCC: The pinion trees were fat though.
KB: Maybe you were really short so it made them seem taller?
ELCD: I think that’s what happened. That’s what happened.
NCC: No they used fir or some kind, some kind of pine tree that the logs were built out of.
KB: Do you remember ah, the celebrations you had at home, the neighbors that would come over? Was there a lot of closeness there, and even, you know, even death, or you know.
HLCD: Well, mainly the get-togethers were with our relatives. Because my Mother came from a large family and most of them lived around there. And so every Thanksgiving or Christmas, ah birthdays, 4th of July, we would get together at different aunts and uncles houses. But I remember mainly the ones that happened at our house, of course. Because we, ah there would be like, what 30 counting the kids and all the aunts and uncles. And that was the, the core of our family, I think, was our, was my Mother’s brothers and sisters and our Grandmother. Ah,…..
KB: Did you have a big enough table to accommodate everyone?
HLCD: Oh, well, and our, yeah. We made it.
NCC: We had a dining room set that was, that had belonged to my, our grandmother who got it from her sister who bought it when she lived in Buena Vista. Her story is interesting too, but I don’t know if you want to go into that.
KB: Yeah. Go ahead. Just one at a time though. You go ahead.
NCC: This Great Aunt, ah, Aunt Gertie we called her, was from Nova Scotia. All my Dad’s family was from Nova Scotia. But, Aunt Gertie developed Consumption, or TB as we call it today. So she and her husband, in the late 1880’s moved from the North East to Denver for her health. They didn’t like Denver, cause she didn’t get any better. So they left there and went to Buena Vista. And the air was a lot thinner, and they also went to the baths, the hot springs in Buena Vista, up there around Mt. Princeton, Cottonwood and so on. And she, surprisingly got over her tuberculosis. Then in 1890… well my Dad was born in 1896 and when he was eighteen months old his parents divorced and Grandma and Dad came to Buena Vista and moved with ah her sister. And I think Aunt Gertie raised Dad, basically, because my grandmother got a job teaching school. She taught around Buena Vista, Gas Creek school is the school where she taught. And when Dad was about five years old they moved from Buena Vista to Salida. And they lived ah in a place that’s just immediately West of your County Fairgrounds over there now. The house stands out all by itself. I don’t know what they farmed, it belonged to a farm. And grandma taught in Poncha Springs. She’s taught up in the old Pinon Grove School, she taught at the Valley View School. And ah, when Dad was about twelve years old, my Aunt decided to adopt him. So, ah Ella, my grandmother Campbell, she decided to, to remarry about the same time. So, since my Aunt had raised Dad, he wanted to go with her, so she adopted him. And my grandmother then married Bill Blanchard who owned this ranch where we grew up, which is right immediately adjacent to the Marshall place. And our grandparents moved there to that house and Dad continued to live with his Aunt. And the Blanchards, then they adopted a girl. Anne, her name was Anne, Anne Morris and she become Dad’s sister, in a sense. Not legally, or, or anything, but we considered her our Aunt. And then, Aunt Gertie in about 18,…1920, her teeth were bothering her so she decided to have them all pulled out. So she went to town to the hospital. They pulled all her teeth out and she got pneumonia and died. So we never really got to meet her. But, we heard a lot of nice, wonderful stories about her. Now, how did I get on that subject?
KB: And I don’t know. You just wanted to interrupt your sister, I think and do a story. No, you were going, you had a little story to tell too. I don’t know how we got on that but it was a good one.
NCC: Yeah. We, we want to do a book on our Dad’s family similar to this one we did on the Sage family.
KB: Oh, interesting.
HLCD: Well, my, our Dad was born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, but he grew up in Colorado, so Colorado was really his home. I don’t, let’s see, I had something I was going to say. We’ll get back to this.
KB: Well, we’ll get back to it. I have some, ah some more questions I want to ask about Valley View School. As you know, there, Historic Salida, Inc. is ah doing a lot of research on it and ah, and we’re also working with them on this Oral History Project. We’re kind of partners with them, the Library and HSI. And, so I have some more questions about that, if you can, if you have some more memories about it. Like, just I mean……..
NCC: Well, Valley View school, if you need the history of it. It was one of the last country schools built in Salida, in Chaffee County. And it was built because my Grandmother Blanchard and, and Mrs. Hutchison, Wendell Hutchinson’s grandmother got mad at the Burnett’s who sort of run, ran Poncha Springs and the school board. And so they formed a separate, new school district. The Valley View School district. It’s a kind of odd, it’s an “L” shaped school district and ah, built their own school. You couldn’t do that today. But anyway, that’s the way it got started. And I think my Aunt want to school there. And then ah we of course did.
KB: Your Aunt?
NCC: Our Aunt Anne. Anne Blanchard.
KB: Aunt Anne.
HLCD: In fact I believe this Arlene is going to interview her; ah, a lady who we think went to school with my Aunt. She’s ninety years old, now what’s her name?
NCC: Now go ahead, what were your questions?
KB: Ah, well just so many questions, like what were the desks like? What kind of celebrations did you have? Was that a central gathering point for your neighborhood or………
NCC: No, it was not, it was not that type of thing. We just went to school there. At Christmas time we had, would put on a Christmas program. You know, a play and sing songs, and do drills you know, dressed up like popcorn balls, or, depend, depending on how many kids. Cause at times there were only four of us in school. At one time Jake and Wendell Hutichson and me, oh, and Elsie Alloy Curtis were the only ones there for a couple of years. And then David came along, my brother. And then one time when you were there, (Helen) there were only three or four.
HLCD: Yeah. Ah, I believe David, our brother, went completely through the 8th grade as the only student in his class. I believe it was something like that. And then, many years, I was the only one, but then there was a family, Houle, obviously they’re still some living in Salida. Oh, one of the boys, Donald, was in my class for two or three years. So you can see, it wasn’t a very large school. But I remember that when you’d walk in the door, and to the right, that’s where the girls hung their coats. And if you brought, carried a doll to school that’s where you put them. And then to the left, that’s where the boys put their, hung their clothes. And in the front was this great big shelf and we had this great big ah, (ceramic) water thing. And we all had out little cups, and we could go out there. And the teacher had to make sure that had water in it. That was one of her jobs. Then, the two doors went into the main part of the schoolhouse. And, toward the back was a big pot-bellied stove that we would all gather around in the wintertime, especially if we’d all get cold and wet and the teacher could read us a story. Ah, I remember looking towards the front; the picture of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, I think, always hung in the classroom. I can’t remember what, I looked at it for six years.
NCC: The desks, they were a variety. They had little, little desks for the little kids. They graduated up. Most of those desks were hooked together in rows of two or three. But then we had some long desks, which were originally probably designed for two students to sit in. When you got to be in the 7th or 8th grade you got to have one of these bigger desks. You were one of the big kids.
HLCD: As far as the restrooms were concerned. The girls, you’d go out the door and it was to the right, you had to walk down. And if you didn’t as the teacher to leave soon enough, sometimes you didn’t make it. And then the boys was way over on the left of the playground.
And we liked to have, a lot of games that we played. One of our favorites was called Dare Base and, or Red, Red Rover……
NCC: Yeah, you mentioned that the other day, Dare Base and I’ve been trying to think of the rules in it and I can’t.
HLCD: Oh, we made ‘em up. I think we kinda made ‘em up. You had these two ah bases and the two lines and the kids were divided into two teams. And you had to sneak your way, you had to try not to get caught, and if you got caught you got put in a pen. And then you had to get your teammate out without getting caught. Well, it was just a lot of fun.
KB: Well was it, were they parallel lines? It sounds like Red Rover.
HLCD: Oh yeah, parallel lines.
NCC: One was at one end of the school house and one was at the other end.
HLCD: Oh yeah, and it was just fun. And then we would play cowboys and Indians and we’d bring our play guns to school, and back of the…….
KB: And the girls did this too?
HLCD: Oh, oh, yeah, we all did. And ah, back of the school, we’d play on the hillside.
NCC: Yeah, back on that hillside, back of the school we built tree houses. And, up on top of the hill, I ah, this is land that belongs to the airport now, there was a stone fort that somebody in years gone by before we ever went there. It was probably 10 or 15 feet in diameter, rocks, you know, piled up. And then off to the East, there was, where there was a seepage place in the willow creek, somebody had taken and they’d built ah, woven willow sticks into, so there was this sort of little play house.
HLCD: A play house. Then we could go across the road in that sandstone and we would dig caves and play in that area. And, ah, we would, we really didn’t have supervised……
KB: This was during recess though right?
HLCD: Yes, during recess, we weren’t supervised, but we didn’t get into trouble. We just had a great time. Ah, and I remember the swing that was in the yard, I was telling Norman this the other day…..
NCC: Well, the posts of it are still there, I believe. The woman that’s working on that, she called it the, the bell tower or something. But that was really the swing. And, it was made of, there were two chains that came down and divided, and it was, it was probably, what, 10 or 15 feet high.
HLCD: Mmm hum. But, what, I was in awe of Elsie Alloy, who was Norman’s age. Because she would get on that swing and she would try to get as high as she could. And I said she could go up and over. And seems to me as though one time she did. And I was in awe of Elsie to think that she would be so…… talented.
KB: Talented. Yeah, what about other things, like you had balls to kick? No?
HLCD: We had a baseball.
NCC: We played baseball.
HLCD: Mmm huh. With our own rules of course.
KB: Somehow I believe that.
NCC: Baseball today, you call it softball. If people who played what we called baseball today, were playing hardball back in those days. But we played baseball. And in the winter time when it snowed we’d make a fox and… what was it called?
HLCD: Fox and Geese
NCC: Fox and Geese. Yeah, you know the pattern.
KB: No, what is that?
NCC: Oh, in the snow you make a circle and then, and then cross it like these lines are here.
KB: So you make a cross in the middle.
NCC: A cross in the middle. And sometimes we’d have two rows of…. And it was a…….
HLCD: Try to catch me if you can kind of game. The fox is in the middle and then he would run and try to catch us and the first one he caught would be the fox and it was just a lot of fun.
KB: And you played in the snow so you could make the lines.
HLCD: Oh yes, definitely in the snow.
NCC: That’s what we used our baseball field for in the winter-time.
KB: And how did you all get bundled up in those days? I mean, what were the different…layers?
NCC: There was layering. Overshoes we all had.
HLCD: We all wore long johns, you know, we had the, the, Mom would’ve ordered from Montgomery Ward. And then you’d put ‘em on and you’d put, then your brown stockings over with the little garters.
KB: You didn’t wear uniforms?
HLCD: Oh, heavens no. No. But, I, I never wore a dress to school except on the Christmas program. We always wore pants. Because it was cold and we had a lot of playing to do. And you got dirty if you wore a dress. I mean that wasn’t any fun.
KB: So, you just mentioned a Christmas program. Ah, then you just celebrated a lot of the Holidays, like you probably had Easter program….
NCC: No, just Christmas. Ah, Thanksgiving, we would oh, we’d you know, decorate for Thanksgiving and we’d decorate for Easter, we all you know,….And we had…...
HLCD: We had a Halloween Party.
NCC: Well, at Easter we did have the Easter egg hunts.
HLCD: Mmm huh. And then the, I remember the parents putting on those Halloween parties.
NCC: Well, they didn’t when I was there. That was a different teacher, cause Mrs. Schroeder didn’t, you know.
HLCD: Yeah, they did when I was there. And they would have “spook houses”. But, Mrs. Paquette, Emmorine, did.
NCC: Yeah, at the end of the year we would have a school picnic. Some of the parents would bring…. And we’d go out to Poncha Springs or over on Little River or someplace and spend the day and have hot dogs and hamburgers and all that kind of stuff.
HLCD: One thing I really looked forward to was when Mrs. Schroeder….ah, Schowalter, who was the Superintendent of Schools would bring out books. Every two weeks I think it was she would bring out a load of books and put it on the table. And that was the most exciting day, because she would have different levels and, and everyone would try to get their favorite books. So that was really a……
KB: So she was like a walking Library.
NCC: Yeah, she was the county Superintendent of Schools. She was also… came out a day a year and oversaw the giving of the achievement tests which we had to pass to go on to the next grade.
KB: What about the curriculum? Do you remember the different …..
NCC: Reading, writing and arithmetic.
KB: Just the usual, huh? And you just had one teacher and basically one adult with how many?
NCC: Just the usual things. About the most we ever had, I think was around fifteen.
HLCD: Well, that never happened when I was there. We never had many.
NCC: Well, a couple years, there was Evie Kroesher, or whatever her name was. And there were five or six in her family.
HLCD: What about the Browns, were Wilma and Vernon and Ellis there?
NCC: Yeah. But usually it was eight or ten kids at the most. But a couple years we had a lot; thirteen.
KB: So, is, do you remember anything else about the physical part of the school. You said that somebody thought that was a bell tower. Is there anything else?
HLCD: What about that garage that was put on later?
NCC: The, the, North end of it is, the walls are made out of cinderblock. Originally it was frame like the rest of the school. But, back during the ‘30’s the WPA had a project. They went around and they built these cinder block garage, ah, what else do you want to call them, structures in the back of every school house. Adobe Park had one and we had one and I think they did one at the Smelter Town school. But when they did, most of them they built the garage opening on the side, so the teachers could easily drive into it. But for some reason when they were at Valley View they built it on the back end so the teacher had to go around and drive in from the back. And it was, Mrs. Schroeder couldn’t do it because there was a drop off back there. And why they, they changed their plans on that school, I don’t know. They had a place they could have a cook stove out there. Most of the schools did. And they didn’t use our school so much for it, but the Adobe Park school would have farmer reunion meetings, 4H meetings. And they would always, you know, ah use the stove in the garage to make coffee.
KB: So Valley View was mostly a...
HLCD: The school was used on rare occasions for……
NCC: For other things. But there wasn’t a… it was just a school. It wasn’t the center of a community or anything.
KB: Kind of an offshoot of now, of the other school……
NCC: Of Poncha Springs.
KB: The Poncha School. Is there something that, that ah you said that a group of people, the parents wanted to make a different school, because they were unhappy with what was going on in Poncha. What, what exactly, what was going on?
NCC: I, to this day, I don’t know. All I know, Dad commented they got ticked off, that wasn’t quite the word he used, with ah,….
HLCD: The Burnetts.
NCC: With the Burnetts. And the Burnetts sort of……
KB: This is another family?
NCC: With another family, who had a ranch. Their ranch was just to the West of Poncha Springs. But there was a squabble there. What is was about, I have no idea.
KB: Ok. Well, I just thought I'd try to find out, if you knew.
NCC: Yeah, I wish I did, because I’d be happy to be helpful.
HLCD: Well, my Dad, our Dad went to school with his mother. And ah she would have him come to the front of the room every morning and she would whack him. She had the best discipline because the other kids figured if she would whack her son on the hand for doing nothing, what would she do to them. She had no prob…no discipline…she did not have a discipline problem.
KB: That’s very interesting. You know I thought of something, ah what kind of…I mean, you brought your lunches to school? Ah, you mentioned a cook stove, for heating or warming. Or you had the…….
HLCD: We had the big pot bellied stove.
NCC: Most of the schools had an old cook stove.
HLCD: But we didn’t.
NCC: But we didn’t. That’s right, at Valley View we didn’t.
KB: Could you heat up food in the winter or you just always brought the same… which was?
HLCD: A sandwich, and an apple and a bottle of milk that always got kinda warm.
NCC: One Easter, any idea how, we were having, we were to bring eggs to school and we were all going to decorate our eggs. And Mrs. Schroeder was going to bring the dyes. And I told Mom we had to boil eggs. And she said well if you’re going to dye eggs, you want them warm when their being dyed because they dye better. So we took our, each of us, a half a dozen eggs, or whatever it was, to school. Raw. When we got there, we didn’t….she didn’t want to build a fire that day, I don’t know why. So the eggs never get boiled. So we went ahead and dyed them, painted them and whatnot. And the next day we heard about it, because some of the kids “Oh, why don’t we eat our hard-boiled Easter eggs”. Well, when they tried to, it didn’t work.
KB: So from Valley View school, you went to?
NCC: Ah, to Salida High School. And ah, Helen mentioned awhile ago. We had a county graduation exercise for the schools in the southern end of Chaffee County. And they held the exercise at the Poncha Springs School, in the upstairs in the auditorium they had there. And we…all the kids, all the key kids that were graduating had to perform. I remember I played “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” on the piano.
KB: On the piano, ok.
NCC: Then we went to High School in Salida. My high school days weren’t particularly memorable. I, I went to school, period. At first, when I was a freshman, the school bus didn’t come by our place, so I had to, Dad had to find other means of transportation. So they said,… they decided I’d live with my grandparents in Salida.
KB: In town?
NCC: Yeah in town. So I did that.
HLCD: You rode your bicycle in. Didn’t you ride your bicycle in ?
NCC: Yeah, on Monday’s I’d ride my bicycle into town and stay a week and then ride my bicycle home at the end of the week.
KB: Oh, wow. And where did your grandparents live?
NCC: They lived at the corner of “G” and 8th. They lived on “G” street.
NLCD: Then you lived with our other grandmother for awhile.
NCC: And then Mom and my grandma Blanchard had a “set-to”, so I… it only lasted,…my staying with them only lasted two months. And I went to stay with my other grandmother who lived down on Park street or avenue – what’s it called…..
KB: Park Avenue?
NCC: Park Avenue, yeah.
KB: Right across from St. Joe’s?. Oh no, it was the other one. The one near Crestone?
HLCD: What’s the name of that street? You go, it goes past the hospital and on down to, to ah , to meet the Highway 50.
KB: 1st Street.
NCC: It was out the East section of town where the streets came together……
KB: They all meet there. Like Teller and “C” and Park all come together?
NCC: Yeah the main street there where the division was at Park St. or Park Avenue, whatever it was.
KB: Do you remember the address?
NCC: It was,… she was only a couple blocks from the river. It was just to, it was almost on the highway. What was that highway there?
HLCD: 291
NCC: Yeah, she was at the corner of Park Avenue and 291.
KB: Oh. Ok. Yeah.
NCC: And so then I, I stayed with her for quite awhile. And then that, then she moved, or, I don’t know what happened. Then I started,… Albert Crouse, who was a printer for the Salida Record, which was Salida's second paper back then, and he lived near us. And so he, I drove,.. rode with him to school for quite a long time. And then after school I’d go down to the, the printing plant, the Record’s office.
KB: Which was where, do you remember where that was?
NCC: It’s where the Mountain Mail is right now. The Mail was on the other side of town it was on , about where the new bank is. And the Record was there about where the Mountain Mail now is. And anyway, and then Albert, finally after I’d been there awhile he let me go back and watch him on his linotype. I’d fiddle around, and Mr.Marquard, anyway, he’d let me run other things off. It was kinda fun to do.
KB: So, as far as High School, I mean you, you play the piano, does that mean, were you were in the band?
NCC: No, I should, I should never have been given piano lessons, because I just wasn’t musical in that way. No I didn’t.
KB: Uh, huh. So were you in sports?
NCC: No I wasn’t in sports because we had to go home and do the chores.
KB: Uh huh. But not all the kids did, I guess, if, if there was some kind of a sports program.
NCC: Yeah there was.
KB: So just the ones who lived on the farms?
NCC: Well, yeah, we were just…. No some of the farm kids, the Posts, [Naccarota] and so forth were on football teams.
HLCD: It was just our, it was just our family.
KB: So Helen, what were your ah memories after you left Valley View?
HLCD: Ah when I was in the seventh grade, my mother wanted me to have more friends, girlfriends especially, because…..
NCC: I’m going to interrupt Helen – because she was the only girl in the school and Mom felt she needed some. In fact Joe Hutchison was asked how many kids there were in school at the time, that Wendell’s little brother… well you tell what….
HLCD: You go ahead.
NCC: And anyway, he said “well there’s, there’s four boys” he said “unless you count Helen , that makes five boys”.
HLCD: I was a tom-boy.
NCC: So Mom about that point decided Helen had to go.
KB: Oh oh. That’s all she needed to hear.
HLCD: Yeah. So I want to Kesner Jr. High for two years. And then I graduated from Salida High School in 1951. And I had a very pleasant time, again. And I even had lots of friends. And, in fact some of us still get together once in awhile over at Salida. We had, I was more fortunate than my brothers because my Mom made sure that I did have friends. And I belonged to Camp Fire Girls, Horizon Club. I belonged to the Drama Club at the High School, Journalism Club. And ah, buy my, I think Mom made a certain point to make sure I had a good high school time. And then ah after graduating from Salida High school I went to what is now called CSU, it was “Aggies” back then. And after graduating from there I started teaching, I ended up in Delta.
KB: So what we forgot to do in the beginning was give your date of birth.
HLCD: Oh, my date of birth is March 4th, 1933. And I was born in the D&RG Hospital in Salida. But, let’s see now there was… Dad couldn’t pay for me, because all the banks were closed.
NCC: Because Roosevelt had just taken office. For the first 17 years, of your life, was it, you only had lived under one President.
HLCD: But, I know he (her Dad) kept telling me, I couldn’t pay for you but I took you home anyway.
NCC: Because Roosevelt had closed the banks right after he took office The banks all across the country were closed for about ten days and that’s when Helen was born.
HLCD: Yeah. 1933. Ah, we were very active in 4-H during our growing up years. Ah, from the time I can remember, the boys were in 4-H with their fat beef and then I was with my cooking and the sewing and then I had fat,…the sheep and I had turkeys and I also went into, what, ah fat beef. That time the Achievement Days was held in Buena Vista during Head Lettuce Days. Then later, the Achievement, 4-H Achievement Day was held at the Community House, which was, is now a Bed & Breakfast, but used to be the Poor Farm.
KB: Mmm huh. Ok.
HLCD: Ah, that building was used ah for ah Farmers Union, and other Grange, and we had all kinds of community things there.
NCC: Square dancing.
HLCD: Square dancing? Oh, we square danced a lot. I remember that, in the summer time, especially when I was in High School, ah there would be square dancing right downtown in Salida.
KB: Where, do you remember?
HLCD: Oh there was, by the…….
NCC: The, the park that has the two lions. What do they call that?
HLCD: The main park.
NCC: The main park.
KB: Ok, Alpine Park?
NCC: Alpine, Is that what they call it?
KB: The one that’s right near the Library?
NCC: Originally at the center of that park there was a band pavilion.
KB: A band shell?
NCC: Band shell.
KB: That’s what I heard.
NCC: It, it was, and I can remember when we were small, we’d go in and stay with our grandmother and we’d go down and sit on the lawn around there and, while the band, this city band preformed, which was kind of neat. Then they quit using it and it got very, in pretty bad shape so they moved it and later had the cement out there. I guess it’s still there.
KB: Yeah, yeah. It’s like a basketball court now.
NCC: Well we went down there and used it to square dance on.
KB: And was it a live band?
HLCD: Yeah, uh huh.
KB: Do you remember some of the songs that were played?
HLCD: Oh, “Cotton Eyed Joe”, and,.. now that was a round dance. And all those square dance tunes, I don’t remember them.
KB: And what did you wear?
HLCD: Pardon me?
KB: And what did you wear?
HLCD: I just wore a plain dress. You know, it was, I didn’t have a special square dancing dress. I just had a big skirt. Mom did.
NCC: Yeah, Mom did.
HLCD: Ah, because some of our parents ah had square dancing clubs. And then they would wear certain, certain ah dresses and everything. Oh, kids we just, yeah, whatever we had on. And also in the summer time, for two or three years, ah I think it was sponsored mainly by the ah County Agent and the 4-H group, we would have movies in the Park, in the same park. Ah, we would, they’d put up a big screen and there’d be Gene Autry, you know, we’d have movies down there .And ah we would all go down in the middle of that park and watch movies.
KB: In Alpine?
HLCD: Alpine. Uh huh.
KB: Because their doing that now in Riverside. This last summer they started doing that. Probably got the idea from back then.
HLCD: Did they?
NCC: That was after my time.
HLCD: Yeah that was after your time. I think I was in Jr. High or High School.
KB: Could we, I, I just wanted to ask you Norman, after High School, just briefly, what did you do?
NCC: After High School, well, I got drafted into the Army. And I was supposed to have gone in the last part of August, but my appendix decided to burst so I spent VJ day in the hospital. But that, ah, they went ahead, and I got drafted, so I went into the Army like in the fall of ’45. And it was, I enjoyed that. I got first sent to Ft. Logan in Denver. Instead of, at that particular time the war was over so the new inductees they used them if they could type. So I was put into the, one of the main offices there running a typewriter, and helping to discharge the real soldiers, as I called them. But then I did get sent to Japan for about 8 or 10 months. And that was really worthwhile, cause we were there right after the war ended and at that time you’d be driving like through Tokyo and Yokohama, and you’d drive through mile after mile after mile of nothing but burned out homes. The whole, the whole city seemed like it had been burned.
KB: Quite an experience.
NCC: But it was interesting. And one thing, I was riding on the train one day, and this Japanese guy came up and he said, “Are any of you from Colorado”, he talked with quite an accent. And I said, well I was. And he said well he had a cousin, and his brother that lived in Salida, Colorado, he said “have you ever heard of Salida Colorado”? And of course I had, you know.
KB: Well, of course.
NCC: And it turned out his cousin, let’s see, worked for George Everett. And he had worked for George Everett for years and years and years. And this fellow I met in Japan had also worked there for awhile, but then before the war started he had gone back to Japan and he couldn’t get back to the United States.
KB: What an incredible coincidence.
NCC: Then, after I, I was in the army long enough to get enough credit so I then went to Colorado, CSU now.
KB: And you became a teacher?
NCC: Well, I majored in agriculture. And after I got out of college I worked for the Dept. of Agriculture for a while and I did not like that. It was just boring as all get out. Just sit around and wait for somebody to come into the office. Then Dad decided to sell our ranch in Salida and he bought one in Gunnison. So I thought well, my Dad and brother and I were going to go into partnership on that. But that didn’t work out. Which is, I should have thought things out clearer ahead of time, because I should have known it wouldn’t, you know, there was just a clash of personalities there. And just because we were in Gunnison, I went back to college, I went to Western State College for teachers credential and then I started teaching.
KB: Well, can either one of you think of one last memory that we can put on tape?
NCC: Well she (Helen) was a while ago mentioning things you did in the summer time. The 4-H Clubs would have a camp every summer. And we, a couple times we went up to St. Elmo and the girls would stay in one home, and the boys usually in one of the old stores, we’d go there and lay out our sleeping bags, and spend a week up there. And sometimes we’d go to the Boy Scout Camp down on Bear Creek for a week. And that was, you know, you got away from home and it was kinda interesting.
KB; And you met different children?
NCC: Yeah, other 4-H clubs from around the county.
KB; That’s good.
HLCD: Well I remember on our ranch we, ah Dad had built a pond. Ah, and in the summer time, we, our friends and our relatives, ah our cousins would swim in it. And in the wintertime we would ice skate on it. And we’d, you know, we’d build a big bonfire, and Marie was talking about this the other day, ah and Mom would make sandwiches and hot chocolate and we would skate. And, and that was a very fun place. The whole ranch was fun, but that pond with the swimming in the summer time, fishing in it, you know, and then ice skating on it. Ah, that was very nice, a very nice memory.
KB: Yeah. We need some more ponds around I think instead of TV sets for kids. Yeah, things are so different now. Well I want to thank you so much. It was really interesting and I hardly had to work at it. I mean if you’re willing, maybe we’ll do it again sometime.
NCC: I was going to say, I just, when you talk about things, I think of other things.
KB: Right. Well it’s such a nice trip up here, I might come back. And we can do it again, if you’re willing.
HLCD: That would be fine. Well, just like my Dad and my Mom met at dances. Then, there used to be lots and lots of dances when my parents were young. Ah, at all the schools. And that’s what the young people did. Dance. And Daddy was a good friend of my Mom’s brother, and that’s where they met, probably, I suppose at those dances.
NCC: Probably at the Adobe Park School.
HLCD: Yeah, probably at the Adobe Park School. And ah, they always talked about those wonderful dances. And I know before Mom died, when they were living over here, she said I wish I could just go one more time to a dance. Well, when our Nephew was married out at the Pea Green School that was a little building, ah that was more-or-less sad, but it was kinda fun. But she said, I wish I could go just one more time in my life, to one of the dances.
KB: Yeah, well it holds good memories. Thanks again.
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