Let Georgia Do It

Girls at the Kennerly Finishing Ranch model clothes they made in sewing class.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER BALESTRERO, MAURICE KOONCE AND EDWARD J. BEATY A ranch is a cattle farm-a collection of “wide open spaces” covered with green grass where lean, bowlegged cowboys “ride hard in the saddle” all day and raise sleek, fat cattle for the nation’s beef-steak platters. Cattlemen are rough, rugged, and two-fisted. Their wives are lanky and leather-skinned from long hours in the wind and sun.

Maybe fifty years ago this was an accurate description, but now it’s no more than a child’s television or comic book dream.

Cattlemen like comfort like anyone else. Some of them early saw the future in selling their herds, dressing up their cowhands in fancy boots, embroidered shirts, and tight pants, and opening their range to an invasion of eastern “dudes” who wanted to play cowboy for a while and were willing to pay for the chance.

Although there are still thousands of head of cattle raised, dude ranching has become a fine art. Now, the wife of a prominent Texas attorney has established, of all things, a “finishing ranch” for sub-debs, a six-weeks summer course on an Arizona ranch in the art of gracious living.

The prospect of riding herd on fifty or sixty teen-aged girls for six weeks would make the hardiest cow-man saddle up and take to the hills. This little Houston lady not only keeps track of them, but turns them into charming, poised, and competent young women.

man saddle up and take to the hills. This little Houston lady not only keeps track of them, but turns them into charming, poised, and competent young women.

Mrs. T. Everton Kennerly considers personal charm and beauty mighty important to any girl. She also thinks there’s a lot more to developing into a mature and happy woman than knowing how to apply makeup, wear clothes, and select the proper forks.

As her two young daughters, Ann and Mary Marcia, were growing up, Georgia Kennerly spent summer after summer at camps looking for the kind of training she wanted for her girls. She has always enjoyed her children.

“We like to do things together as a family,” she says.

When the regular school year was at an end, Mrs. Kennerly and her girls headed for a summer camp where she taught speech and dramatics.

But she never found quite what she wanted. When Mary Marcia, the youngest, was six years old, Georgia Kennerly began to dream about starting a summer school of her own for her daughters and their sub-deb friends.

Five years ago she opened her first season on a cattle and guest ranch in Southern Arizona. She leased the Rex Ranch near Amado, 35 miles south of Tucson, hired a staff of specialists as instructors, chartered a Pull-man train, and brought 32 Texas sub-debs to Arizona for a six-weeks course none of them will ever forget.

Mrs. Kennerly spent two seasons at Rex Ranch, one at Circle Z near Patagonia, one at Linda Vista near Oracle. Last year nearly sixty girls from Texas-and states as far east and west as Florida and California-enrolled for the fifth Kennerly Finishing Ranch season. This session was at Beaver Creek Ranch near Rimrock, a short distance from the beautiful red-rock formations at Oak Creek Canyon.

Wherever the location, Mrs. Kennerly's training course is essentially the same to prepare her young charges to become happy and useful, as well as charming and decorative.

Believing strongly that every girl needs to develop, to the fullest extent, all of her talents and abilities, Georgia Kennerly insists upon thorough training in the usual techniques provided in "charm" schools. For such training, she lines up real experts. For example, last summer Mrs. M. H. (Ellen) Barrow came over from Houston to teach the girls modeling, and brought along Cecile Gill as her assistant. Ellen Barrow, a graduate of Louisiana State University, was trained in the John Powers self-improvement and modeling course. She also studied with Jeepie Adams, one of Powers' most famous models, at the University of Houston.

Her assistant, Cecile Gill, at 19, has a modeling studio in her home in Houston. Her training was with Mary Beth McDonald. By alternating classes at the Kennerly Ranch, Mrs. Barrow and Miss Gill gave the girls the benefit of both Powers and McDonald training.

For more than an hour every day the girls, under their direction, receive intensive training in details of makeup, care of skin and hair, proper carriage, and high-fashion modeling.

Under their tutelage tomboys learn to walk gracefully. Shy, little wallflowers learn to stand and sit at ease and what to do with their hands and feet. Over-confident girls discover that sharing the center of the stage with their companions is a more assured way of being popular than trying to focus continuous attention on themselves.

At first some of the girls are a little reluctant when they find that learning to be charming means hard work. But their enthusiasm grows as they see unattractive bulges disappear with exercise, drab hair begin to shine with plenty of brushing, poor complexions take on a peaches-and-cream look with judicious application of soap and water, the proper creams and lotions, and a good diet.

They discover a woman's eternal joy in seeing what a little lipstick and powder, correctly applied, can do to correct a minor flaw in the shape of a feature. They spend long hours experimenting with new hair styles. They try on each other's clothes to demonstrate how the right lines make a dress a background for individual beauty instead of something to throw on in the morning after brushing your teeth.

Each time she walks through the huge, old stone and paneled recreation hall of Beaver Creek Ranch, a girl is taught to pause for a few minutes before an enormous full-length mirror at one end of the hall. Here she practices turning and pivoting, sitting and rising, a few new dance steps and twirls, "seeing herself as others see her."

At the beginning of the course some of the girls whisper, in horror, Outdoor life is one of the features of the Kennerly Finishing Ranch.

"I couldn't ever get up before a lot of people!" At the end of six weeks, these girls stroll confidently and gracefully before a crowd of guests, displaying the latest fashions at a style show they plan and execute themselves, under Mrs. Barrow's guiding hand. They can be doubly proud, too, since almost every girl wears an outfit which she has made in the sewing class and accessories she has made in the arts and crafts class. These are girls many of whom, two months before, had never so much as threaded a needle.

It is in the emphasis which Mrs. Kennerly places on housekeeping, homemaking, and sewing that her "finishing ranch" follows an unusual course.

"I wasn't trying to start a bride's school," she explains, "but I don't see why our young girls of today should be expected to learn homemaking almost by osmosis. In the old days a girl learned, from her mother, exactly how to run a household. And, personally, I've never thought it was the least bit funny for a bride to produce only burned toast and bad coffee."

Clara Alice Marley, a home economics teacher at Spring Branch School just outside of Houston, teaches the girls cooking and sewing. At the Kennerly Ranch she is the "Home Economy" teacher, since the courses show the girls short cuts which save them time, energy, and money in the homemaking arts. Regular meals are prepared pared by a kitchen staff, but the girls plan, cook, and serve all the food for their side trips into the surrounding country.

One of these trips into Oak Creek Canyon put their newly learned cooking techniques to a "trial by water." The five youngsters responsible for planning the menu for this trip selected hamburgers, "refried beans," a dish borrowed from Mexican cookery, a tossed green salad, and milk. For dessert, there were to be cinnamon apples, stuffed with marshmallows, and roasted in the campfire. They piled the fixings for some seventy people into cars, station wagons, and a cattle truck. The caravan drove the thirty-two miles to the Castle Rock area in Oak Creek Canyon. There, the girls clambered over massive, old red rocks, grotesque castles cut out by millions of years of erosion in direct reversal of man's brick-bybrick tower building process. When they had conquered enough of these buttes, they scrambled back to the thirty-two campfire, ready for Food with the incredible hunger of teen-agers. The proud cooks and hostesses were just beginning to dish out the sizzling hamburgers when an Arizona summer storm blew up. The sky split open at the seams, and "the rains came" in the solid sheets of water peculiar to these flash floods.

When the first squeals and howls died down, the girls faced the state of emergency and constructed a blanket tarpaulin over the chuck-wagon (a converted station wagon). They grabbed their plates, huddled into the cars, and calmly munched their hamburgers and beans, only slightly water-soaked. As one girl put it, "At least the lettuce was crisp!"

He was Dining at the Kennerly Ranch is not usually quite so hectic, however. The actual cooking is done by professional cooks. The girls take care of the niceties that go with eating. Each day two dining room hostesses are appointed. It is their job to set out the dishes, silver, and glasses according to the menu, and they serve the food.

Each of the small tables in the dining room has its own hostess. She sets the table, generally sees that the meal runs smoothly, starts the food around, watches to see that each girl gets enough, leads the conversation, and gives the signal to rise at the end of the meal. In this daily process the girls learn the art of dining graciously. The seating arrangement is planned, and the job of being hostess rotates around the table. Each week the arrangement is changed so that every girl will get to know all the others. Table manners are improved. Those who eat too fast are slowed down; dreamers are taught that it is not polite to dawdle over food and finish a half-hour after everyone else.

One of Georgia Kennerly's chief purposes is to teach consideration of others. She asks the girls to regard themselves as guests while they are at the ranch. She wants them to learn the technique of being a welcome guest, and considers this as important as being a good hostess.

Each day there is a class in the "Art of Gracious Living" which Mrs. Kennerly teaches herself.

"One of a guest's duties," she explains, "is to take care of the property. We always try to leave a place in better condition than when we came."

The girls learn that a good guest accepts the hostess' plans graciously and without complaining. They learn that a good guest is on time to meals. In their "homes," each with its own counselor, the girls learn general housekeeping habits. The heavy work is done by maids.

Georgia Kennerly is trying to get rid of the idea, that, "My parents brought me into the world. I had no choice, therefore I owe them nothing."

In the six weeks at camp, the counselors replace their parents, and the girls learn that a sense of responsibility to their parents need not be a tedious thing. The counselors get to know every girl inside and out before she leaves the ranch. She is treated as an individual and gets special attention for whatever she needs.

With the beautiful setting of the Oak Creek country outdoor activities take on added zest. As in most summer camps, swimming is a required subject. Barbara Roane of Richmond, Texas, teaches the girls this sport according to the American Red Cross program. They learn to swim and dive in a clear, cold, natural pool surrounded by a heavy stand of birch, pine, fir and scrub oak. Most of the girls become able swimmers, and life-saving instruction was popular last year.

Tennis is played on a court with a hard-earth packed terraced approach, and archery in the green woods is like playing Robin Hood. And, of course, any ranch, even a "finishing ranch," without horses is unheard of. Beaver Creek Ranch has eleven horses, and Mary Catherine Lusk of Houston has a full schedule teaching riding and archery.

Under brilliant, blue Arizona skies the girls take long rides over the wooded hills which loom on every side of the ranch. Their eyes sparkle as they breathe deeply of the crisp air pungent with the smell of pine. It is common for their approach to send tiny chipmunks, nervous brown squirrels, and wary rabbits scurrying off into the woods. The girls inevitably catch the wild freedom of these little creatures, and counselors are hard put at times to keep them from racing their horses across the hills under a particularly virulent attack of the "joy of living."

Their enthusiasm and energy is given a chance to explode in dramatics classes which Georgia Kennerly teaches. Mrs. Kennerly is famous in Houston for her dramatic readings.

"I don't feel that I am a professional," she says. "I just love to teach young people." She has been associated with the theater and dramatics groups for many years. Mrs. Kennerly feels that the girls can learn much more than acting in a dramatics class. She says, "You teach life itself when you teach dramatics."

The girls learn to use their ingenuity in preparing and presenting variety shows each Friday night. Each week one cabin or "home" is responsible for the show, and "Ken" Kennerly (T. Everton, Jr.) helps the girls write and prepare their skits. Imagination runs wild! The acts are usually comic take-offs on some popular song, current Broadway show, and frequently exaggerated imitations of the counselors.

The shows are presented in the recreation hall. The blanket curtain is supported by two of the young thespians. The audience in blue jeans and shorts sits on the floor and shows its approval by shouting and stamping its feet with a vigor worthy of Shakespeare.

In Georgia Kennerly's opinion, taking part in these shows is one of the best ways for her girls girls to learn selfpossession and poise. Mary Marcia Kennerly, now 19, and a sophomore at the University of Texas, teaches ballet, tap, and modern dancing.

When the girls go back to Texas, they know nearly as much as the local citizens about the area in which they have spent the summer. Side trips to all the points of interest within reasonable distance are a part of the Kennerly curriculum. Before they leave for these trips, one girl is assigned to study available books and brochures and, when they arrive, she is prepared to give the other girls an instructive lecture on the spot.

When the ranch was in southern Arizona, the trips

included San Xavier and Tumacacori Missions, two of the chain of missions founded by Father Eusibio Francisco Kino. Father Kino was the Jesuit missionary, rancher, explorer, cartographer, agriculturist who opened up the Southern Arizona territory to the white man. He brought the Southwest Pima, Papago, and Soba Indians Christianity. He showed them agricultural and building methods which enabled them to build permanent settlements for the first time in their wandering lives. He brought the first cattle and horses which the Indians had ever seen into Southern Arizona. He paved the way for the Franciscan priests who, a century later, built the present missions. They visited Tubac, the oldest town founded by white men in the state, in 1752 when the Spanish established a garrison there, and the birthplace of the Weekly Arizonian, first newspaper published in the Arizona territory, in 1859. Tubac, once a thriving agricultural center, is today virtually a ghost town.

They spent one afternoon wandering among the curio shops of Nogales, just across the Mexican border, and sixty miles south of Tucson.

Last summer the girls visited Oak Creek Canyon twice for campfire suppers. They saw Tuzigoot National Monument, an outstanding example of the large late-prehistoric pueblos of Northern Arizona, located on a hill across the Verde River from Clarksdale, Arizona. Another trip was to Montezuma Castle National Monument and Montezuma Well, about 17 miles southeast of Sedona. The Well is a natural limestone sink from which a large spring flows, feeding into Beaver Creek. Its surface lies eighty feet below the rim. Around the Well are several prehistoric Indian ruins. The story is that Spanish soldiers who had met the Aztec chieftain, Montezuma, near Mexico City in the early 1500's, facetiously named the well after the wily Indian.

They saw Jerome, now a ghost city. Once a thriving mining community, Jerome hangs on the 30 degree slope of Mingus Mountain, 2000 feet above the Verde Valley, an area filled with history and scenery.

One of the highlights was an overnight trip to Grand Canyon National Park. The girls stayed at the auto camp and hiked from there around the South Rim to Yavapai Point, where a ranger lectured on the history and geology of the Canyon. They square-danced at Bright Angel Lodge, shopped in the curio stores, and as they described in their Ranch newspaper, "We, and the famous opera star, Patrice Munsel, were entertained by the Hopi Indian Dancers," a team of dancers who present colorful tribal dances every evening before the Hopi House.

Religious training at any school is always a ticklish subject, but Mrs. Kennerly, herself a deeply religious woman, instituted non-compulsory Vespers Services every evening. She asks the girls themselves to take complete charge of the simple service. Each evening as sunset approaches, every girl hurries to bathe and change into clean, white shirts and shorts for the short outdoor devotions. Not a single sub-deb in the history of the Ranch has ever missed the voluntary service. With their freshly scrubbed faces and wind-blown hair, these young "glamour girls" add a further peak of beauty to the indescribable parade of light and color that is an Arizona sunset.

The high point of the season is graduation night. With their introductory training in the delight of being women at an end, the girls present the final style show of the season for guests from nearby towns. Up to this point, the girls are completely unaware that they will receive diplomas which state that they have satisfactorily completed a course of charm and modeling with the purpose "to develop her individuality, enabling her to learn to grow beautiful physically, mentally, and spiritually... also to inspire her to further develop these potentialities through daily application."

When the girls go home, parents decide that when it comes to turning out delightful, attractive, and competent young ladies, it's a good idea to "let Georgia do it" at her Kennerly Finishing Ranch in Arizona.

YOURS SINCERELY VERBOTEN:

For several years I have been sending you a subscription each year to a friend in the East Zone, Germany and he reported receiving his copies regularly. He and his friends in this little town behind the Iron Curtain enjoyed the beautiful scenes and descriptions of our wonderful state of Arizona and it made them forget their troubles. Even the village postmaster would sometimes hold back delivery of copies for a day so that he also could look at the pictures. Lacking any references to politics or ideologies, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS was doing, nevertheless, too good a job in promoting friendliness and international goodwill in areas where such instincts are not wanted by the Kremlin rulers. So, one day, about a year ago, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS was placed on the "verboten" list, and all of his copies were confiscated and probably burned by the censors.

The new subscription will therefore go to a relative of his in the free zone of Berlin. There the relative, after reading each copy himself, will re-wrap it in plain paper, step across the Iron Curtain boundary into east Berlin and there mail it to my friend. We hope this plan will work.

PINYON AND LIGHTNING:

As all my field work as an archaeologist between 1907 and 1929 was done in the Southwest, you can imagine how I revel in each number of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. The fine article in the March issue on the piñon leads me to pass on a belief about this tree which, when I first heard it, I took no stock in, but

BACK COVER "WUPATKI DETAIL" BY CHUCK ABBOTT.

Arizona Indian ruins are replete with pleasing architectural details such as the one here shown of Wupatki National Monument, near Flagstaff. From a distance one sees the scope of the ancient buildings; in a closeup one can observe the carefully dressed stone, the thickness of the walls and the wellformed passage-openings. In summer, Wupatki is best photographed around 11 a.m., just as the sun moves south far enough to throw the ruins in relief. Earlier, the ruin is flat; later, the ruin is in silhouette. 5x7 Deardorff view camera, Ektachrome film, Goerz Dagor lens, 1/10 at f. 22.

which seems to have had some confirmation.

In 1915 or '16 one of my workmen on the excavation of Pecos, in San Miguel County, New Mexico, a very intelligent and reliable man named José Baca, told me that lightning never struck a piñon. From that time on I kept my eye open and although I found plenty of junipers that had been struck I never saw a piñon that had.

Where there are yellow pines, they, of course, being tall, catch any lightning that's hitting in their neighborhood; so for years, whenever I was in juniperpiñon country, I took particular care to look for smashed piñons. Even on the Mesa Verde, where, as Mr. Dodge states in his excellent article, the piñons are particularly luxuriant, I had no luck. I asked an old-timer of the Mesa who told me that he'd never seen a lightningstruck piñon. That, of course, was some years ago. Anyhow, I'd like very much to learn if there is anything to Joe Baca's story.

ARIZONA'S NAME:

The ARIZONA HIGHWAYS for March 1955 features an intriguing bit of research about the origin of Arizona's name (Page 2). May I add an additional lilt to the euphonious name, Arizona. It is this: I have read that Pope Pius XI, the predecessor of the present Pope, was extremely fond of the name and thought it was the sweetest sounding name of all the states of U. S. A.

OPPOSITE PAGE "SUMMER AT LAKE MARY" BY CHUCK ABBOTT.

Summertime at Lake Mary finds the skies filled with popcorn clouds and wildflowers abundant along the green shorelines. This artificial lake, constructed in 1903 by T. A. Riordan, pioneer lumberman of Flagstaff, was named for his daughter. In the ensuing years the dam has been raised thus extending the lake to its preseent length of nine miles. In a state where most of its lakes are made and not "born" they are even more appreciated by the residents and vacationists. Photographed in late June; 4x5 Graphic view camera, Ektachrome film, Goerz Berlin lens, 1/10 at f. 22.

With sleek, sophisticated curves, the highway flaunts its purposed path along the mountain's base, then suddenly, with rocket-like economy of line, it plunges out across the desert miles devouring distance with swift certainty, to disappear, a silver dot upon the far horizon's rim.

But in its wake, the desert lies unmoved and smiling, on its aged face a thousand tiny roads cris-cross . . . from rabbit hole to hidden spring; from wind-carved buttes to briefly reeded lakes of sand; from green mesquite through Joshuas' weird suppliant forms, they go, these winsome desert roads that flash and wind, that run and vanish in a rocky wash . . . smile lines upon the desert's face.Silently, silver-crested leaves dance with their shadows velvet-soft on hard-baked earth. Softly, silent silhouettes of harsh cliffs gently nudge infinity star-dusted high and clear. Blue-black, the mountain shadows lay their quiet patterns on upland mesa flat and still Coolly accepting the luminous veil that enshrouds each spiney plant and low-flung thorn in gentle peace.

Distance-silence, silver-soft. Desert-shadows, blue and clear.

Alone, alive and quivering, my heart-how silent, soft and chillAlone, alarmed and moondrenched-is lonely now, and still.

The Sky Gods painted wild tonight Across the western sky; Great strokes on sweeping canvases Were hanging there to dry. All shades of crimson, scarlet, rose, In modernistic line, With golden edging on the clouds From setting sun's bright shine. The Sky Gods viewed their handiwork Well satisfied. So they The brilliant exhibition closed With slip covers of gray.