1. My friend Julie Cannon and her Daddy.
2. Theresa Walker and Bobbie Avery. They are widow ladies from Barstow. I take a picture of them every year. They are always very sweet to me.
3. Cole Armstrong...probably the richest rancher in these parts. His nephew and wife (Scott & Regina) live across the street from us. Scott works out at the family ranch. He's in the middle...don't know the other guys.
4. Dick Slack. He's a retired lawyer among other thangs. He's 95 years old. His grandfather "Uncle Henry" was in the first Pecos rodeo and he lead off the parade every year for decades....EVERYONE knew Ol' Uncle Henry.
5. Merle "Tuffy" Skelton on the right...don't know the other guy. I just got done reading Mr. Skelton's book. He's cowboyed and cooked off a chuck wagon everywhere.
6. Zelma Cannon and Bessie Osborn register Old Timer's folks.
7. This band was REALLY good and fun to watch.
8. The band was REALLY, REALLY good...wish ya'll could've heard 'em....wish they'd come over to our house and play this weekend.
It's fun to watch the parade from the front of the museum with all the old folks....because everyone shows off for them. This one guy on horseback hollared at his old friend: "Where's your hoss?" The response was : "Fell off'n him long time ago."
Love, mary
2 comments:
Is the Slack fellow in the photo the “Dick” Slack who was a US Congressman years ago?
Mr. Avery was a distant relative of mine, but not close enough to keep in touch. I remember Theresa Walker. She had a daughter named Sherry or Sherrie who I thought a horrible snot and snob, and physically unattractive as well. I think she married a Mexican.
Most folks I met in Barstow were fine people. An exception was CW Wright, who I believe was the superintendent of the tiny school. I don’t know what the CW stands for.
Few people know that in the late 50’s and early 60’s Wright was under investigation for possible misappropriation of school funds, and other unspecified moral questions. For some reason the grand jury never heard the evidence. That always puzzled me.
Later I learned that when the Barstow school closed in the late 60’s, Wright was grandfathered into the Pecos system. After a few years they told him to move on, retire, or be fired. It was fairly well known that CW was a sadistic aggressive closet homosexual. At that time this was sufficient to remove teaching privileges. Why that didn’t happen who knows, perhaps the fix was in.
Not so long after I graduated PHS, LBJ invited me to his little gig in Southeast Asia. I left and didn’t return for more than thirty years. When I went back after all that time, I was shocked by what had become of those two lovely desert communities of Pecos and Barstow.
To passersby there was never much to recommend these villages, stuck as they are all alone out on the hot ugly desert. Yet I felt there were some redeeming qualities, subtle as they were.
I remember the crystal clear mornings under deep blue skies and the desert air so dry and fresh and clean and pleasant. While the heat of the summer days was almost unbearable, they often ended in spectacularly colorful sunsets after which came the gentle evenings with a steady breeze blowing up from the great Chihuahua desert miles to the south. And there were the peaceful nights under stars so bright and bold they seemed within easy reach.
At times the little canals that crisscrossed Barstow ran strong with irrigation water. Often, in the middle of the night, my girl and I drove over from Pecos to a quite place along the main channel and waded around in the cool stream that sometimes reached to our knees. Afterwards we sat on the bank under the bright stars and dangled our feet in the water and talked about the great adventures that awaited us.
During the spring under the bright morning sun she and I would sometimes go out and watch the crop dusters work the fields along the Balmorhea highway. This was during the Pecos Valley heyday when beautiful farms and green crops stretching from horizon to horizon along either side of the road.
The daredevil pilots and their graceful old bi-planes fascinated us as they raced down the rows, wheels just inches off the plants, pulling up at the last second barely clearing the power lines. They made long gracefully banking turns, dove down to within a couple of feet of the ground, lined up with the field, and flew back down the rows again and again.
Perhaps because of this, she and I began flying lessons at MAF, as money and time allowed. All too soon however, we went our separate ways, I to the military and she to Arizona.
I learned that she flew cargo for awhile out of Tucson and later moved on to the San Joaquin. With the pipeline boom in Alaska she went up and ferried workers and supplies to camps scattered about the tundra. Mostly she worked out of Fairbanks but made regular trips to Anchorage, Valdez, and Juneau. She flew the Beech King Air, twin turbo.
Not long ago I caught up with her in Anchorage. Sitting on her porch with the spectacular McKinley in the distance, we talked a lot about flying, our adventures, and our families and kids. Eventually we got around to those wonderful times we shared so long ago down on the desert around Pecos and Barstow and how different and so far away that world seemed.
I would like to get in touch with Pecos Girl in regards to these nice posts. However, I do not how to befriend her. Any advise from the followers?
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