interviewed by Kathy Berg

#1 - 3/14/04
This is Kathy Berg of the Salida Regional Library at the home of Wendell Hutchinson in Salida, Colorado. Today is Sunday, March 14, 2004 and it is 4:45 in the afternoon. And we’ve had a lovely time visiting and now we, I’d like to ask you some questions. We talked about you giving some more details and more information about the Valley View school. And I would love you to talk about anything else you want to talk about when you’re done doing that. So……

Wendell Hutchinson: You want me to just go ahead and start talking then?

Kathy Berg: I, that’s fine, yeah.

Wendell Hutchinson: Well, the Valley View school is exactly one mile north of our ranch here. It ah is due North, and we used, my brother and I, when he was going to school, walked that mile to school in the morning and return at night. So, a mile one way up and of course a mile back. And we ah, we went by today, there’s a dairy there, but, the dairy ah wasn’t there. At the time it was owned by John Woods. John Woods had a large family. There was Art and Bows, Jim, Harold Woods and ah, some other girls. Mrs. Consin. Mrs. Enheiser. We went right by those places up there on that roadway to Valley View. Valley View, as I understood it, was built about 19…. well it was the turn of the century. I heard 1900, but since then I’ve heard 1902. And it was my understanding too that John, John Woods was the builder, the carpenter. John Woods, and maybe his family.

Kathy Berg: So his children went to the school also?

Wendell Hutchinson: Yes, many of his children went to that school also. Another, later years, my ah brother, Joe who was 10 years younger than I, went to school there. But he, when he was in about the 5th grade, he moved to Salida, or had to go to Salida. They took, picked him up on a school bus and took him into Salida. So he didn’t go to that school only, I think, five years. This, that brother is in Denver, I mean College Station, Texas now, and teaches school there. He teaches art. The other brother, the one that went to school with me and we walked that mile so many times was, was my brother Jake.
I remember the day before, he took, walked across the lower part of the ranch and, and walked up the hill there and showed me the, how to get to the school. He said, now you just get on this, this ah roadway and go straight up there and the school will be right at the end. It so happened that there were others going to school that day, so I joined them and went to school for the first grade.

Kathy Berg: Do you remember who they were?

Wendell Hutchinson: Do I remember? Yeah. It was ah, it was some of the Cooper family. Cooper family. There was, there was, in that family was Floyd, May, Ellen, Marion, Margaret; Margaret was my age. There was ah, and there was young Elmer, the old, the father’s name was Elmer also. Young Elmer was about a year behind me. And the next, there was Charles and Daniel. And I think that was about it in that family.

KB: That was a lot.

WH: They didn’t all go to school at that same time. I also went with a kid named Dan Heiner. He was, his mother was working in the old ranch house as a cook. And he started out with me and ah when I got to school the teacher said, where’s Dan and I said “I don’t know, he started with us but he’s not here now”. What Dan Heiner did was play hooky, I think. He didn’t show up.

KB: How do you spell the last name?

WH: Oh, H… H e i n e r, I think. Dan Heiner.

KB: Did he ever show up after that?

WH: Well, yeah, at times, but very, very rarely though. He was not a very good student and would rather fish and hunt and do all other kind of things rather than go to school.

KB: Were you a good student?

WH: So, let’s see, also there was ah Robert Goff, Robert Goff. He was the son of ah, his father’s name was also Robert or Bob. Bob Goff. And he lived down on the corner a little ways below, below the, the road that went to the schoolhouse. Bob ah Bob Goff. We went to school together that first year. So he, he and Margaret, ah Margaret Cooper and Robert Goff, we were in the same grade. The teacher was Lila Starbuck. She, she was the teacher at the time. She was only there one year, but had taught there some before that. That was my first year there, but she had taught some years before that. Lila moved into town and taught in the old Long Fellow school for many, many years. Lila Starbuck. So, Bob Goff, after a year, moved to Salida also. So he didn’t continue to go to Valley View. But I do remember the building, just as if it were yesterday. They had pictures of George Washington on the, on the wall. First you come in and went through the cloak room where the, where the boys usually hung their clothing on nails and whatever was on the walls there was to hang ‘em on in the vestibule, on the West side. And the girls hung theirs on the lower side. In that same room was a crock with a little spigot on it that you got water with. And the teacher, every day would bring fresh water in ah, it was I think about a three-gallon milk can, and then she would dump the water into the crock. And then we, we all had our names then on, on the cups. And there was a place on the wall with our name and we had to put our cup back in the right place. We weren’t supposed to use anybody else’s cup. I also remember that they had two, two outside privies. And they were, oh, I’d say they were almost a half a block away from the schoolhouse, up towards the hillside there. And the West most one was ah for the boys and the other lower one, a little lower one was for the girls. And, and we were instructed not to bother the girls or tip the thing over, or anything.

KB: That was good.

WH: So, anyway, we respected it pretty much. There was no hanky-panky went on. All the teachers I had were pretty strict. So the first teacher was ah Miss Lila Starbuck. And the Starbucks family lived down the road from us had a dairy there, and they had a large family. There was Lila’s brother’s and sister’s were, were many also. The oldest one was, was ah Hap. And Hap and ah Lila were, were twins, as I remember it. And then they had…… then there was Elvis, and then there was Glenn, who just died about a year ago. Glenn, and then Paul and then Joe, Joe Starbuck, and, and Gordon. And I roomed at CSU with Gordon for four years. He’d been crippled when he was a young man. Had a real bad case of, I guess it was polio, but anyway he was very badly incapacitated, just barely lived. But he pulled, pulled out of it. But he and I then teamed up together and lived at Fort Collins. He studied agriculture and I studied vet medicine.

KB: I just have a quick question ah to go back with the name you said, Elvis. Was that Elvis as in Elvis Presley?

WH: Just like Elvis Presley, exactly. Elvis and Hap…. I think Hap’s real name was Leon, was Leon Starbuck. They went to Colorado College at Colorado Springs and they were very active in football there. In fact they made quite a name for the place. They both were linemen. But the Colorado College played a lot of teams. They played Notre Dame, they played Army and they played Navy. And they held their own against most of them, winning some of ‘em.

KB: Well that’s outstanding.

WH: But I don’t believe any of those Starbuck kids went to see, went to Valley View. Although there was an Art Woods' house on top of the mesa, and they could have possibly went before my time. But, so when I went there, it was in about 1931, ’30 – ’31. And ah, then I went to ah Salida High School. I started Salida High School about 1938 and graduated then in 1942. So, ah, I remember one of my first, maybe it was the very first day, or anyway I was looking out the window and I saw a Blue Jay on a tree out there. And I started quoting an old statement:
“A Blue Jay, A Blue Jay, sittin on a limb.
He winked at me and I winked at him.
I lifted up my bow and shot him in the chin”.
Well the teacher thought that was …. , ah, the kids thought that was funny, but the teacher didn’t think it was too funny.

KB: This was a Valley View?

WH: Yeah, at the Valley View school. So, that was one of my things I remember from that first day. I don’t know how, where I learned that, that poem. I think from one of my Great Uncles or somebody taught it to me. But I still remember it to this day.

KB: And you still remember it. That’s pretty good. Can you remember any of the classes that you had, the courses or subjects that you learned?

WH: Yeah. The first ones you know, when we were in the first grade we had, had to learn to read. Just little books. They were ah…….. Nelson Eddy, ah……..anyway those books were, were rather primitive, but they, but I learned the first, I had to learn to read them. They were such things as “spot went……my dog’s name was spot”. And then another page over there’d be a picture of a dog. And then we had other things like, things we had to learn, like…. it’s hard for me to remember.

KB: Was it ah Dick and Jane and Spot?

WH: Yeah, Dick and Jane kind of thing. And Dick and Jane and they,…. Dick went up the hill and had a pail of water. Jill fell down and broke her crown and Jill came tumbling after.

KB: Oh yeah, I have that same book.

WH: Things like that. But then later as we advanced more, we had to learn our numbers and we also had to learn all the letters. And the teacher, I remember taught us how to pronounce different letters and words. And she would put a curved hat on some, and, and, and a straight hat on top of another, depending on how you were supposed to say it. So, that’s how we kinda, how we learned the alphabet and learned to pronounce them according to what kind of a hat they had on them.

KB: Well that’s a good way. You should teach young children. Ah, so there was a chalkboard?

WH: Yes. Yeah, the old schoolhouse had a chalkboard at the front of the room. And ah we were often asked to go up there and write something on the board. But, in the class, that first year I was there, there was probably, oh, I’d say there was 15 kids in the class. Then later, it was just Norman Campbell, David Campbell and, I think about the time I graduated, then Helen came. But the Campbell’s lived, oh, about a, a mile and a half West of the school. And they’d walk everyday too to school.

KB: What was it like in the winter? Did you still have to walk?

WH: Yeah, we had to walk. It was pretty cold. If it was a real cold day, my Dad would take me horseback. We’d put on, he’d get the, he’d saddle a horse, we’d get on, I’d get on behind him, that first year. My brother hadn’t gone to school yet. And, and I was hanging onto my Dad as he went up the road horseback. And I remember he had several good horses. One was “Sox”, had four stocking feet. Another one of the horses was “Old Dave”. And Dave was a, he was a Bay horse, but he (his father) could put his coat over a fence and Old Dave would jump the fence, which was quite a… he didn’t have to open the gate that way.

KB: That was smart.

WH: That was nice, huh? So……

KB: Anything more you remember about the school building itself and different activities, like you mentioned the jug of water, was there anything else that was really unique?

WH: And another thing, every morning the teacher would start by going up to the front of the room, she’d play the piano and we’d sing some songs. Some of the songs like “God Bless America”, ah “The Star Spangled Banner”, patriotic songs like that. And later I remember ah, some of the songs teacher wanted us to say was:
“I think when little chicken drinks,
He takes the water in his bill.
He lifts his head up way up high,
And lets the water run down hill.”

KB: Did you want to sing that for us?

WH: No, I can’t sing.

KB: Ok. I just thought I’d put you on the spot.

WH: Yeah, you put me on the spot.

KB: So, can you also recall, oh, different holiday’s celebrated at school?

WH: Yes. At Christmas time we always has a Christmas party and a celebration. Ah, we had to put on a Christmas play, and they were pretty ah, sometimes they were pretty elaborate. The, after Lila Starbuck was there one year, the next year was Dorothy Allway and later she married a man named Noble; she was a teacher. And then the next teacher was Bessie M. Schroder. And she was a fine teacher, and very, very strict, but very, very good and we learned a lot from her. Bessie M. Schroeder. The Superintendent of schools, rural schools, was Bessie M. Showalter. And she would go and visit the different rural schools in the county. And I think there were about 30, 31 rural schools at one time in Chaffee County. But she’d visit each one of them. But when the two got together, Bessie Schroeder and Bessie Showalter, they would visit for several hours, really, reminiscing old times.

KB: Like we are now.

WH: Yeah, like we are now. Right.

KB: So when they were so busy talking, did you all continue your studies?

WH: Yeah, and we were supposed to be back there studying, lots of times we were listening to them tell stories. And Mrs. Schroeder had spent some time in Alaska and her boyfriend was up, had been in Alaska. She mentioned that. It was about the time of the Klondike gold rush. Another thing I remember, Bessie Schroeder, her maiden name was Johnson, Bessie Johnson. And Bessie ah had taught, among others, Glenn Everetts Grandfather, George Galicia Everett. And in one of George’s, in the book he mentioned Bessie, Bessie Johnson. And it was tellin that she was quite a proper, very good-looking woman. And come branding days or something, she’d come out and help just like a man. Bessie Schroder.

KB: Well. She was a woman of the West.

WH: She was. And I have a…., then I went to high school and she, she quit teaching up there. She didn’t teach my youngest… she taught my youngest brother Joe, ah just a year or so and then we had other teachers there. And, my brother Joe was there with, oh, in his class was a bunch of the Baker boys. One of them was the attorney ah Ken Baker, now. His father was on the water board and has more or less retired. But, but a bunch of the Baker boys were going to school. And another family that lived down the road when I was there was the Archuletas. There was Felix and his sister Charlotte and there was another one, but I forgot the other one. I think it was younger than Felix. I think Felix has came back to Salida and is living down the road from us now on Highway 50. Felix Archuleta.

KB: What are some of your happy memories of the Valley View School?

WH: Oh, we used to …..we’d get out of school, ah we had a recess. We’d start school at 8:00 and then about 10:00 o-clock we had a recess for fifteen minutes. And we went out and we could play. One of the things was dare-base. We had a kind of a, oh a mark we put across and it was about ah, maybe a hundred yards apart. And then we had a “soup” we’d put ‘em in when you caught ‘em. When you’d catch ‘em off the line, then they’d have to go in the “soup”. And the one that got all the kids in the “soup” first, won. So, ah that was a, a nice game, I thought it was fun. Sometimes we’d have one kick-the-can, too. Then we played baseball some. We had an old baseball. It had been batted around so much, the cover on it was wore out. The string inside it was beginnin to come apart. I remember I was never a good fielder, wasn’t very good at catchin ‘em, but I could hit him pretty well.

KB: All right.

WH: And one of the girls that was a pitcher was Elsie Alloy. And Elsie’s alive today, yet. She’s in the, kinda in the nursing home now, I think, Elsie is. But she, she pitched ‘em so slow to us, even a blind man could hit ‘em. I think I’d even hit ‘em today, as bad as my eyesight is. If you hit it over the fence out there, if you did that was a home run. We didn’t have very big teams, you know, maybe three or four on each side. Later, when Norman and David was there, we, we only had something like four in the whole school, five, maybe. There was Norman and David, Jake and I. And Cameron I think came on a bit later. But there was Elsie then too, so that made five.

KB: So when you went to Salida to school, ah, was that because of the grade?

WH: I graduated from the eighth grade. And when you graduated from the eighth grade then you had to go to the high school. And the rural schools always, always met at the old Poncha Springs schoolhouse up here. And it had a kind of a meeting room upstairs, still does. And it’s used as a City Hall for Poncha Springs. A nice building. My Father had gone there to school. And my, my Great Uncles and my Grandfather had gone to school up there also. But, Valley View hadn’t come into use yet, for them, so. But I got the opportunity of going to Valley View School. But we had eighth grade ceremonies and we had to pick a historical subject and talk before a group, which was, it had a lot of anxiety, but it was good for us.

KB: It was good to learn that at that young age.

WH: Yeah, It was. For example, I talked about…. I went to my Great Uncle, he was kind of the historian, he said why don’t you talk about Chief Ouray . So I did. I talked about Chief Ouray and his wife Chapitta and their son Pahlone. And about Palone being captured by the Kiowa’s and he, when he was about two, and took him away from Ouray and Chapitta. And then, then later he had a chance to come back and live with them but he didn’t want to. He said “no, I grew up with the Kiowas, they’re my friends and I don’t want to come back.” So, anyway, then the next year when Jake graduated, he talked about the Espinosas. The Espinosas. And they were, they were some outlaws that were disgruntled about the ah Spanish American war. A lot of land had been lost during that war in Mexico, and these Spanish guys were disgruntled about it. They came through the country murdering lonely ranchers & miners. In this hard-scrabble county outside of Westcliff there was David Bruce. He was a lonely miner. They came in and chopped his head open and shot him. Then they went up in dead man’s gulch, and John, ah John McPherson’s brother Murdock was up there settin up a sawmill and they came down, and their friend Henry Harkins they found him, he’d been chinkin his cabin and they found him murdered. And they thought it was Indians, but it was not the Indians, it was the Espinosas. They cut his head open with an axe and shot him four or five times. He’s,.. Henry Harkins today is buried about oh, fifteen miles out of Colorado Springs, and there’s a little white picket fence around the grave there. Henry Harkins. Incidentally, Henry Harkins crossed the plains with my Great, Great Grandfather and Grandmother and their family and my Grandmother Annabelle. So, so, but he was in that same wagon train. In fact, little John McPherson fell out of the wagon some way. I suppose it was their own, McPherson’s own wagon. But Harkins saw it, and he hollered real loud, “Woah, Woah”, and then they did stop just as the big wheel was about to go over little John. Little John was, oh he was born in 1855. They came across in 1860, so he was about five years old. But he was spared, by Henry Harkins. But then Henry Harkins was killed by the Espinosa brothers up there. They got over in South Park and killed another one or two. They got up into Oro City, below Leadville and it was a different story. Boy the miners didn’t want to put up with anymore. So they organized a posse and among them was old Chuck Nachtrieb and others, and Henry Lamb. And they, they finally, after quite a lot of research, or lookin for ‘em, found them, and they were up on a peak. Still today it’s called Espinosa Peak. And he was murdered. Ah, they…, Henry Lamb shot him, shot one of the Espinosas. The second Espinosa got away, went back down to New Mexico and got a cousin,…. I believe it was a cousin, and he was only fifteen. And then they came back on a rampage, pretty much in the San Louis valley over here. So, ah…but they hired, hired some army guys from Fort Garland down there to go, to go lookin for them. And they, they got Tom Tobin, an old trapper to go with ‘em. Tom Tobin did go with ‘em and he, he was able to track ‘em and they got ‘em up ah in kind of a canyon, in a hole and they couldn’t get out and Tobin says “there’s your Espinosas” and he let the army guys shoot at ‘em, they missed. And he said give me the gun”, and they did. He shot both of ‘em, just one shot apiece. But he was an old frontiersman, you know, he didn’t waste his bullet, Anyway, he chopped their heads off, this is the way the story goes, ah he chopped their heads off and then he want back to Ft. Garland where they were havin kind-of a ball that night, and he, he had these heads in a gunny sack and he grabbed the end of the sack and rolled the heads out on the floor and he said “here’s your Espinosas”. Now that sounds like a fictitious tale, but It’s supposed to be true.

KB: OK. It’s supposed to be true. So was their mean-spiritedness, was their goal to just rob these people, or just wanted to kill them?

WH: They took some things. Yeah. In that ah, when they got one of those Espinosas they found Murdock McPherson’s vest, so they did take some of the things. And I think maybe his watch. But, it was in the cabin, I guess when the Espinosas were stalked down.

KB: That was a good story.

WH: That’s a good story

KB: So do you have any good stories about ahmmm, family life on the ranch, and all that went on there like things that your Mother did?

WH: Oh, about that time on the ranch, growing up here, we…it was pretty much in those times all horse drawn equipment. Mowing machines, hay rakes, and all. And they had big A-frame packers with cables between ‘em. And, and they had just wagons, just old hay wagons. And they pulled the old hay wagon in three compartments; one in front, and one behind and one in the middle and used the harpoon fork in the center to pull up the hay. So ah, those, those stacks were huge. They were, oh, probably at least 40 foot tall, some of ‘em. And down in my dog cemetery now, that’s where there was tack yard there. And since then the highways come through and widened the road and, and took a lot of that tack yard out.

KB: Uh huh. Did you have a lot of chores as a young man?

WH: Well, yeah, when we come home from school, we always, my brother and I always had to go bring wood in to the wood box; make sure it was full of wood. And that’s, our stoves were all heated with wood. We didn’t in those early times, didn’t have any coal either. But ah, later we got some coal. And the train comin across our railroad track, the grade’s still over there, and trains would come from Crested Butte where they had mines, and some of that coal would fall off along the edge. We, we were supposed to go over there and pick up some of that coal that fell off. My father became a brakeman in later years and sometimes he made some of that coal fall off. I shouldn’t tell you that I guess, but he did. He’d just push few chunks off.

KB: And then you were supposed to go pick it up?

WH: We’d pick it up, yeah. That was kinda stealing, stealing from the Government.

KB: Well, I’m not going to tell anybody. What about family celebrations at home, ah what kind of things did you do?

WH: Well, yeah at home, we always had…. on every birthday we always had an angel food cake, usually, made. I can remember, like when I was six, that, that was first grade, it had six candles. But as we got older they’d usually add the extra candles. But when you got too, too many to count, then they ah they didn’t have that many. But seems like the cake was always angel food, an angel food cake that my Mother made.

KB: Did she do a lot of chores around the ranch?

WH: Well, she didn’t. She didn’t do so much work on the ranch as she did the house. She always kept a good house. Clean, neat, and as kids we had to take our shoes off a lot of time when we come in. Back in those days too, I remember you open the, the screen door would just be filthy black with flies. And I don’t know why so many flies. And I think it’s because at the upper house, up there they threw the garbage out in the yard and let the birds pick at it. And I think it, it was a fly hazard too. Maybe the flies would gather round in that garbage that was thrown out there.

KB: So did she do a lot of canning and did she have a garden that she grew vegetables in?

WH: We all had, yeah, we had a, had a small garden. In our time it was in the backyard. And in it was radishes, I remember, and tomatoes, some, some lettuce, some cabbage. And then right back behind the corrals there was about a half acre of corn that they always put in. And they kept it pretty well weeded. They used a horse drawn implement to keep the weeds down. And then, then the corn was always harvested and thrown in the top of an old……there was an old barn that was there, and had, it burned in later years, but in the top of that barn was a loft, and they threw that full of corn. But they, the hired men, when they were around, used to, used to eat a lot of that corn. I remembered some of those hired men said “boy I sure do like my roastin ears”. So they would roast the corn and, and the hired men would get it. Some of them would eat whole cobs of corn. But then the corn too, after it dried, you could twist it and get a hand full of corn and we used to feed the chickens with it; chickens and the turkeys.

KB: So was everything on your ranch just for your own consumption, or did you sell things to your neighbors or in town?

WH: We,… the cattle, of course, we sold the steers. The calves were almost always sold in the fall. And still are to this day. Just so we,…. but most of the other food we did…… Ah, this same Cooper family that were on the hill, that had so many kids, we,… my Great Uncle let him have a garden down here in the bottom. And young Elmer had to weed it and keep it going. But it, it was quite a good sizeable garden. And Cooper himself used the garden material, but we also used it in the ranch house to feed the hired men. So it worked out about right. The Coopers put it in. We furnished the land and the water. But as far as sellin’ produce downtown, we, sometimes we’d take hay and sell it to the grocery, to Vaughns Feed Store and that would give, would help pay on the grocery bill.

KB: What did they do with the hay?

WH: Oh, Vaughns feed… yeah, back in those days there was a lot of buggies, you know. And they, they’d come in and buy the hay. We had to bail it though. We had an old bailer I have pictures of, if I can find it. So, they would bail the hay, take the hay and bail it. And then they would sell it and they would feed ah, ..they’d take it to people and they’d feed, feed their horses. Cause almost everybody had a, a buggy and, and at least one horse. So they needed hay.

KB: Do you remember where Vaughns was located? The feed store.

WH: Yeah. Yeah. It was located where…. there’s a bank downtown now called……. it’s……

KB: Is it Pueblo Bank and Trust?

WH: There’s a bank there today, and it changes…… I think it’s called Bank……

KB: Bank One?

WH: Bank One. It’s called Bank One.

KB: Oh that’s where it was, on “G” Street.

WH: There was a grocery store in front and then back behind it was a kind-of a barn, and they kept the hay in there that they sold to people. Vaughns Grocery Store. George W. Vaughn. I suppose he was George Washington Vaughn.

KB: So is there anything that you can, that you want to tell us about what you did on the ranch? I mean, I mean just living there. I know you had, you had your chores, but things are so different now. I just want to get a little flavor of, you know, how your life was on the ranch.

WH: We,…. I guess some of the most fun we had was,… I guess it was fun. We had to go up in the hills after the cattle. We had to go up in the hills and help, help the Uncles, and my Dad, get the cattle and bring ‘em in, in the fall, and look, look at ‘em in the summer too. Back in those days we rode what we called a bog hole. Cattle, ah, they overgrazed it. I hate to tell you that but they did. They overgrazed it and then cattle would get in those bogs and would get stuck in the mud. And we’d have to go on horseback and throw a rope on ‘em and pull ‘em out. But they was thin, and perhaps taller. It was kinda pathetic. Today, things are much different. We, we had larger permits, that we probably shouldn’t have that big a permit in those times. Anyway, that’s what we did. And then here on the ranch, oh, I remember I, my job,…. my brother Jake’s first job was to pull, lead the stacker horse. And the stacker horse was hooked onto a cable and would pull those loads off the wagon and up onto those tall stacks. So ah, that was the first ranching we did then. When we got older they let us drive a hay rake. We’d go out,… the hay rake had long fingers on it and you’d rake it into windrows. And then men would go along later and bunch it up and make shocks out of it. And then they’d put those shocks……….

KB: Shocks?

WH: Shock. A shock of hay. It was just a pile, a pile of hay, maybe about three or four feet in diameter and maybe, maybe three or four feet tall. You’d stick the fork in it and pitch it onto the wagon. That was a shock of hay.

KB: Hmmm. Just like Shock….”S H O C K”. Hmmm.

WH: Yeah, like you got shocked. An electrical shock. A shock of hay. So, those were some of the good times. Then, as time when on I got big enough to run the wagon. That was, I thought that was really a promotion. I was probably fourteen then and I could run a wagon, had a team of horses on the front. And learned, we learned how to put the hay in there like it was supposed to be, haul it into the stack yard. And then get the harpoon fork, pull it down, shove it into the hay and trip the levers on it. Still got an old harpoon fork on the side of one of the buildings down here at the ranch. But we,…and then pull that hay up. If you did it just right you could unload that hay rack in three, in three parts. But if you got a lot of short grass hay, it would fall off, and it’d take you six or seven trips to get that, get that hay up there on the stack.

KB: Sounds like a lot of hard work.

WH: Yeah it was. Yeah, a lot of work

KB: So then from eighth grade you went to Salida?

WH: Yeah, after we got out of Valley View we ah, we went to Salida to High School. And ah, back then they didn’t ah, we didn’t have school buses to take us in. Now, when my brother Jake and I were going to High School, after about one year they got us an old Model ‘A’ Ford and we’d go, we’d go into school with it.

KB: How old were you?

WH: Oh,…. about, well, I was in the 8th grade, and ah my, my brother was drivin’ it when he was fourteen or fifteen, I’m sure.

KB: So they didn’t have drivers licenses then?

WH: Well, yeah, they did. Anyway we got by with it. Maybe we weren’t old enough, to matter. Then later they got school buses. And, ah, they really didn’t all get school buses until about 1955 or so. I remember I was on the school board here and I said, we got, those rural kids really have to have transportation to get in to Salida. So then they started a school bus. Now, I think they, they’ve overdone it. Everybody in town is served by a school bus.

KB: Yeah, they should walk now. Yeah. Well, and everybody needs a little more exercise these days, so walking to school might be the answer.

WH: They should be walking to school. Here in Salida they used to walk clear over from the Italian side, over there, clear over. They didn’t have to walk a good mile to school. But it didn’t hurt ‘em, anymore than it hurt me to go to Valley View.

KB: Right. Well, I think I’m going to stop here only if you promise I can come back and start again when you’re 15 years old, or we’ll, we’ll start your High School years. I’d love it. Well, thank you so much.

WH: Yeah. You bet. Sure. I’ll see if Betty can find that tape that I made. I think we might have loaned it out.

KB: For the Valley View School?

WH: Yeah, for the Valley View School.

KB: Well, it’s been more than enjoyable and you have a lot to say and I appreciate your time. It’s been a joy.


#2 - 3/21/04

KB: Today is Sunday, March 21st. Thank you Wendell. And I’m here at ah Wendell F. Hutchinson’s house on Highway 50. It’s about 5:25 in the afternoon. And, we are continuing our …… this is the second recording of Wendell's life. And we ended up when you were fourteen or fifteen and you were ah driving your bike – ah you were driving your car to school and you didn’t have a license, but we already went through that. So why don’t you tell me some of the things you remember about what you did in High School: the activities, the classes you took, did you like it, did you not like it, some of the friends you had.

WH: Well, when I was,…. I graduated from Valley View School over here. But, it was the eighth grade graduation and we had to go up…… I think maybe I already said that didn’t I? We had to go up to Poncha, to the old Poncha School house. There were about 31 districts in the county then. And so I went up there and that’s where I gave my graduation speech. And I talked about Chief Ouray and his wife Chippita and their son Palone. My Great Uncle Art had given me the story, and I, I was scared, I remember giving that speech in front of a whole room of people up there in the top of the Poncha school house. So, I’ve talked to some other’s that graduated about the same time, like ah Art Post, here in Salida. He remembers very well the same thing that happened. There was Leta Cantonwine, a girl from Nathrop. She was ah, she graduated tops in our class from Salida High School, Leta Cantonwine did. She, she also graduated from the eighth grade and she gave a talk in the old school house. I don’t know what she talked about. I just remember Art Post for one. Then the next year my brother graduated…..

KB: Brother who?

WH: My brother Jake. And he, he’s about two years younger than I am. He talked on the Espinosa brothers, how they marauded the area, came through killing and different old-timers that were in log cabins.

KB: Right, you told me all that.

WH: I told you that. Yeah, ok.

KB: You told me all that. I’d love to hear it again, but we want to get to some other things. It was a great story. So, what were some of the activities you participated in, in High School and your classes?

WH: In High School I went in, I was gonna go out for football and I did for about, a little while, but I decided after meeting up with a couple of real tough guys in front of me and being snowed under, I think, I thought I’d rather be a student. But it did make a different change in my life too, when I quit. Being an athlete in school was a good honor. And a good many of my classmates did become good, good athletes. Like, oh, Eugene Naby, ah Frank Curtis, ah, Sammy Post, Art Post, some other’s. But I decided that I would ah……. oh, another one, Albert Starbucks. Those were guys on the football team then. The Coach was, was Gov Gluner , and he was a tough old bird. He scared me all the time. He bawled me out.

KB: Gluner? Did you say GOV?

WH: Gov Gluner. He taught ah mechanical, mechanical arts. In other words, he was a shop teacher. But not the wood, it was the metal. They’d rebuild old cars and farm machinery and stuff. And that was Gov Booner. But he was an assistant coach too. Remember, the early coach White was a very productive coach. Salida High School in the early 1930’s won the State Championship three times in a row. And then the final year, 1936 they got beat in the finals by Grand Junction, 6-nothing.

KB: Ouch!

WH: I remember seeing that game. It was a cold day game. I went with my parents to see, to see the game. So, so ah…….

KB: So did you ever play in a game, or you quit the team before the practice?

WH: No, no I didn’t go out for any wrestling or basketball or any of those things. Some of the, some of my classmates did, and really stared. So, not only did the early teams of the 30’s do well, but about the time we, I graduated, Neal Merring was the coach. And Neal Merring was ah, he, he had three different years where he got to the State Championship, but lost in the final game. The first game they played Fort Collins for the State Championship. Back in those days the schools played everybody.

KB: Mmm huh. They didn’t have divisions.

WH: They didn’t have divisions so much. For example they played South High School in Denver, and they played Fort Collins. But in that particular period, they played Fort Collins and lost 7-6. Then the next year they played ah, I think, Loveland, and they got beat by about a couple of touchdowns. And the third time, I think they played Longmont. But anyway those were…….

KB: And what was the year again…..Longmont?

WH: Let’s see, it would be…… I graduated from High School in 1942.

KB: Mmm huh. Well that’s close enough, I was just trying to follow.

WH: So, yeah, so in 1942 they would meet Fort Collins. In 1943, I think they played Loveland. In 1944 they played Longmont. And they lost all three games.

KB: Oh. Well those were big schools.

WH: So, some of the teachers I remember in high school were ah,….. Mr. Burgner. And his son Jack was a, was a classmate of mine. Jack Burgner. And he was also a good football player, Jack Burgner. And there was ah, let me see, the teacher that taught Spanish and Latin was ah Donald Custer. Don Custer was a very, a very good teacher. I took Spanish two years and then the final, final year I took Latin. I thought Latin would be good because I wanted to become a Veterinarian.

KB: So you knew then.

WH: I thought if I knew Latin terminology, it would help me. And it did. But the Spanish helped also, since Spanish is a Latin based language. Let’s see, the Math teacher was Joseph Soules And he was a wiry little man that always walked real fast to school. And, and ah, he was always pointing out, he would point to you and say, if you had your hand up, he’d say “you, big boy”, “you, big boy”, “what do you know about this” ‘er, “you, big boy”. I don’t know what he said to the girls. Every, every boy was a “big boy”, “you, big boy”. Joe Soles. The….ah…..incidentally the High School burned too, while, in later. Not while I was in school there, but later. And ah, this Joe Soules had a lot of different, he taught Geometry and he had a lot of Geometry symbols up on his wall. And they had a hard time keeping him out of there once that fire was going. He said “all my, all my things are going to burn”, and they did I guess, because they wouldn’t let him go back in and get ‘em.

KB: Do you recall the year of the fire?

WH: Mmmm. I was on the school, I became, later after I got out of school, I was on the school board. And I started I think, on the school board about 19……. Mmmm. I can’t remember exactly when that happened.

KB: That’s ok. Sometime in the ‘50’s.

WH: It burnt the school down. And the present High School is what we built later. Cause I was on the school board twenty-nine years. And was President the last 18 years.

KB: Wow!

WH: I’d say that fire took place in the oh, in the 1950’s. Ah, let’s see, the chap that taught ah, he taught Chemistry and Physics was Allen Hampshire. Allen Hampshire. He was ah, I thought he was a very good teacher. He came from Coffeeville, Kansas. But if the classmates was always trying to get Allen Hampshire to get off the subject, so they’d mention Coffeeville and we’d get off on Coffeeville, Kansas and he’d start talking about Jesse James and all the desperados in Kansas and get them off the subject. But he taught Physics and Chemistry. The principal we had, ah the Superintendent at that time was Lawrence A. Barrett, Lawrence A. Barrett. L. A. Barrett. He was a very bright man also. Let’s see, the Principal then was a chap by the name of Kennedy. He’s not related to John F. Kennedy and that group. But he was, he was Irish. And he was a very good Principal. Let me see, who else…….?

KB: Was there ever any reason for you to be sent to the Principal’s office, that you want to talk about?

WH: No. No I was a pretty good boy. I didn’t get sent to the Principal’s office much, so I wasn’t reprimanded.

KB: Did you have a favorite teacher?

WH: Yeah, I guess I did. Ah, there was a teacher that taught English. Her name was Wilma Scott. She was still there when I, later when I was on the school board, we still had Wilma Scott. And she was a really fine English teacher. In fact, when I graduated from high school I had to give a speech and she was the one that taught me, she wrote, she helped me write out the speech. To this day I can’t remember what I said. It didn’t really make much sense. I’d have been better off if I could have given a good history talk.

KB: So were you Valedictorian of your High School class?

WH: Well, no. Ah, no, ah, Leta Cantonwine was the, was the Valedictorian and the second in charge was Maxine Heberer. I think the Heberers owned the old Sherman Hotel in town. So, Leta Cantonwine was a country girl from out at Nathrop. The Cantonwine family was, was one of the early settlers there in the valley. But they, they had to give up their farm too because of hard times. So, during the depression years of ’30, which was Leta. We’ve had several class reunions since. In fact, our class, graduating class of 1942 has had more reunions than any other class. I think we’ve had oh, fifteen maybe, fifteen reunions. The last one was our 60th. We tried to get Leta Cantonwine to come, but she didn’t. We had ah, one of the boys in our class that I remember, became a medical doctor, Dr. Howard Rupp. And he, I remember when he was in school, he, he was in Allen Hampshire’s ah chemistry class and he cut his self on a broken test tube and it, it caused him to faint and he fell right back into Allen Hampshire’s arms. I don’t know, Allen was pretty, I think he was quite excited. He, I think he thought Rupp was going to die. But then Rupp went on to become a medical doctor. And he said all his life if he, he could stand all kinds of blood from other people, but if he cut himself he would faint. He couldn’t stand to see his own blood.

KB: Wow. So, you mentioned a little earlier that you took Latin because you knew you wanted to become a Veterinarian. When did you decide that you wanted to become a Veterinarian and what caused you to decide that? How did you come to that?

WH: Well, ah I’ll tell you, my father ah, he used to help the local Veterinarian around here do things. Dr. Christensen and a Dr. Reimenschneider. He,… they’d get him to go help them. He was good, a good hand a throwing horses, that sort of thing. They’d get him because a lot of times in those days they didn’t give the horse any anesthetic, they just, they just put ropes on the horse and pull his legs out from under ‘em and threw ‘em, and then the vet would castrate ‘em. A lot of times too, sometimes ranchers themselves would cut their own horses. But anyway, that’s kinda the reason I wanted to be a vet was, it kinda intrigued me. I remember in Dr. Reimenschneider’s car and Dr. Christensen’s car both, they had all kinds of drugs pretty much in the back seat of the car. They had an arsenal of drugs in there and bottles and, and chains to pull calves and that sort of thing. So that’s kinda when I decided I would maybe become a vet. And you know, since I hadn’t went out for…….. I think I owe a bit of, a lot of gratitude to my, a cousin of mine, that he was a second cousin, his name was Art Hutchinson. You know, I have a son named Art Hutchinson too. But this was a, this was a second cousin. He was the son of Joseph Mills Hutchinson who was Sheriff here during, from 1917 to about 1927.

KB: And he was one of them that influenced you in becoming a vet?

WH: Yeah, he lived in…. So, those two different vets, had their cars full of things and that’s one of the reasons I decided to become a veterinarian I think. And then the fact that I hadn’t,… I started and didn’t go out for school, so I .… out for sports, so I just started studying a lot. And ah I didn’t graduate tops in my class, but I did graduate third in my class.

KB: That’s pretty good.

WH: That was pretty good wasn’t it? Incidentally, there were 92 in our class. And that was the largest class for many, many years. And the very next year when my brother and Rex Rhodes,…. you know Rex Rhodes?

KB: Oh yeah, ah huh, sure.

WH: Rex Rhodes was in that next class. I think there was only fifty-five in the class. But the reason there were so many there in 1942, in the late ‘30’s they were doing a lot of road construction around here, on the highway. Highway 50 and the road over Poncha Pass and up to Monarch, those roads were all kinda rebuilt. Anyway, that’s ah one of the, another one of the reasons I guess I became a vet, was because I was interested, not only in the livestock here on the ranch, but in my neighbors too. Most all of them all had cattle of some kind. For example the Starbucks down here had a dairy. And, if you go down the road you still see ah, ah sign that says Starbucks? Starbuck Dairy.

KB: Right, right near the bowling alley.

WH: So, originally that was a King Brother’s Dairy. And King, they each had a dairy barn and on each side of it, the two dairy barns faced each other. And then those houses, if you go down by the Starbuck place, the two houses were very much alike and they faced each other. Still do. But, ah Betty Starbuck lives in the West most house and the Eastern house was ah exactly like it. Most of the Starbuck boys and all, grew up there, in that old house. Ah, Dr. Gene Avey who is a vet in Glendive, Montana, also became a vet. He was in my class and he was a good athlete. But, he’s still, ah still practicing. And he’s, he’s almost, he’s about my age, almost 80, and he’s in Glendive, Montana. So ah…….

KB: So, where’d you go to school?

WH: Then I went to college. We both went to C….Colorado State University. Then, it was Colorado A & M college. Colorado Agricultural & Mechanical Arts.

KB: They called it the “Agie” didn’t they?

WH: So, that’s where I went to college and that’s where Gene Avey went also. But Gene went into the service first. I came, I started in school at CS, well at “AGIE”, and then I dropped out because my Father, it was during the war years, he couldn’t get help on the ranch, I came home here. For two years I helped my Father here on the ranch. I went back about 1946 then. But I did, I served a hitch in the Merchant Marine there, just before, before getting back into college again. So I served a hitch in the Merchant Marine. It was in the South Pacific. And at that particular time they were amassing great fleets of ships and airplanes. And, and I was on a tanker, the USS LaBrea Hills tanker. And it went out to sea with a load of high-octane gas. And it they, if it had been, ever been bombed it would have, would have been blown to smithereens. Anyway, they, the thing about that was, they, that’s when Truman decided to go ahead and drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese ah ended the war then. It saved a lot of, cost a lot of lives of civilians, Japanese people, but it sure saved a lot of American lives. Cause they had amassed great amounts of, of ships and ware planes and stuff and they were going to attack Japan. But they, the Japanese would have really dug in and it would have been a very costly error. So, I guess Truman decided to do it right. He dropped that atomic bomb on both of those two towns. It devastated them, and terrible, terrible slaughter. Weapons of mass destruction.

KB: Yeah. Long ago. Yeah.

WH: Yet, George Bush today can’t find that.

KB: Oh, he’s still looking though.

WH: He’s still looking though, isn’t he?

KB: Ah, let’s see, so you graduated from Colorado State University in 1946?

WH: Incidentally, there were about 45 in my, in my graduating class and I was second.

KB: “Huck”, you’re really smart!

WH: Oh I had pretty good grades. I, I studied like a dog too. I studied long hours, I’ll say that.

KB: Well, good for you. Well, you loved it, so that was a good incentive.

WH: So, I graduated then. I think I graduated in 1949. I know it was ’49, the same year I married my sweetheart Sue. Sue Swallow. You know, the Swallow family was an early family here too. It was on Highway 50, down there about where the Ford Garage is; that was Swallow property. At one time they owned most of the, she and her early relatives, including Noel Ware, they owned all the water rights that Tenacy had. Some of the best water rights on the stream. I wish we’d have kept some of those rights, but we didn’t.

KB: So, where did you meet your sweetheart?

WH: Well, ah she came up to some dances here. I remember the first time I danced with her, and the first time I really ah noticed her much, was over at a school house here in Adobe Park. It was the Adobe Park School house. Now she was sittin over there with her two sisters, Frankie and Ann and her Dad was there too, and Mother. And most of the guys were afraid, afraid to ask them to dance because they were afraid of Lou Swallow. He was, he was an older man. He was the same age as my, my Grandfather. And he also, so, he was about 50 when he married Mrs. Swallow who was a Wall. And anyway, I remember walking across the floor feeling kind of conflicted, and didn’t know whether she’d say yes or no, which she did and so I had the first dance. I couldn’t dance very well, of course. But it was, I remember it as if it was yesterday.

KB: So, you didn’t actually go to school with her, this is when you were both out of school?

WH: No. She went to school here in her earlier years, then they moved to Arizona. First they moved to California and she went to some California schools when she was little. Then she moved to Tempe, Arizona and ah she ah went and enrolled in Arizona State and she graduated from Arizona State in 1949, the same year I graduated from CSU. So, ah, we ah, we got married that same year, 1949. Got married on August…. I got out of college June the 10th. And she had gotten out in late May, down at ah Arizona State. We had the wedding in the old Presbyterian Church, here in Salida. And it’s, it was at 3rd and “F” Street. There’s just a vacant lot there now. But they moved that church, they tore it down. And, I have the windows, part of the windows in this house here, come out of that church. The Presbyterian Church, has most of the same windows that were in the original Presbyterian Church.

KB: So, it was love at first sight?

WH: Was it kinda, well, kind of. Yeah, I guess it was. Anyway, I remember I went down to Tempe to ask her to marry me. I wasn’t sure she’d say yes, when I was out there. I went down to see her. I went with a friend from “AGIE” in that early year. I went down with him. He drove me down in a new Plymouth. His name was Schaeffer. Ted Schaeffer. But I went down with him and he stayed there with us too, so. And we should have, I should have proposed to her out on the prairie there. We went out to get some wood for the fire-place. But I didn’t, I waited til evening, and it was kind of in a hurry. We had another engagement to go to and my wife was kind of ah anxious to get there on time.

KB: Your girlfriend. You weren’t married yet.

WH: Yeah. And I was excited. Anyway, I pulled off on kind of a little side road and, and then I proposed to her. I had a ring and, and give her the ring and she agreed to marry me. So we got married on August the 17th, 1949. And we were here a bit, and then moved to Gunnison, Colorado where I practiced for almost a year and then came back to Salida later and practiced here the rest of my life, until just a few years ago.

KB: Uh huh. What did she get her degree in?

WH: In, in Education.

KB: So she was a teacher?

WH: Yeah, she was a teacher. She also majored in, in piano. Ah she took piano, and she, she thought maybe she might be a pianist for maybe an orchestra somewhere. But she got, but after we got married she was tired of that constant practicing for those complicated melodramas, or whatever they are. So, she, she never much, after we had family she, she just became my, my husband (wife), she helped me with my practice. She helped…the kids…we had three children and they, they grew up and she was really good to take care of the kids, and even the grandchildren. I had one of my granddaughters here just this past week. In fact she left just Saturday. Abbey Hutchinson. She, she lives, she’s going to CSU incidentally. And she’s majoring in Animal Science. But, she was here. But, Sue was a, she helped with those two kids. My son Art had two girls, Aaron and Abbey.
Aaron is the oldest one. And she has a horse training business at Longmont now. But Abbey is still going to CSU. She works at Starbucks Coffee place. Starbucks Coffee place. Had to get over there at 5 A this morning. Five, AM. And, and open up, get it goin, get the coffee perkin and all that stuff.

KB: So, they followed in your footsteps in a way, didn’t they?

WH: Yeah, yeah, kinda, uh huh.

KB: Did you ah, show them, when they, they were younger, did they get to stand by you, and like you were learning, and you found out when you were in High School that this was going to be the, the job you wanted?

WH: Yeah, they, they did have the opportunity kinda to grow up here. My wife ah … for many years they stayed upstairs in the upper bedroom up there. And when Abbey came this past week, she went up there and stayed and it reminded her of the days she stayed up there with my, with my wife. She said she and, that my wife would have Aaron on one side and Abbey on the other. Sometimes they’d, they’d change sides and sometimes one would be next to her and then they’d change and then the other one would be. So ah…..

KB: So, you were a close family it sounds like.

WH: Yeah, we were a close family. But then we did have some disagreements, ah and. So this was kinda, so having her come here the other day was, was a kind of re…reunion, I’d say.

KB: How wonderful. Yeah

WH: Which, which was very nice. I, well, my son Art and Lisa have, have kinda disagreements. And that was what I, I had some too.

KB: Well, I think all families have disagreements.

WH: Have trouble don’t they? Yeah.

KB: You’re not the only one. So that’s neat that they’ve followed in your footsteps, I think. That says, that says a lot about you that your granddaughters have followed in your footsteps. They must admire you.

WH: Would you repeat that, please.

KB: I was just saying that I think that says a lot about you and how you influenced your grandchildren, you know. Because they are doing very close, you know the same type of work, at least working with animals, and they have the love for animals that you do.

WH: Right, Yeah, yeah. Yeah, when she was here, she helped me feed the cows the other day. She helped me change the water, up here, and moving troughs around and such. And she was, said that’s what she wants to do. That’s Abbey. She wants to come here. The other girl has that horse thing going. And I think she’s doing very well with it. But she’s now living in Longmont and has her horse business there. She leased a piece of ground from a rancher. And, it had a barn, a stable. And so she, leases ah stalls out for horses. She also teaches other girls how to jump. Aaron got to be quite an avid horse jumper.

KB: Wow. That is a sport. So, ah well we’ve got you graduating from college and marrying and you have your children. Umm, I was just going to ask if you can remember, we had talked before we got on, about ah the different ranches that were around….

WH: When?

KB: When? The different ranches. When? A long time ago, well as far back as you can remember.

WH: Heee, ah, I’ll say there’s some things that have not changed so much. For example, Frank McMurray has probably the largest ranch in the valley. And ah Frank McMurray still owns the ranch, and he, he runs it with his offspring. He has three, three children and one of them married a, a girl from the San Luis Valley and they, they still run the ranch there in Nathrop. And then there’s Joe Cogan. The Cogans’ have ah themselves a pretty big ranch. And, they run about 400 cows. Ah, it has reduced some. Albert Eggleston runs most of the cattle there now. With Albert related to Joe Cogan.

KB: How, how are they related?

WH: How are they related? The old original Jack Cogan, had ah, he had three… four daughters and one of them married Norman Engleston. And Norman and his wife then had, they had ah six kids. And Albert, who lives out here now, was one of them. Now that, that ranch out there that Albert’s on now was ah owned by some of the, I think,…. yeah I think it was owned by one of the Usnicks (?). And then they,.. he bought it and he’s put sprinklers on it and now he’s made a real fine ranch and raises a lot of alfalfa hay to sell. And also, he went out to Joe Cogan’s, his Uncle, and bought his cattle, a whole bunch of ‘em. And so, he’s running, running on, on Joe Cogan’s forage permits.

KB: So, where is that ranch?

WH: It’s out on the way to Buena Vista.

KB: Oh, ok. Oh, the one in Nathrop? Yeah.

WH: It’s, about ah, I’d say it’s just about three miles this side of Buena Vista, three, four. So, that’s the Cogan ranch.

KB: So that was the Cogan ranch when you were growing up too?

WH: Yeah. It was Cogan then also.

KB: Can you remember some others?

WH: Yeah, there was ah… Frank Feeling owned a lot of the land that ah, that ah Frank McMurray has today. Frank Feeling was ah Frank McMurray’s Uncle. He was a legislator. Had been in Colorado Legislature as a representative from Chaffee, Lake and Fremont counties. So Frank Feeling owned a lot of the land that Frank Feeling, that Frank McMurray has today. Ah, there were others, other ranches that were then, in those days that I remember. One was ah a fellow by the name of Matlock, Charlie, Charlie Matlock. Had ah, had a nice ranch. Then today it’s own by ah Alice and Gary Hill. They’ve recently sold a lot of their water to, I think, Pueblo West, off of those ranches they had there. Originally those ranches were owned by the, by the Donnaly’s, John Donnaly The, ah, Alice Hill still, she works down here now at T J Liquors, but she, her husband owns, moved to the San Luis Valley, and owns most of the land along Sawache Creek over there. So he, he got, and he went over there with, they’ve got a son-in-law, Tate Scanga and, and Mary Jo Scanga. One of ‘em. He’s has another one, Cory, Cory Hill and then there’s a George Hill and then there’s another girl married Josh Stout

KB: What was that? Josh what?

WH: Josh Stout. And they have a, a they have a little boy named ah JACE. So, ah, that daughter is, and that’s Alice and Gary daughter. And also living out there was, she’s, she was Peggy, Peggy McMurray and she married a chap by the name of Scanga. And they live there at Nathrop. And she, she teaches school, I think, in the Buena Vista system. Peggy Scanga. So, oh there’s others a lot of other’s too I guess. There was Ray Saylor. Ray Saylor lived up there kinda just below Buena Vista, and he has a sizeable ranch. And recently when I was here, the Paquette family owned property. Paquette There was several Paquette. And the old Paquette house still sits on Highway 50, it’s a two story brick, right on, it’s not 50, but it’s 285. It sits on (Highway) 285. That’s the John, John Paquette house. So the Paquette were early people here too. There not many of those left either. Harold Starbuck’s wife, down here is a Paquette. Their next door neighbors. They own the old ah Starbuck property.

KB: Is that Betty? Betty Starbuck?

WH: Betty Starbuck. Betty Starbuck. But I think Harold really runs, runs and owns probably most of the property now. I don’t know how he, how it’s fixed up for the family. But, then one of the Paquettes, is Frip Paquette married a Moser girl. And she’s still living. And she lives on Highway 50. And so, and then Betty, ah, let’s see Harold’s wife is Judy, she was Judy Paquette and she married Harold Starbuck. And Harold had two girls.

KB: Sorry, Harold Starbuck?

WH: Harold Starbuck. He has two girls. And one, the oldest one…. the youngest one’s Amy and she just had a baby, I think about the 29th of, of December and she called it…. Mackenzie. She has a daughter named Mackenzie. But the other girl has not gotten married. But, both, both Amy and, and the other girl were very pretty. The one girl had horses for several years, and competed in 4-H with her horses. Right off hand, I’ve, the name of that older girl has skipped my mind.

KB: Well, well you’ve got, it’s because you’ve got so much in that mind of yours. You’ve got an incredible memory. Why don’t we ah go to the, some of the buildings that, or some of the structures, some of the structures that were around, we were going to talk about that today. Like for instance, can we start with the smokestack and what you remember about it?

WH: Yeah. The smokestack, the smokestack was built about 1917. And the reason it was built was to take those fumes from that smelter over there, higher so it would drift off and hit the Arkansas hills, instead of…..before it was landing on the fields around there and poisoning the crops. So they built that tall smokestack. And it’s probably 365 feet tall. We had a committee, in which I was kinda the president of the group, and we called it, the committee, Save Our Stack, SOS, Save Our Stack. And we saved it. We happened to know the right people.

KB: When did you have, when did you have SOS, Save Our Stack?

WH: When? It was before 1977, because George Everett and Tammy Everett were alive then. And they were killed in the plane crash that hit, that hit the mountain up here. So it was just before that. I’d say maybe 1975 or so. In the early 70’s there, we had the SOS Committee.

KB: And obviously it worked, because it’s still there. Yeah.

WH: Yeah. Some of the, I think one of the reasons too, was that old Joe Lionel has a, was kinda instrumental in getting the right people to back us. But that’s, that’s what I know about the stack. We saved the stack. Let’s see, what else? Oh, there’s the Valley View School. I went to it, and their trying to restore it, now you know. They’re trying to get a grant to restore it. I think they got it on the, they got a grant to get it on the National Register of Historic Places. You know where it is don’t you?

KB: Yes I do, uh huh. Highway ah, 140, county road 140.

WH: Yes. Right there. I went there eight years and my brother Jake went there seven. And then my brother Joe, who just called me this afternoon, incidentally, he, he went there till he was about in the 5th grade I think. Then he moved to Salida, I mean they took him, he was bussed in to Salida. Then my own kids, when they came along, they were bussed to Salida. Went to Salida schools.

KB: Because this is where you lived, in this house.

WH: Yeah, and they bussed them. Today it seems like they just about bus everybody, even if they live a block,, live a block away. Seem like they get a ride to school.

KB: Yeah, so, did you tell your kids that story “well, I used to walk five miles to school”, you know that famous old story?

WH: It’s just one mile to Valley View School. One mile there and back.

KB: It wasn’t so bad.

WH: Yeah. And the Campbells, incidentally, ah Helen Campbell recently has had some articles in the paper. There was Norman and David and Helen Campbell. They came down from the north, from the west up there. They live on the, on a place. We use to call it the Campbell place. They, they walked to school. They walked a little further than we did, about, they walked probably a mile and a half. We, we, my brother and I we went one mile. But there were some, several kids along the way. There was the old Woods family. They, they sort of built that school in about 1902, John Woods did. And a bunch of the Woods boys, I know there was Art and Bows and several of those boys went to school there. And then, Ken Baker, the present, he’s, he’s an attorney here now. He went there, to Valley View School, in later years.

KB: Yeah, it has quite a history doesn’t it? Well, ahm, I think we’re going to start to close now, so I just wanted to see if you had anything else you wanted to bring up before we called it quits on this interview.

WH: Well, you want me maybe to think of something, another night?

KB: Well, yeah, if it’s ok with you we’ll get together again and start from you life right here, as a veterinarian.

WH: Sue and I, ah, when we first got out of college we went to Gunnison and we bought a Dr. Reimenschneider’s practice there. And we practiced there about a year there, before we came back to Salida. I guess maybe, do I have that already in there?

KB: Yes, you mentioned it a little earlier. Well why don’t you tell me just briefly why you came back to Salida, if you want to share it with me.

WH: Well, yeah, my brother, my brother Jake came over when we were at Gunnison. And he said, you know, he says, I don’t like to irrigate anymore, I’m just kinda fed up with ranch life. He had been doing that. And he said, would you and Sue contemplate coming back and running the ranch? And I said yes, I would. So we came back here again. That was the main reason I guess, because he asked me to. But then also, I love the, I always loved the ranch. Loved to do it. And so I came back for two reasons, I guess. One, my brother wanted me to and, and one, that I wanted to. And Sue of course, being a Swallow down here, she wanted to move back to Salida area too.

KB: So it made everybody happy.

WH: Made everybody happy.

KB: That great. And then you opened a practice here?

WH: So I was able to practice here.

KB: And still ran the ranch?

WH: And still run the ranch. Then, then about 1965 I built the hospital over there. And I sold that hospital later to Kit in about 1981. And then, then I, then I agreed not to practice for five years. Then I came back, then I….in the meantime I did quite a bit of work for Kit, and then I came back and set up a clinic out here, next door.

KB: And just the last couple of years, you haven’t done it.

WH: Yeah, probably the last, oh since about 19….. oh, let’s see Sue died in l997. Yeah, about ’91 or ’92, I think, seems like. Then after, after Sue died I continued to operate it. And then Janet Barholtz (?) kinda bought the clinic and she moved up to her new place up there.

KB: Well, you’re quite a lot of history for Salida. And again, thank you for talking to me. And we’ll do it again. Yes, we’ll do it again.

WH: Well, thank you for comin out.


#3 - 3/27/04

KB: This is Kathy Berg at the home of Wendell Hutchinson. Today is March 27th, 2004, and this is a continuation, our ah third conversation with Hutch. And last time we got to the ah moving back to Salida from Gunnison, Hutch starting up his practice and Sue starting to teach school. So do you want to start there?

WH: Yes, I guess it’s as good a place as any. I came back from Gunnison. Now, I already mentioned my marriage didn’t I?

KB: How you courted and proposed to your wife?

WH: We did that didn’t we?

KB: Yeah. That was sweet. But you can always do it again. No, go ahead, I’m just kidding.

WH: Well, I’m just thinking how far we got. Am I on the air now?

KB: You are on the air. The whole world can hear you. So, watch what you say.

WH: We came, we came back from Gunnison, Sue and I. And we ah, first of all we lived in my Mother’s house for a bit, which is down the road where I was born. We stayed there. She was out at the time. She’d went back to Harvard, Illinois to ah see her Mom & Dad, I think.

KB: Now, about what year was this?

WH: About 1950.

KB: Mmm huh. Ok.

WH: Actually…… yeah, it was about 1950. And we came, she was there. So then we stayed in my Mother’s house which was down the road from where we are in this house.

KB: Do remember the address?

WH: Yeah I think, 8,.. 8911,…8911 US 50. It’s the house that’s sits directly above the old Hutchinson ranch house. I mean directly East of it. It’s not over………..

KB: The little white house? Ok, I know that.

WH: It’s the little white house. Uh huh, the little white house. So we stayed there a bit until she came back. And then she, there was confrontation then between my Mother and my wife. So then we went down and stayed at the Swallow house, downtown. Well, it was on highway 50 also. It’s now a guest house. It was built by Lou Swallow in about 1920, oh I’d say 1925 or so. And then, we went down there and stayed there. And Mrs. Swallow was up in Ft. Collins at the time with her two daughters. Ah, Sue’s, it’d be Sue’s sisters, Ann and Frankie. So, we stayed there a bit, and then it was kind of, and then she wanted to come back, it was crowded for her and, and her two little girls, so they suggested that we’d better ah start a house of our own. So that’s when we started this house. And, at first we built on, it was just mealy a, it was about a five room house then. We had the kitchen, and a dining room, a bathroom, one bedroom and kind of a utility porch. And I had put the vet operating table in that room. And I kinda worked out of that room as, as a vet hospital. And also I had, was using a car, and I remember it was a Pontiac. And it, I had a little box built in the back of it to carry my tools. So we ah, I could work out of it pretty well. First, then also in coming back here, we had the cattle to look after and, and to get someone to, maybe to help us run the cows. And so we always, especially after I got real busy vetting I couldn’t do it myself. So I had other people help me then.

KB: I just have one question before we go too far. What, you said you put blocks in the back of your car?

WH: A box.

KB: Oh, a box.

WH: Yeah, it was kinda, it was in the trunk. It was kinda made with some compartments in it and I could put my, a lot of my veterinary bottles and drugs and stuff in there. And, and ah it was kind of a box, with ah, with drawers that stood out and we could find the drugs we needed and, and the causal obstetrical tool that we needed. It was a longer drawer with a, that had an obstetrical jack , had chain and things in there that we needed for vet work. So, after then, after we built this house here and I practiced on this porch out here, where the washing machine is now. I had the operating table there and did my surgery out there in that add-on room. The large/small animal, it was. The rest of the time I made calls in the car to different ranches. It didn’t all come at once. I, … people had to find out that, where I was and who I was. Cause there were, had been other vets here before.

KB: Were there any at the time?

WH: Yes. There was Dr. ah M. J. Nachtrieb; Melvin Joseph Nachtrieb. He was ah, he was the son of ah, of ah Charles Nachtrieb. But they called him, they called him “old Chuck”, and, and Joe has a brother called “young Church”. And Joe had a brother Carroll. But Joe was also a graduate of Colorado A&M College and he practiced here too. So ah, then, then after awhile, later he took the job as, when they got kinda got up and going, he took the job as meat inspector at Scanga Meat Co..

KB: Cause you took over and he didn’t have any patience left? Wow.

WH: Yeah, so he became the inspector there.

KB: Was he the son or the grandson of the Charles who founder Nathrop?

WH: He was the, he’d been, he’d been a grandson of the old original Charlie Nachtrieb. That would have been his, let’s see….. that’s right, that would have been his grandfather. And we called him Charlie, Charles Nachtrieb. And they called, and then that next one in line was, was Chuck and they called him “old Chuck”. And this Chuck has a another, a brother called Chris Nachtrieb. And Chris had some, did some ranching property up, up that way also. And, so Joe then ah had a place down on Highway 50, it’s recently been…ah he had a little clinic there in the back. But he did most of his practicing too, out of his car. But he also had this sort of a clinic there that he used and he did his small animal surgery in it. But it was, he, it would’ve been nice if he’d have finished it, but he didn’t. It was never really finished. Joe was in some way not well organized. He was a very good surgeon, had very clever hands. And he, I learned quite a bit just going around with him some. I remember an early C-section, I remember the growing-up and have a long sterile field. And Joe just went in and he washed the side of the cow up. Most of the time he didn’t even prep it much, but he just washed it with soap and water and made an incision, after blocking the sides and he’d go in and take the calf out. He cut open the wound, took the calf out, sew the wound up and put it back, maybe put a little antibiotic power, a sulfa, or a pill or two in, closed it up. He did it real fast, quick. And I, I had done one previously and it took me mostly, a couple of hours to do. He done it in about a half an hour well, less, I’d say less, about an hour. So he could do them, I learned then too that you didn’t have to have all these particular sterile procedures as long as you were clean and you had your instruments in, in the, the solution to kill the germs. They had different solutions, like Novasan(?) and other, other solutions. And keep them in there, keep your hands in there and keep your hands, keep your hands clean. But I also learned that it was better to clip the cow with a clipper before going in and getting rid of that hair. It would lap over into the wound.

KB: So was this in, sometime in the 50’s when you followed him around?

WH: Yeah, I did ah, I just went a few times with him. Before that, as a, before I was ever a vet I used to go some with Joe on calls too. He went to a lot of the same places I did. Over to South Park, to Fairplay and that area. He also went towards Leadville, too. And I went, later went there. He also went to Westcliffe. I also went there, later. Joe, ah, so we competed with each other pretty much, but we never, we didn’t, didn’t have any quarrels particularly. I think Joe kinda lost out because he had a tendency sometimes to stop at the Green Parrot in Buena Vista and have a few drinks too many. So, so Joe did have a little bit of a problem with alcohol. I don’t know if we should use that for publication, but that’s true, he did. In fact later he, in his later life, he always smoked a lot too, and they had to operate on him and, and ah remove his, a lot of his lung.

KB: So, you were a clean-living man?

WH: Was I clean living? Yes. Yeah. Not bragging, but I was. I didn’t drink hardly at all. I might have a glass of wine occasionally. Maybe a beer once in a while, if a rancher offered me. But, I, I didn’t make a habit of drinking. I never smoked hardly ever in my life. I remember here, after we built this house, my wife, my wife ah wanted me to smoke a pipe. And I thought it’d be kinda nice to do that. And she bought a little pipe stand and set it in there by the chair. And she said, “I think you’d look nice smoking a pipe”. But, I tried it for a time, but I didn’t like the smoke, and I still don’t. I still don’t smoke.

KB: Well good for you.

WH: I think it’s one of the reasons maybe my lungs are still good. And I don’t have any cancer in the lung or things like that that happen.

KB: And you go outside and you take walks.

WH: Well,… no well, mostly, when I go outside, I, I don’t walk as much as I should.

KB: Well, you just said, you were, ah what, fixing the irrigation ditch? I mean that takes some huffing and puffing.

WH: Yeah. I did quite a bit of irrigating. In fact in those days, I didn’t have ah,….. I got a business called a “gater” now, that I ride in. It’s like a four-wheeler.

KB: Say that again. A “gater”?

WH: Yeah, a “gater”, called a “gater”, made by John Deer. And I use it. And it has two seats in it and a bed on the back. And you can carry your tarp, shovels, pick, whatever you need to irrigate with, in it. But back in those days you had to either drive as close to the field as you could and then ah get, get out and then change the water. Or leave the house here and run across the highway, change the water. Or I might drive down to the old barnyard down there and then change the water there. We had ah water to change at our other place at Poncha. I’d drive close as I could there. Many time I’d run, actually run down the road, change it and come back. So, that’s how we did it then. Then, we always had to put up the hay later in the year too. Cause after you irrigated, the hay grew, then you had to mow it with a mowing machine. For many years we used, it was strictly horse drawn. We had ah, oh I think we had two McCormic-Gary (?) mowers, and that we used to, and two different teams. One, one team was Brigham and Maude, and, and the other team was ah Molly and Nig.

KB: Nig?

WH: Molly and Nig, uh huh. Nig was a big black horse, and Molly also. But the other were little bay horses. Brigham, Brigham and Maude. Brigham got his name because he was sort of proud cut, and he, and when, whenever mares came in heat he was out there riden’ ‘em, was how he got his name Brigham. Named after Brigham Young.

KB: Brigham Young, yeah. So, what did you say, proud cut?

WH: Proud cut. What that, what that meant; he was cut with, and left some of his testicle in and made him proud cut. Or, some animals you might cut ‘em completely, but still they’d be proud cut. For some reason they just have the, they still have the hormones in there, whether it went to the brain,….it was. Those horses could be a real nuisance. But Brigham was a kinda mean horse. You had to hook him up over the back of his partner Maude or he’d kick your head off.

KB: Sounds pretty mean.

WH: So, when you got, got going with him, he, he worked hard, he didn’t let up. Maude kinda got used to that and wouldn’t pull as much as he did. She got lazy. So….. then, the other team Nig and Molly….Nig would ah,… I guess his name, he got his name because he was black. And they, they probably called him ‘ol nigger’ to start with, but later they just called him “Nig” But he was apt to run off, if you give him a chance. In other words, if you get off your mower or anything and he knew, could see that you didn’t have a line, he’d take off runnin. So as long as he had a wagon, he, he tore up a lot of hay rakes and wagons because of him being that way.

KB: Well, what would Molly do, they were attached somehow?

WH: Yeah, she run with him then. They’d run together after he’d instigate it, and then she didn’t have much choice but to, to run too.

KB: Well, sounds like they had some personalities.

WH: Yeah, all, every horse seems to have …. Molly was awfully gentle. When she got hit out on highway 50 and got her shoulder ripped open,; I remember, boy that was before I was a vet. I had to doctor that wound on her shoulder. Another veterinarian had prescribed scarlet oil. And we would put the dauber in the bottle and then paint that wound out. That was my first experience trying to be a vet.

KB: Was it hard working on your own horse? Did that make it difficult?

WH: No, not particularly. No, that never did bother me much. Or my own dogs either. I….it didn’t matter. I could still put ‘em to sleep and spay ‘em or castrate ‘em, or whatever

KB: What were some of the dogs on the ranch?

WH: Some of the what?

KB: Dogs you had. Do you remember?

WH: One of the earliest dogs I remember was a dog called Wag. And he, he developed a big sore on his side, and it was cancerous. And the dog in his later years when out in the blacksmith shop and he hid under a bench. And, and I remember my father had to put Wag to sleep. And I think he shot him.

KB: So you were a little boy then?

WH: I was pretty little, yeah. I was about, oh six, maybe, five or six. And he killed old Wag. And that broke my heart.

KB: Mmmm, yeah.

WH: Another dog I had was ah… was a dog called Pal. And we got him…. up on the Kirkman ranch, they had some half, they were ah half breed dogs. Ah, had some German Shepherd in them and then some Labrador, I believe. But this dog, old Pal, was kinda red. He’d lay out on the highway and when cars would come by, especially if they were going slow, he’d bark at ‘em and run and chase ‘em and try to grab their, grab, grab ahold of their tire.

KB: Oh, ouch!

WH: But finally, oh, he also was bad about getting in, in the neighbor’s sheep. And old Mr. Sid Dennison, my neighbor up here had a bunch of sheep. And he got into those sheep.

KB: What was his first name again?

WH: Sydney. Sydney Dennison. We called him old Sid.

KB: Sydney Dennison. Old Sid.

WH: Old Sid Dennison. He was the original of the old Dennison family.

KB: So did they ever take pot shots at Pal?

WH: Yeah. My mother, ah I came home from school one day and she said Pal had been up there and cut into his sheep. And she had the vet. The vet here then was not Dr. Nachtrieb, but was Dr. Reimenschnider. I think he spelled it Reimenschnider. Reimenschnider. So, he lived in, before he came here, he lived in Marshalltown, Iowa. And my caregiver here, ah Kimberly, says there are a bunch at Marshalltown, there’s still a bunch of Reimenschnider. She says she went to school with, with several of the Reimenschnider boys. So, it’s kind of a small world.

KB: It is!

WH: And he, Dr. Reimenschnider, & I, both practiced at Gunnison, and, and he, one of the things he had was some cages and they were homemade. But on the back of it, for some reason, it says “Marshall Town, Iowa”. So ah, but I had those cages for quite a while. I had them in the clinic, clinic out here when I used it, and when I built Mt. Shadows I used it. And then we got some better stainless steel cages. They, they were kinda hard to keep clean, barn-wood wood and iron bars, nothin on ‘em. So we got some better cages and, and some of those cages Kit still has over there. Those stainless steel cages will last a lifetime.

KB: Um hum. Just hold them out, huh? So he, he saved Pal’s life or he saved the sheep’s life, when your Mother called?

WH: He got into several sheep and killed some. But Dr. Reimenschnider put the dog, put old Pal to sleep. And that, that, I really cried over that. Him puttin’ old Pal to sleep. Old Pal. And I don’t,…. I got a cemetery for dogs now, but back then, we just took ‘em off up in the Pinions. We had a place up there, if we had a cow die, we had kind of a pit, kind of a gully wash, we put the cows in. Well, that’s where the dogs went. Anything that died went, went to that place. Later I had a bulldozer scoop out a pit or two and we were puttin’ animals in there. There was a lot of people that would bring pets to you that were old, had to be put to sleep. Then, then I would put ‘em to sleep and put them in these pits and then kinda cover them up a little bit, with dirt from the edge of the pit.

KB: Was that a pretty common practice in those days?

WH: Well it was common then. Today, it’s, you, you put the animal to sleep and you take it up to Buena Vista and they have an animal crematorium where they cremate animals. And that’s much, a much better way to do it. And then also, I, I was requested, before they ever had that crematorium, to, to bury dogs. So that’s how come I got my pet cemetery started down there. And then it gradually grew and grew until today there’s probably, oh, 200, 250 dogs in there.

KB: Are they still using it, or have they run out of room?

WH: Oh, yeah, I always try to find room for somebody’s pet. I just recently put a, a dog to sleep for Barbara,…. Barbara Williams. She … Barbara has, I think, somethin’, I think she told me she has 23 pets in there that I buried for her in the dog cemetery. In the pet cemetery.

KB: Oh. So who do you remember after Pal, dog wise.

WH: Well, they had a dog, called Jack. And Jack was kind of a Shepherd dog. And he was, he was a pretty good cow dog. And my ah Uncle had, my Uncles had a dog they called him Ring.

KB: Ringed?

WH: Ring. R I G N, R I N G. Had a white ring around his neck. Kind of an old ring. And Ring was deathly afraid, I mean, of lightening. If it was lightening or crashing, he’d just go, he’d just panic. He’d, he’d go somewhere and hide if he could. Seems like the old blacksmith shop was a common place for ‘em to go cause there was some old dark places back in there and they thought they were hiding, I guess.

KB: So, the dogs were not really inside dogs, sounds like?

WH: No, they were not inside dogs. They were strictly outside. Tethered outside. Didn’t buy dog food for them then. they just got table scraps. Usually they had enough to eat, they weren’t starved or anything. But they, we did not back then, have dog foods that you could go down to the store an buy, like they do today.

KB: So one of the purposes in having a dog was to, for, you know, for the cattle, to work the cattle?

WH: Right, mostly to herd cattle. Right, right, to herd cattle.

KB: So everything had a purpose, on the ranch?

WH: Yeah. Sometime too, ah they ah, there were a lot of hobos in the dustbowl days. Hobos were itinerate men, out of work, walking up the roads. Some of them were, most of them were oh, just hungry and my Mother always gave ‘em a nice lunch, when they stopped. A couple of sandwiches, and maybe a cookie or two, and maybe an orange. But, I don’t know of a hobo she ever turned down. But, some of them could be dangerous, but we never had one of ‘em attack us.

KB: Especially if you had a dog around, on the ranch.

WH: Yeah.

KB: So after Ring.

WH: After Ring? Well,………I mentioned Jack didn’t I?

KB: Yeah.

WH: Ring was a pretty good little cow dog, but he, like I said he was afraid, afraid of lightening. My father had a dog before that he called Tootie

KB: Tootie?

WH: Well, we got pictures of that, ah the dog would ride on the back of the horse. He’d go to the hills, and when we was coming home, after going, well we had to ride clear up Poncha, clear up the highway, clear up maybe to Marshall Pass, or, or in that area. So coming back the dog would get real tired and he’d jump on the back of the horse and ride on the back.

KB: Smart dog!

WH: That was Tootie. My dad taught him to, to do that. He also taught the dog to grab the, the reigns of a horse and lead the horse. He could say “go get Sox” or something and Sox, would, would ah,, he’d grab, Tootie would grab the reigns and pull the, bring the horse over to where my Father was.

KB: Amazing.

WH: That was kinda cute. I was pretty young when that happened. But, I’ve seen pictures of that.

KB: So, being a veterinarian, did you throughout the years just have your own pets, or did you feel like you had your fill of pets because you took care of them all day long?

WH: Did you have to take care of them all day long?

KB: Well, I was wondering if you had any pets of your own in your home, or if taking care of pets satisfied your love for animals?

WH: Oh, here. Oh yeah, we had some pets. Uh huh. I remember when my, my son Art was a little boy, we had a, a dog. It was a Collie. And he went to school one day, and the dog tried to follow him, and he got hit by the, I don’t know, I think it was another car. But he, I think he was kinda chasing the school bus. But when my son came home, found his dog. He felt the loss of that dog.

KB: Oh, that’s too bad. Do you remember the name of the Collie?

WH: I was thinking about it the other night and I remembered. I forgot it now.

KB: Oh, well, maybe next week, huh?

WH: Next time.

KB: Well, that sort of brings up another subject for me. If we’re all “dogged out” here. Ah, what about,… so Art, Arthur was your first child. And we can talk about your kids, and what family life was, and how you built onto the house, you know, and when and so on.

WH: Oh, yes. Sure. Well, we built onto the house, and then our first son, about two years after we got married, was Art. And he was born October the 11, 1951. And he was our only child there for about five years. But, he used to go with me on calls a lot. And ah he would sit out here and visit with the clients that came in. Cause after a year or two we not only built some more on this house, we built the clinic out here and it had an operating room in it, and had those cages in there. That’s before I built Mt. Shadows. But Art, ah he would go with me. And he was very fond of a dog too, and, and he backed out of the car on, ,… garage here one day, when he was old enough and he ran over the dog. Killed his own dog. That was a bad day for him.

KB: Oh. How old was he then, about?

WH: Oh….about, oh, maybe nine or ten I think.

KB: Yeah, so he couldn’t really see over the back anyway.

WH: Yeah, he couldn’t see where he was going.

KB: But in those days kids got in the jeep and the cars.

WH: Yeah, they got in the cars. They’d drive around the ranch and learn to drive. All my kids became good drivers. Because I was such a poor driver I think I taught, told them what not to do.

KB: They learned from,…. that’s great. So then, who was next, as far as children?

WH: And five years later came Andy. And he was born almost on Christmas day. He was born December the 26th. And that was 1956. December 26, 1956. And he was born……they were all born actually in what’s now the Salida hospital, or the Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center. But it wasn’t called that then. I think they called it the, the Salida Hospital. So, Dr. Hoover delivered Art, and then finally when Andy came along I think, I think Dr. Steven Phillips delivered Andy. And Andy is the second son, and like I say he was born December the 26th, 1956. And now, Andy lives in Durango. And he recently is in a divorce now with his wife Mary Ann. And that is to me kind of a sad thing, cause I always liked Mary Ann, Mary Ann very much.

KB: Do they have children?

WH: They have no children. I think, had they had children it’d been different. But, Andy became quite a, a man……he learned to kayak out here in this pond. And he became a kayaker. And he would kayak in the, in the river here. And he started competing in the 26-mile long kayak run, that went from Salida to Cotopaxi. And, ah he ran it about six times and then in 1989 Andy won it. The only time he did. But he won that particular race. So, then, let’s see, the next child we had was, was Lisa. She was born September the 16,th 1958. Andy was born in ‘56 and she was born in 1958.

KB: She was almost born on your birthday.

WH: Yeah, she was. Later Art had a daughter born on the 27th of September.

KB: So Art has how many kids?

WH: Art has two, Aaron and Abbey. Aaron is up, she graduated from CU in finance. But now she’s ah got a horse training facility at Longmont, which is ah not very far, it’s a little bit, it’s kind of on the way to Fort Collins, Longmont is. But she has a facility there where she works horses and, and also jumps horses and teaches kids how to….a lot of those girls don’t know the first thing about a horse. She teaches then how to bridle ‘em, saddle ‘em, ride ‘em and then some of them she teaches how to jump. She’s worked herself up a pretty good business. She’s not married. She goes with a, a boy and he helps her a lot. And then I got Abbey. She’s going to Colorado State University, and lives in Fort Collins.

KB: She’s the one that visited you last.

WH: Yeah, actually. She visited with me. Did you meet her?

KB: No, I came after she left.

WH: Yeah, yeah. She, ah she works with the, works on the side up there. They both did work on the side to make money. Their parents helped them a lot. I even gave them some, quite a few dollars too, to help with their education. I did, we sold some land up there, some of that land, oh, money I got from that, I gave each one of them $10,000 apiece, which was to help them with their education. Aaron graduated, but Abbey is a senior now and should graduate maybe in December. But she very much loves cattle and would like to come back to the ranch.

KB: Think she could run the ranch for you?

WH: Well, she could. She’s pretty capable. When she was here, she, she went right out there and was pitch’en bales of hay onto the wagon and then when we got off the field, she was pitch’en it off with a pitch fork. So, ah…..

KB: That’s a good sign.

WH: Yeah, that’s a good sign wasn’t it? She’s not lazy in other words.

KB: Yeah, she’s a hard worker it sounds like. So, Lisa, she was born in 1958. Does she have any children now?

WH: Let’s see, then what?

KB: Lisa?

WH: Lisa, yeah. Lisa has two boys. She didn’t get married until just recently. Ah,… let’s see when did she get married? I think she got married in 1988. And her husband was David Scarborough. (?) And they, they lived there in Anchorage, Alaska. And he, he was a helicopter pilot and he was shot down in Vietnam. He kinda messed his ankles up and I think maybe a knee pretty much. But, but he was ah, I think he was taken to ah some hospital. I don’t know whether it was in Guam or Hawaii, or somewhere to recover after being shot down, but he’s there now and he’s with a helicopter firm. Lisa met him when she was working for Alaska Bureau of Indian Affairs. And he would fly her around in a helicopter and drop her off at some Indian camp, maybe with another girl, a co-worker. And they’d interview the Indian. Cause about the only way you could get around would be by helicopter up in that country. But that’s where she met him. So they still live there, and he still, he doesn’t do much flying himself, but he managers a helicopter form there at ah Anchorage and also co-manages one at ah Fairbanks. Anyway, they, so they live there.

KB: And what are her boys names?

WH: The two little boys? The oldest one is Benjamin – “Ben”. He was named after my good Japanese Vet friend in Alamosa, Ben Konishi. And I was just over there and saw Ben, Ben last week. I to a dentist over there, in, in Alamosa. And then I had dinner with Ben and his wife Bessie.

KB: Bessy?

WH:, Bessy, yeah. Bessy Konishi. He has a Vet practice there. He graduated from college the year after I did. And he practiced around the valley there. A very, very good Vet.

KB: Ok, so there’s Ben, and what is the other boy’s name?

WH: Oh, oh yeah. The other boy is Daniel. I don’t know what, she likes the name. I got a worker here Daniel Wood – Danny Wood. She might have named him after him, cause she always liked Danny. But anyway, ah she said, “I just liked the name Daniel”. Maybe she named him after Daniel Boone.

KB: Or maybe Daniel in the Bible. I have a son named Daniel.

WH: Do you? You have a don named Daniel?

KB: I do. And I don’t know why I named him Daniel.

WH: Wasn’t there a Daniel in the Lions den?

KB: That’s probably why. Yes. So what was family life like, in this house, with these three kids and you’re a veterinarian, and was Sue still teaching, or did she stop teaching to raise the kids? Or, how did that go?

WH: Well, yeah my wife, my wife was trained to be a teacher. She also took music, did a lot of music in training. She was going to get a job as a, did a lot of practical music, but she got real tired of that, I think. Because after she came here, she didn’t, she didn’t use her, …oh she learned to run this organ, but I didn’t, …she had an organ, but she gave it,… she’d given the organ away to Art’s family. So, we’d have to…..Sue took care of the kids. She raised them well. And sent ‘em off to school when the school bus came right be the road, and then took ‘em to school. They no longer went to Valley View, that little country school that I went to. Let’s see, she went, … but they did go to Longfellow School in Salida and then they went to Jr. High there - Kestner Jr. High and then also to Salida High School. All of them graduated there. But Sue made sure they, they were always well clothed and clean. And she, she made ‘em, when they came home and had to study, she made ‘em study. They were all pretty good students. Ah, Art became Student Body President and he was on the football team. But Andy was kind of a track…. he went out for football a little bit, but a friend talked him into running. So Andy competed in running. But, ah, I don’t know that Andy was President of his class or anything.

KB: And what about Lisa?

WH: And Lisa though, yeah, she was pretty active in school, school affairs. I think she was on the Student Council. I’m not sure whether Andy ever was in a session. He might have been in there one year. But Lisa was in, I think she was in the student body. She was never President, but she competed, she was in there. And she also, she had a lot to do with when they made the school annual. Lisa had a lot to do with getting it done. She also had a chance to be the Queen one year, but she was voted out.

KB: Well, it’s quite a deal just getting that far.

WH: Just getting that far, yeah.

KB: So do you think they felt like “out-of-towners”, because they had to get the bus, or were there other kids that lived out of the Salida city proper?

WH: Yeah, yeah, there were quite a few. I was on the School Board, incidentally during this period for 28 years. I was President 18 on the Salida School Board.

KB: Wow. No wonder they were so popular.

WH: So then, then after…..now days they, I think they only let ‘em stay two full year terms and then they’re out. I think they maybe are……I had some really fine school board members that really helped make my tenure there easy. And they had some good… all good Superintendents too to work with. There was Charles Marine, John Ophus, Robertson , Jim Robertson…. Anyway, I had good people to work with.

KB: What kind of ah big decisions, and changes and projects were you part of those twenty-eight years. On the board – on the school board. When you were on the school board. Can you recall any of them?

WH: Oh, yeah. One of the big things, about halfway during our term the school burned. The old High School, the old original high school burned. And then we had to build this present high school that’s there now. And then we also converted a hall upstairs, Melein Hall, and, named after a glee club man, who had the, who run the glee club for, oh I don’t know, forty years, I think. Charles Melein – ah No, ah John Held. John Held run the glee club. Charles Melein was one of the Superintendents.

KB: And it’s his wife that’s still alive today?

WH: Yes, his wife is still alive.

KB: Yeah, she comes in the Library, and she’s pretty energetic, yeah.

WH: Pert-near every day?

KB: No. I said she’s pretty energetic. Probably every other week or so.

WH: She taught English for years too.

KB: How do you spell that last name again?

WH: M E L E I N, I think. Melein. But her husband was, he was Superintendent for quite awhile. And there’s ah one of the halls down there, is named Melein Hall, after Charles Melein. John Ophus was only President about a year, and then, and he died, as a young man. He was a very good friend. He was ah quite a historian. He went around to all the graveyards, I think, in the region, photographing the graves. That’s a good way to get the, the dates of their birth and death of the people he wrote about. And he has, still has files of them. His wife’s a teacher, John Ophus' wife is. But she won’t let anybody…..several people have tried to get those, some of those files he had, but she, she won’t let ‘em have them. I, I hope someday she does something with them. She’s getting near retirement. She teaches in the High School. Maybe she’ll let somebody get in there and take some of them. But that’s a good set for a historian that’s a treasure trove, because John went all over the State photographing tombstones.

KB: Wow, what a hobby. Yeah, that is valuable. Well Hutch,…… shall we conclude this little conversation?

WH: Oh, I, yeah, I suppose so.

KB: Yeah, well I think we’re both getting tired, it’s about ten minutes to nine now. Two old fogies can’t stay up so late.

WH: Another day, then I could probably, maybe next time could talk about some of the different vet calls that were interesting, that I went on.

KB: Oh yeah, that would be great. Yeah, we’d love to hear about that. So let’s just close by one little memory that you have of your whole family gathering. I mean did somebody every play a guitar? Or did you all sit and watch television together? You know, when you had the three kids and Sue? What was the fond memory that you have. Or the kids were all in bed and you and Sue were watching television.

WH: On, on, on most every Christmas, we had, most of the family would be here.

KB: Right here at this table? Ah huh. When you say most of the family, you mean, not just your immediate family, but……..,

WH: Yeah, Sue and I, Aaron and Abbey and Art. And her, her mother, for many years. Sue’s Mother. Blanch. Blanch, she was Blanch Swallow. She was here usually at those gatherings. So, each, each Christmas was memorable, I don’t know whether I can pick out one over the other.

KB: Yeah, they all were memorable. Well, great. Well, thanks again. It’s about 8:50 (PM,) and we’re going to conclude this session with Hutch. And, anyway, as usual, it’s been fun and we’ll get back to something interesting next week

WH: That’s nice. It’s nice that you’d do that.

KB: Well, I’ve been enjoying it too, I want you to know.



#4 - 4/4/04

KB: This is Kathy Burg visiting Wendell F. Hutchinson, at his home in Salida on April 4th, 2004. It’s Sunday evening about 7:45. And, we’re here again. And this time, in fact I think, I just want you to tell me some stories. We talked about, after the machine went off last time, we started talking about ahm, some things like; the Murdocks and the sawmill and your very famous cousin, Robert Cummings. So, I just thought it would be fun to hear some, some tales from Hutch. So, you go ahead and pick whatever thing you want to talk about, and I’m here to listen.

WH: Right now I guess I’ll talk about Murdock McPhereson ok? He crossed the plains in 1860 with his brother John Duncan McPherson. And John Duncan McPherson would be my Great, Great Grandfather. Also with him in this wagon train was his wife. Her name was Helen. She was also a McPherson, but she, they both were not related. She was born in Edinburg and John Duncan’s family came from Inverness, Scotland. But they came to America and then the next I hear of them they were at Riga, New York. Ever hear of it?

KB: I have. Do you know anything about it?

WH: No, I don’t know a thing. There’s a, a friend of mine; his name is……….. well I’ll think about it. He, he said his school bus used to go through Riga, everyday, when he was in school. Through Riga, New York. And I’m not sure where it is. I think somewhere in central, rural New York. But, ah the McPherson family had ah three kids. The oldest one was Charles; Charles Henry McPherson., and the second one was my Great, Grandmother, Annabelle McPherson. She was 12 years old when she crossed the plain. And then along in that big party was little John McPherson who was ah only, I think 5 years old at the time. They, of course left Riga New York in the 1850’s and went to Matawan Michigan. Matawan, I think.

KB: Matawan. Do you know how to spell that?

WH: MATAWAN, I guess, I guess. And they were there about 2 years and they went to Sparta, Wisconsin. And they decided to go west when they heard about the gold strikes in Colorado. And that was in 1959. The gold rush in California was 1849. But this is 1859.

KB: We’re always about 10 years behind here, huh?

WH: Ten years behind. Yeah, 10 years behind. So, ah, crossing the plains in the party with them was Murdock McPherson. One of my little Grandson’s I named Murdock after this Murdock. Murdock, anyway, brought his sawmill across the plains with him, even with a big boiler. It created steam to run the sawmill. They didn’t have electricity or gasoline then. But with the steam they could run the sawmill. So that crossed the plains. But Annabelle, when she was talking to my Great Uncle, and he wrote, that she said, many times they stopped on the plains and they could see the silhouette of this big boiler, which was part of the, part of the sawmill. So, Murdock, then they got west and then they went to Oro City, McPherson’s did. And it was a very mining, one of the earliest places in Colorado where they found, found gold. They credit Abe Lee with saying, as he was working his pan, and he says “I got all of California right here in this here pan”. And, and there was real excitement displayed. And that’s when many people then came. So they called it “California Gulch”, when he said “I got all of California here in this pan”. They call it “California Gulch”. And it’s up at, up near Leadville. And they stayed there, the McPhersons’, about, oh five years. And then went down to Cache Creek. And then finally to a place named after my Great Grandmother, called Helena, along the river. On the Arkansas river, just below Buena Vista. About where Fisherman’s Bridge is today. To get on with the McPherson, Murdock McPherson part of it. Ah, there was a man, Henry Harkin that crossed with that same wagon train that crossed the plains. Henry Harkin. He was apparently kind of an older man. But little Johnny McPherson fell out of the big McPherson wagon, and the rear wheel was about to go over him when Henry Harkin called out “WOAH”. And, and then, then they stopped and said “what happened?” And he said “little Johnny’s under the wheel”, but it didn’t go over him. So he was credited with saving, saving little John. So then they got to Canon City about 1860, and then they, I think they stayed there pretty much the winter and the next Spring they went to California Gulch, or Oro City, up by Leadville. It wasn’t Leadville then. So in ah, 1863 ah Murdock McPherson and a man by the name of Basset I’m not right now sure what his first name was. But the Basset family lived not too far out of what’s now Colorado Springs. And there’s a gulch up there called “Dead Man’s Canyon” it’s on Highway 114, as, as you come out of ……..

KB: It’s 115?

WH: Yeah, you’re right. You’re right, it’s 115. As they were constructing this road they went over this graveyard and they took the body out and put it on the hillside. If you go down there during the day you can see where this, where they buried this man. And it was Murdock Mc….. it was not Murdock,, it was Henry Harkin, the man that had saved “little John”. And he was chinking his cabin there in the gulch, putting mud or whatever they could put in. Puttin in mud I think. And they, Murdock McPherson and Basset were settin the sawmill up. I don’t know if it was the same sawmill that Murdock crossed the plains with or not. Well, probably. Anyway, they were settin it up, up there and they came in and found Harkin’s head split open with an axe. And they also found his body was punctured with a bullet, bullet hole. So, but he’d been buried right in the road there and when the road was re-done, and they found it, they exhumed his body. And my great uncle Art had a letter from the State highway department confirming the fact that they found the body. But they did, they did ah honor it. They picked another grave site and you can see it today, right there at the mouth of this Dead Man’s Canyon. So,… they used to have a, ah, a State Historical Marker on the road commemorating the event. But it’s been torn down for some reason. So….

KB: Did they avenge his murder?

WH: So, ah, they, they thought, when Murdock and Basset came down there that evening to check on, on Harkin, they found him, of course, his head split open, and they thought it was, thought it was Indians. They thought he’d been tomahawked. So they, they took off to Basset’s farm, which wasn’t too far away I guess, three or four miles maybe. Went down there. And then the next day they came back up with a bunch of friends and neighbors, to the camp to see. And by then they, someone had heard that this was the work of the Espinosa brothers. The Espinosa’s came and left about that time. All along Hardscrabble creek here, you’ve probably heard from Lead…., or, into the wet-mountain valley, they call it. Which is ….. Westcliffe and Silver Cliff. And ah, they went over the hill there, you go down Hardscrabble Creek. But, a man by the name of David Bruce had been mutilated by someone. Apparently by these same Espinosas. They went up the next, the next winter, maybe more other ones were killed in-between, but they got up there and murdered Harkins. So, ah, and, they did the next day, they, they the next day, the people with Basset and Murdock McPherson buried,went ahead and buried him there in what was later the road. And so then the State Highway re-buried him. Going on, I don’t know much more about Murdock, except I heard he went to a place in New Mexico. I think it was called White Oaks. White Oaks, New Mexico. And he set his sawmill up down there, and he sawed lumber for people. And his wife wrote later, and I saw a letter, said “were not doing very good”. Yeah, she said “people won’t pay their bills”. People didn’t have any money, I suppose, wouldn’t pay their bills. But they were on hard times.

KB: That was your Uncle Art that he wrote to?

WH: Yeah, that was Uncle Art that he wrote to. And I did have, if I can find it, I think I can still find the letter the State Highway wrote about.

KB: That would be interesting.

WH: Well, anyway, ah, and then the letter also that Murdock’s wife write to Uncle Art about the hard times they were having down there. And I, I , as I understand it Murdock died there and his wife too. But I don’t, I’ve never found White Oaks, New Mexico on a map, so I’m not sure exactly where it was in New Mexico. I imagine it was somewhere in Northern New Mexico.

KB: Could be a very small, small town.

WH: A very small town. So that’s kinda the Espinosa thing, you know, Well, they went out through South Park, killed a, a lonely rancher there. Then they got over into the California gulch country and the early miners there including Charles Nachtrieb who was ah, …. Nathrop, Colorado was named after Charles Nachtrieb. Then his son, today in the county here, there's still a Chris Nachtrieb, is a Grand….Great, Great, a Great Grandson of this early Nachtrieb. But Nachtrieb, Joe Lamb and some other’s formed a posse and they found, they found these Espinosas. They, they saw them on a hill, and they climbed up to the of a peak. Joe Lamb, who was a farmer over in the wet mountains, not too far from Silver Cliff, they kinda had some farmland over there. They simply go by the name of Lamb, their last name. So then their, but Joe Lamb shot one of the Espinosas and killed him. And the other Espinosa then took off, went back to New Mexico. Got a Nephew, they said, a 15 year old Nephew, also named Espinosa, and came back to the San Luis Valley. And there were a lot of Hispanics over there. But, they didn’t raid the Hispanics, but they killed several, several white folks. They called them Anglo families, they mutilated them. So the army was called in and they got a guide, to, to go help find where these Espinosas were. So ah, the guide was very apt he was a frontiersman. Right at the moment I’ve, I’ve just forgotten his, his name. Not Dick Wooten……

KB: It’s alright. It’ll come back to you. You’re allowed to forget.

WH: No. I’m out of it.

KB: No your not.

WH: Anyway, they went up there, with two Army men, he did, and he tracked them down and he said “here’s your Espinosas”. And the two, two Army men shot two or three times and missed. And he said “give me the gun”. And he shot both of them. Not with a single shot, but with two, two bullets I guess.

KB: Right, two shots.

WH: And, ah, then he got, there was a reward. And he brought, brought the h