THE MONTHS OF OUR YEARS

Paintings By Peter Hurd Words By Patricia Paylore months of our year

A Very Special Documentary Portfolio Depicting The Land, The People And The Way Of Life In One Of The Oldest, Not Yet Awakened, Undeveloped Regions Of The New World. with personal comments by the artist Editor's Note: The inevitable summation of the creative effort of an artist is in varying degrees, his autobiography expressed through the senses and reflected from his canvas. What an artist paints is a release of his dreams, reality and philosophy in other words his world. In November 1953, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Magazine introduced their readers to Peter Hurd and his Southwest. For us, it was an auspicious presentation with fifteen paintings and text, by the artist, titled "A Southwestern Heritage." Peter Hurd's name and fame have gone far beyond the horizons of the Southwest. We love Peter Hurd and we feel a special kinship with his world because it is a down to earth heaven of simple things, people, scenes and moods we understand. True, he depicts his beloved New Mexico but what we see and feel is Arizona, Nevada, Texas, California or any other Southwestern state where nature and people, regardless of their social, political or ethnic status, live close to the land and live in harmony with a cosmic system beyond human understanding. Peter Hurd paintings from the collection of The Security National Bank of Roswell, New Mexico Peter Hurd is represented in Scottsdale, Arizona, by Gold Key Galleries. The following paragraphs are reprinted from our Novem-ber 1953 magazine. In retrospect, they are worth reading because what was a Southwestern Heritage in 1953 has become an American Treasure in one generation's lifespan.

A Southwestern Heritage by Peter Hurd

Among the first things I remember as a child in New Mexico was the sound of the old Eclipse windmill on my father's farm. Its metallic cough and the rhythmic tug of rods and pipes were a sort of lullaby familiar to any plains-born child of that period. I can remember watching it by the hour through a window from where I lay in my iron bed; its wooden slatted wheel was occasionally still but more often it made a spinning blur against the brilliant sky. And later when my brother and I were old enough to have the run of the farm we would shut off the mill, using the windlass below, and climb up the big wooden tower to perch on the platform forty feet above the ground. From this height a new and wonderful world spread out on all sides below us.

To the north lay the town of Roswell, which was almost hidden in the summer by the dense foliage of the cottonwoods that lined its streets. In certain lights there was visible the silver gleam of one or more of the three spring-fed rivers that meandered serenely to the Pecos ten miles eastward. They looked like pale ribbons in a formalized pattern of curves as they crossed an irrigated farming country before becoming lost in the thick cottonwood bosque of the Pecos. Across the Pecos, pink and lavender bluffs rose abruptly from the river and beyond these a great prairie land stretched to the Caprock and on to the Texas line. And in the other directions also lay the plains, flat and limitless, broken only by the looming cobalt blue face of Capitan Mountain to the west. Five miles to the south we could see the South Spring ranch where John Chisum had built his headquarters fifty years earlier and set up a practically boundless cattle domain. To the north above the tree tops were the yellow brick towers and walls of New Mexico Military Institute. Beyond the town and the adjacent farm land we could see in the middle distance a dozen or more ranch houses each surmounted by a windmill which, with its accompanying water tanks, gave assurance of survival to the inhabitants and to a few forlorn trees.

So it seemed to us as we gazed out from our windmill tower that our farm lay at the exact center of a fabulous and exciting world; and though there were rivers and bosques and farm land and distant sierras it was primarily a world of plains, for the plains were the dominating feature, extending in all directions to form a complete rim with the sky or be lost in the shimmering infinity of a mirage.

Later, I think it must have been in about 1913, we were given burros and then, after conquering in part at least the perversity and deep resentment of our mounts, we set out to explore some of the world of which we had dreamed from the windmill tower and occasionally glimpsed from the back seat of a mountain hack. This now long-forgotten vehicle served the family for years. It was drawn by a dappled grey mare named Sigrid and a nervous sorrel with wild rolling eyes whose name was Teddy Roosevelt. Though driving in the hack was fun it couldn't compare to the thrill of exploring on our own burros. We made friends with boys on neighboring ranches and we, like all of them, seemed to know from an early age how to swim. I can't remember who taught us, if anyone, but I know it was in stock tanks that we learned. We were all of us avid amphibians. The only sports that could rival swimming were racing our burros or ponies across the

lithograph by Peter Hurd >

Prairie and frequent wild attempts to ride the neighbor's calves. All through the summer, whenever chores didn't keep us at home, we would gather at some neighborhood tank for loud, interminable water games.

Our tank on the farm was not nearly so desirable as the ones on the neighboring ranches for it was rather shallow and had a bottom of thick bad-smelling mud. But it did have one great advantage: it was shaded on two sides by enormous weeping willows whose long branches extended to the water's surface. This circumstance led to an occurrence one day which, though ludicrous in its outcome, almost caused the breaking up of the swimming gang. It was one of our summer time jobs on the farm to irrigate the alfalfa. As this was a fairly continuous process we became adept at it and learned to "set" the water in such a way that a twenty-minute swim would result in no harm. The only trouble with this was that if Andreas, the farm hand, would catch us we would be punished. But we learned how not to get caught. By tying a hollowed-out bamboo stick to the willow branches where they met the water and allowing the other end to extend downward we could sit down on the bottom of the tank completely hidden by the turgid water and using clothespins on our noses breathe through our mouths into the bamboo tubes for practically any length of time. The alarm was always given by the creak and slam of a gate leading into the corral where the tank was. One day in the midst of aquatic high jinks in our tank with some neighbor boys we heard the gate slam. As often before we took at once to the water and our breathing tubes. But this time two disastrous things happened: first, we had aban-doned our clothes in plain sight; second, it was our cook, an elderly and dignified Mexican woman from Zacatecas, who had come looking for us. Unknown to us she had arrived in time to glimpse a small naked boy disappear into the water. She waited on the bank for us to make our appearance until at length in a sudden, agonizing realization of elapsed time she leaped into the water and flounced around until she stum-bled on one of us. Doña Abrana, her clothing and white hair dripping with mud and water yelled "pendejitos" at us in a fit of mixed rage and relief while we four naked brats arising from a watery grave stood in silence.

A couple of years later as we outgrew our burros a friend of father's presented us each with a pony. With these our horizon widened again, for when school vacation began we were allowed to drive each year a string of twenty-some saddle horses belonging to Roswell people up to their summer cabins in the Sierra Blanca. This was a seventy-five-mile trip and took two full days. But we happily undertook it with the indulgence of our parents, and escorted the horses at fifty cents per head, following the dusty and unpaved road across the parched plains into the shadowed foothills of the Hondo Valley, up the Ruidoso, until happily we arrived in the high cool forest country. Saddle horses were always a part of our life in those days and were a common means of conveyance to and from school. Thoroughbreds and quarter horses were unknown to us, though any trim-legged pony with a show of blood was invariably claimed by its owner to have a "dab of 'Steeldust' in him." If old "Steeldust" sired a fraction of the get attributed to him he'd be the most prepotent horse of all time.

In telling these experiences I have tried to give a glimpse into the background which has been so important to me as a painter.

“Come Rain and Quench the Thirsty Land.”

“The Shepherd”

anuary

In this first painting of the series, note certain themes that will recur later: the light in the window that conveys a sense of welcome, of shelter, of human occupancy. Next, observe Hurd's use of line to delineate boundaries, always gentle, natural, organic, as here where the winter-bare trees follow as well as define the water course, or where the vehicle tracks in the snow seem to wander off the picture in the lower right. This is a lonely view, despite that lighted window, almost melancholy, without our quite knowing why. Perhaps it is the lowering sky over the chill dusk, or the absence of any human figure. Yet the pale reflection of light on the snow outside the window also tells us that within there may be dry wood for a fire. And tomorrow may be cold but clear. And the year is new. And in the trees there is promise of leaf to come.

"This painting representing January shows the Salas farm as it was in the 50's, a piece of land joining us on the east. I remember well when I painted the field sketch for this landscape. It was in early January in 1954 and we had just returned from putting our daughter, Carol, on a train bound for New York where she was attending Sarah Lawrence College. Snow had fallen the previous night and when we arrived at San Patricio dusk was about to settle over the land. A matter of fifteen minutes produced the field note for this and I returned next day to get details of the tree and houses."

"This landscape is a composite. The foreground and middle distance is on the north side of our ranch. The figure is my foreman, Eusevio Pena, and the horse is La Mora, a beautiful half-Arabian given to me by a friend. The sign next to the gate post reads: "Close the Gate" which stands open. The sign, incidentally, has the inevitable couple of bullet holes in it, made by some gun happy passerby. I've tried to convey a feeling of the brilliant sunlight of winter a day with low clouds, their shadows racing across the earth."

ebruary

The composition of this superb painting is also superb. Note the gate posts, soaring into the winter sky, balanced by the blue cone on the horizon that breaks the monotony of the otherwise endless tawny hills, winter-bare like those January trees, yet earthy warm. In your preoccupation with the rider, do not overlook the distant windmill beside the stock tank, upper right, to which we are led ever so subtly by the fence that continues beyond the open gate with its "Please close gate" sign at which the horseman is gazing with such unmistakable concern. The rider himself, at graceful ease in his environment, symbolizes a sense of motion, freedom, qualities of life that all of us long to recover if only in memory, vicariously, even viscerally, beyond the experience of twentieth century man. So do we ache to return to a simpler, more elemental life, before we were brutalized by our own indifference to sky and earth and each other.

"I've done a number of sandstorms, all variations of this theme. This ranch house is an old adobe a couple of miles from the highway as one approaches Carrizozo from the east. It was in the spring of the year, as one might assume, and the willow tree bent by the wind had already begun to turn green. Bill Babers, a neighbor in San Patricio, posed for the windblown horseman." A gentle scene of early evening moonlight, with its curving road coming from here and gradually taking us there, in a casual low-keyed way. This little farm in a cleft of Hurd hills is dominated by the exquisite riot of blossoming apple trees, the rich plowed earth, and the life-giving water sluicing through the acequia that follows the contour of the valley. These springtime manifestations of the renewal of life speak to us of home, in the deepest most absolute uncorrupted sense, for the figure taking his team toward the barn (for which he has some concern as we note from the effort to patch its roof) is also going beyond to a welcome that awaits himself in the simple adobe with its hint of supper in the rising smoke. Food, shelter, companionship – is there more to which a man can aspire, either in New Mexico, or Arizona, or Kansas, or Surrey, or the Loire Valley? Say, each of you out there!

March

Observe here the palpable sense of wind direction as it whips the sand and obscures the sun, glowing coldly through its halo of golden dust: the streamer of smoke from the chimney, the horse's tail, the dust raised by his hooves, and beyond the truck the tree leaning against the ranch house. Only the long shadows cast by the brittle-dry shrubs in the foreground are static in their bearing toward us. The windmill, its base invisible, appears to float in the murky sky, but the rider, head down, bent into the wind, is anchored in life as he heads for home or shelter, symbolized again by a single lighted window.

pril

"April in the Ruidoso Valley is the month of apple blossoms and for this painting I chose a neighbor's farm which I have painted many times. The first property we acquired bordered on this farm owned by don Sixto Sedillos. It was in the days before tractors took over the tasks of work teams and in the Valley from Riverside to Ruidoso I knew of only one tractor. With its spike-cleated wheels it would be a curiosity now. Fortunately I made a number of drawings of our own work team, one of which I made use of in painting 'The Month of April.'"

"In past years in our village, four saints' days were always singled out for special celebrations: San Ysidro on May 17, San Juan on June 24, Santa Ana on July 26, and Christmas. The celebration of an honored Saint began inside the church in this painting it is the old church of San Patricio - and ended with the procession which I have depicted in this painting. The fires are made of stacks of pinion wood laid in squares like a log cabin. These illuminate the celebrants as singing hymns of praise, they follow the priests and acolytes in the procession. The fragrance of pinon smoke evokes a special nostalgia for us who remember it from early infancy."

May

This depiction of a saint's day, San Ysidro, the patron saint of farmers and ranchers, is one of action as we view the dramatic procession from the church led by the three acolytes and the celebrant priest. The men bearing the litter holding a figurine of the farmer and his plow behind the oxen are obviously men of stature in the community, being honored in this way but by the same token expressing the burden of their community responsibilities. And despite the number of figures streaming from the old church at San Patricio, it is possible to identify individuals among them. The piñon fires with their smoke plumes matching the church spire as they all rise into the evening sky, throw a radiance behind the promenade that envelops the whole with an aura of serious beauty. There is no question here but that man, in this lovely "ceremony of innocence," has maintained his psychic integration with his environment, the ravages of change beyond this small enclave of the eternal, notwithstanding.

une

"The scene is San Patricio though I have taken artist's license and moved a large cottonwood tree from its true location along the Rio Ruidoso to form a shadowed spot for the trysting place. The dance hall still stands as I portray it but it is now a dwelling. The occasion might well be Saint John's eve which is celebrated on June 24, and in past years inevitably included a rodeo, matched horse races, and an ample intake of alcohol at the final event, a dance which would last until two or three in the morning."

The essence of all that is tenderly revealing of Peter Hurd as artist and man is here: the summer landscape slumbering after the heat of the day beneath a starry sky, the people of this land and their immemorial ways, and the delicate balance between these elemental aspects of his home. But while the activities delineated here are indigenous to the southwest, they are also universal. The tryst beneath the trees to the left, where the lover conducts his courtship properly, Hurd tells us, by remaining mounted according to the custom, is nevertheless an art that differs worldwide only by small local-ities such as this charming one. The family groups converging on the schoolhouse, and the others already gathered in the lighted doorway awaiting the tardy musicians, remind us that we are social creatures bound together by needs beyond expression. The vintage cars, the tethered horses, the lights - ah, the lights: the headlights of the approaching truck, the face of el charro as he lights his cigarette, the fading light above the horizon - all are unmistakable touches from the Hurd lexicon.

uly

The vertical contrast here between violent sky and tranquil fields is more dramatic than is visually evident as we view this picture, for we need to recall the longing with which we await the summer monsoon, the sweet dusty smell of rain long before a drop has fallen, and to remind ourselves that soon the runoff will be gullying out of the angry channel it has cut through these most exquisitely-textured of all Hurd hills. The intense light on the bajadas above the rocky still-dry arroyo tells us that despite the storm, somewhere through some unseen rent beyond our vision, the sun still is strangely shining. The tiny figures of man and beast hurrying to finish the haying are dwarfed by this landscape, yet withal there is a warm sense of humanity here, doing commonplace things in an uncommon land.

JOURNEY RESUMED Peter Hurd Today By John Meigs

The road through the Hondo Valley is wider now and the cars speed relentlessly on to the high mountain country but the little side road at San Patricio is still dirt and the big cottonwoods by the river reach upward a little more than they did years ago. The white bridge of welded steel is new, a concession to the annual cloudbursts upriver that invariably washed away the earlier wooden counterparts. The corrals are partially gone and an adobe barn replaces the old wooden structure. A sign indicates that the upper road goes to the Rogers', the Hurd's son-inlaw, who resides down the valley a short way and has achieved a fame of his own as a painter. The approach to the Hurd's house with its pink and faded lavender walls is pretty much as it was twenty years ago, but just inside the gate the efficient office of Walt Robinson, Mr. Hurd's business manager; intercepts most casual visitors who have not called ahead for an appointment.

The easy going days of another era are still in evidence but the Southwest's most famous artist son values his time and his productive periods more closely than in other years. Henriette, his wife of 43 years and a painter only slightly less known to the public, continues to produce more exquisite still life and floral paintings and unsurpassed portraits.

ugust

There is detail here, not the noisy detail of a photograph, but rather a pattern of detail that reveals Hurd's selective process by which he includes that which serves to identify and certify its authenticity, but by which he also cuts away the non-essential to disclose quintessential. Observe, for instance, the area around the sheepherder's tents: bedroll, barrel of drinking water outside the cook tent, smoke rising to tell us that something is cooking, the nanny goat which is probably milked. In short, a man lives here, however temporarily, and here is the evidence of his occupancy. But far beyond this do we have the substance of the landscape in the dark column of rain with its promise of fresh relief from the somnolence of August, in the band of sheep surging down toward the mirrored reflection of the water hole, in the background of pastoral valley with its cultivated fields. And over all, like a monolith, looms a magnificent cliff, rearing up to dominate. This is not the typical gentle rounded, sometimes featureless Hurd hill, but a sharply defined landform, beautifully textured as only tempera can express.

"This is a composite landscape which includes the Ruidoso Valley looking west. The foreground was made from field notes on that part of our ranch lying north of U.S. 70. Somewhere in my reading I had learned that the old masters of the Renaissance period often used chunks of rock which when painted in detail and in greatly enlarged scale became massive elements in a landscape. The model for the yellowing mass of rock on the left was made by putting a piece of San Andreas limestone in a light comparable to one in the painting and ignoring the scale. The two tents are memories of my childhood when my father and I would visit sheep camps on ranches owned by friends and clients of his."

September

The central tree, outlined in reflected light from the open doorway of what? a one-room country schoolhouse? leads the eye inevitably up into one of Hurd's most beautiful night skies, itself illumined by the afterglow that sets off the dark silhouette of hills. Here again we see his use of lighted windows, and of chimney smoke, this time barely perceptible, ascending lazily, without urgency. The figures of the children at their game seem, too, to be arrested in motion, so that one gets a sense of suspended time a timeless moment between daylight and dark. The small onlooker, foreground, speaks to us with poignancy of those among us who are also apart, the non-person. Is he lonely? alienated? or just wistful? Sharing his hurt, we long to cry out, “Take him, too!” Autumn, the fullness of the year, radiantly warm in the sherry-colored light. The convolution of these Hurd hills dominates the view from his horse pasture, and draws our eye involuntarily to the glimpse of that blue peak beyond that speaks of something far away, outside the homeliness of the familiar and that which moves our hearts with a shock of recognition, like a wisp of chimney smoke. Here again, as elsewhere, the curve of the Rio Ruidoso lends a certain meander-ing quality, almost lazy, while the figures in the foreground place man in perfect scale with this landscape that is larger than life.

0ctober

November

While our eye is undeniably drawn first to the figures around the fire, it is possible to establish a more subtle balance between earth and sky by regarding the handsome alligator juniper, soaring upward yet firmly earthbound. Note the veil of smoke from this well-banked campfire as it rises against the dark background hills, and the almost tangible steam from that cup of coffee on the ground as the pot is hooked off the whitened coals to fill the waiting cup. Who knows what delicacy simmers under the lid of that Dutch oven? The cloud of dust kicked up by the approaching truck tells us that friends are hungry, too, as they hurry toward fellowship, warmth, sharing. Of this painting, Hurd reminds us that: “Most hunters value the privilege of being allowed to hunt whether on privately owned land or public domain. Let us hope that this group are good sportsmen with respect for the earth, the animals, and the ranchers – leaving a clean camp and gates and fences as they find them.”

JOURNEY RESUMED from page 25

The two of them have created a stunning body of work and a remarkable record of the landscape and its people for four decades. A Who's Who of people call, write, or come by with commissions and "ideas," but best of all are the old friends who drop in for a warm reunion and a strengthening of old ties. The grandchildren, Pedrito, Gabriela, and David Rogers are daily visitors with problems and questions about their current interests such as photography, horsemanship, and collecting rocks.

The playing field across the river resounds with shouts and clanging bells on weekends as the polo buffs congregate during the summer months for strenuous sessions in which Peter Hurd is often a conspicuous participant.

Mrs. Hurd's famous luncheon parties sparkle with brilliant conversation and fine food served by Oliva Montoya and her daughter, Vestina.

Pete's underground greenhouse where exotic plants such as Copa de Oro, jasmine and bananas grow in profusion is now two stories high in order to accommodate the burgeoning plants.

So goes the life of these two distinguished painters and it is fitting that they should have this lovely setting in which to create the things for which they and the Southwest will be long remembered. The sunset and the sunrise are as beautiful and exciting as they always were and a lovely or startling cloudy sky will bring them both outside to marvel. The orchards of apples are no longer productive as they once were because newer varieties have taken their place but they produce "paintings" of far greater value as their lovely old trees blossom in spring, bear red fruit in fall, and stand stark against the snow in winter. The farm and orchard lands are often leased to neighbors to run stock and exotic cattle, spirited horses, and the offspring of both provide a kalaidescope of inspiration and ideas.

Peter Hurd's studio is much as it always was; at present supporting immense panels for a mural for the University of Texas at El Paso. Books, the ever present resource of a man of Hurd's intellectual curiosity, are piled neatly or precariously about the studio, depending on the project at hand.

The old Chevrolet carryall has been replaced by a much larger Cortez, a house on wheels and especially adapted for Pete's use with large view window and neatly marked drawers and cabinets for an endless supply of artistic and domestic needs.Late afternoon is a favored time for Hurd to go painting, and many a tourist on the highway is unaware that the hulking bus parked alongside the road contains one of America's finest painters who is once again rediscovering the beauty of his own surroundings and making it into a transportable treasure for many to enjoy.

Though Hurd's flamboyant days as a war correspondent for Life magazine have given way to a more sedate life, his encounter as a Presidential portrait painter has thrust him into the limelight for a generation of people who were not aware of his previous exploits. The much discussed portrait now graces the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Two books, one on his lithographs and last year's Sketch Book, have joined the earlier book of reminisences by Paul Horgan to make his work and his personality available for many thousands who have admired both from afar.

Such diverse requests for his talents as one to translate and sing an ecology song in Spanish, suggested by his old friend Burl Ives, and a request to consider doing a mural on the arid and semi-arid lands for the New West Texas Museum prove that he is more in demand as a creative force than ever before.

The twelve paintings, depicting the months of the year, were commissioned eight years ago by the three Leonard brothers, Pat, Tim and Joe. The brothers' parents were friends of Peter Hurd's parents in Roswell for many years and their boys grew up knowing Pete and his work. The boys became interested in an idea which Hurd had been thinking of for a long time to record the cycle of the year and nature's changes in a series of paintings. Over the following years Hurd inter spersed the creation of the tempera paintings with his other work and they were finally finished in the spring of 1971. This is the first publication of the results subsequent to their initial showing at the Santa Fe Museum of Art last summer.

To those who might have wondered what's happened to Peter Hurd, the reply is one that applies to many of America's great mature painters he is living a vigorous and active life, just as he would have planned it, and he continues to add constantly to the store of America's creative wealth with his talent.

ecember

The contrast here between the dark winter sky and the snowy foreground is a stunning one, emphasized by the accent of line and perspective as we see the black Angus following the hay drop. Both the tree, right, with its burden of icy snow, and the pickup with its mudguards displaying evidence of the weather gauntlet it has run, dramatize the obstacles to be overcome in this feeding operation. This is a still cold, conveying to us the greater need for physical action, as we recognize with a tingling sense of slow-spreading warmth, deeper than the heart, in the gut, the relationship between man and his animals that makes of each something more than is visible.

"A chilly morning on the Fort Stanton pasture, a high mesa that spreads eastward from the Sierra Blanca and which is now an experimental ranch, a part of the livestock division of New Mexico State University.

The sound and sight of the pickup is all that is needed to bring the black Angus cattle to their breakfast. My models are Eusevio Pena and Hilario Salas who work for me and have at various times been my patient models."

LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE

The most satisfying measure of joy in life comes from a feeling of being where one belongs. For most people of this earth, the experience of being foursquare with life is unrealized in their lifetime. Some of us consume ourselves in seeking the great adventure in travel. Others are held as if by a magic spell to the world bounded by the horizons of their birthplace.For each of us, life presents different aspects and variant necessities. Some of us are poets, some are doctors. lawyers farmers and, thanks be to God, so many choose to be plumbers for in this day and age what would doctors, lawyers, poets and farmers do without plumbing?Contentment and, in the end, usefulness follow after we have yielded to great acceptances, made adjustments and at times suffered in one degree or another from minor inconveniences to great humiliations.

This was and is true of people who live the greater part of their lives in cities and emigrate to the land of the wide open spaces we know as the great American Southwest. It takes a great measure of the best in man to surrender to the fullness of life to uproot himself from his spot on earth and to establish a new flow of life in a situation of unknown quantity.

With all due respect to those men and women who won the West, we feel that they succeeded because the land needed them at a destined time in history. The spell of the Southwest held the strong ones like a magnet. And, since most of the men and women were freedom-seekers, they were drawn into a way of life which produced the world's most starry adventure from hardships not experienced by any other people in recorded history.

The great American Southwest is and, for all our foreseeable future, always will be a land of distant horizons, unbounded space and soulstirring skies. Away from the everyday flow of interstate traffic, the manner and tempo of living are pretty much the same as they were in our genitors' generation.

If at times it seems the world is strange and becoming stranger and more difficult to explain and understand... when it seems the way of life is the tail wagging the head... when it seems that the law of chance rules the intellect when dreams seem like lions and reality a frightened mouse Come to our great Southwest.

The spell of the Southwest is something beyond words and imagination. To know it one must experience it. If you don't know it we hope Peter Hurd's paintings and Patricia Paylore's words start you to thinking things like:

We like to think that our Southwest is an Enchanted Isle where one need never fall out with one's time and where people live in harmony with the earthy world. a place to recover one's balance and recycle the senses.

There may be places on earth where people live closer to heaven there may beit. That view, dominated by a giant saguaro with a background of the Santa Catalina Mountains has appeared in hundreds of publications. Countless photo-murals of it have been taken east by tourists who fell in love with Arizona and wanted to take a little part of it back to their homes.

WESTERN WAYS from page 10

Herb had been so successful in selling his still pictures he decided to start "Western Ways Features" covering both sides of the Continental Divide from Montana to Arizona.

Western Ways set up an office and laboratory in the Herberts' Tucson Guest House. Clifton Abbott was the first writer to become associated with them. He wrote articles to go with the picture stories on hand. Collier's, Click, Life, New York Mirror and New York News, Ford Times, Friends and many others were fertile markets.

After Pearl Harbor, Herb volunteered for the army and in April 1942 was accepted into the Signal Corps. He made motion picture Training Films in the United States and Record and Combat films in the Aleutians, Africa, and Italy.

When Herb and Lucile finally settled down and started Western Ways Features they left behind them a long trail of travel in 56 countries. Working on the staff of major news and documentary motion picture producers, and as a free-lance photographer, Herb had a record of 684 motion picture feature stories, 105 travel reels, 6 commercial films, a full-length documentary and 32 illustrated articles. In addition he had handled publicity, through films, for the Northern Pacific Railway, City of Miami and the Henry Doherty hotels.

Herb had excellent connections with motion picture and television companies that used news and documentary features, magazines, metropolitan newspapers, trade journals and syndicates that used articles and pictures.

Many staff writers and photographers for top publications and newsreels, including National Geographic, Holiday, Life, Country Gentleman, American Magazine, Red Book, Saturday Evening Post and Colliers were close friends. It wasn't long before most of them managed to get assignments in Tucson.

The Herbert Guest House was usually available. Herb took them around, pointed out features he had already found, made contacts and helped locate, arrange and set-up stories for their own publications. He furnished a dark-room for the photographers, loaned a camera when theirs was out of service, rounded up models and even helped carry and move their equipment on location.

In many cases, when the visiting writers-photographers had to leave before they could get all the material wanted, Western Ways was asked to fill in the gaps for them. The Features scrap

book is crammed with letters of appreciation from editors – and requests for other material from this area. It has been well said that Herb, through his Western Ways Features, was a one-man Chamber of Commerce. At a time when Arizona needed publicity he had the talent and knowhow to get it on a national and world-wide scale. Western Ways neglected no markets for its pictures and articles and in a short time was widely known as an outfit that could supply almost anything wanted from its territory.

One picture story Herb made was the moving of a thirteen ton giant saguaro from the desert to a private estate, to replace one that had died. With its arms wrapped with mattresses and stuffed with bales of hay, it was lifted vertically by a huge crane and transported to its new home. This unique feature had a wide circulation in twenty publications. in the States. London Illustrated published three pictures with a credit line giving Herb's name and address. Fan mail poured in from England, countries of the British Commonwealth and other foreign countries, asking for pen pals, pictures, cactus plants, donations and magazines. A young boy from Gold Coast, Africa, offered to send an ostrich feather in return for a letter. Then, he said he would send a monkey skin if he received a second letter. Western Ways was swamped and Herb turned to ARIZONA HIGHWAYS for help. Raymond Carlson came to the rescue, and the huge box of letters was given to him. Each letter was answered with a copy of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS MAGAZINE, featuring cacti, along with a letter of thanks. But as far as we know, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS never received an ostrich feather or a monkey skin! There are endless stories about the Herberts and their exploits. At the premiere of "Broken Arrow," the movie based on Elliott Arnold's novel, Blood Brother, Herb set up a major coverage of the event on the Fort Apache Reservation. This involved photographing an actual Apache puberty rite as well as the social events of the premiere. Elliott Arnold, Herb, Peter Balestrero and a Twentieth Century Fox crew went to Whiteriver for this. At one point Herb told Pete that he would like some over-all shots made from a rickety, old water tower. Pete took one look at the tower and said, "It's not safe to go up there." An Apache host confirmed him. Not long after, Herb

Text continued on page 38

Archie Bunker's writers did not invent the good old days. If you're under 40 you missed them . . . The great life in the raw days when real life was an every day vaudeville mood.

The photographs on these two pages need no captions. Their significance lies in the truth that these people, places and things were part of the great American way of life less than a half century ago.

All Photographs From Western Ways Files

<< Sunday at the Oquetoa Mission, Mexico

was on top of the tower proving his point, and they got the over-all shots.

At another coverage on the Apache Reservation he was challenged to join the Indians in a purification ceremony, something like a sauna bath. Inside a hut, rocks were heated then water poured over them, and the men, rubbed from head to foot with mud, sat and absorbed the steam. When they came out they washed in an icy stream. Both Herb and the Indians came out “pale-faced.” Everywhere in the southwest Herb's pink and blue Volkswagen bus is famous. On the front is the Western Ways steerhead, and Herb had a cow-horn installed which sounds like the bellow of a bull. There was no better way to get cattle to come out of the brush and pose for a picture than to blow that horn.

In spite of their years, the Herberts are far from retired. Most recently Western Ways Features color photos have appeared in a series of three Japanese travel books. When the request came in, 216 transparencies were airmailed to Japan. Twenty were used, one which was made 35 years ago. Walter M. Edwards, a long-time friend who did the photography for the National Geographic Society's book, Great American Deserts, used Western Ways as headquarters while working on the Arizona segments.

<< Swinging bridge in the jungles of Dominica British West Indies.

Today Western Ways Features is right where it started in Arizona, in the Herberts' guest house to which a large office room has been added to house the pictures, data and correspondence files. The walls are covered with pictures from many parts of the world. The files are bulging with a half million negatives and color transparencies classified by location and subject. One large frame on the wall has 54 close-ups of personalities starting in 1924 with William Jennings Bryan and ending with Chiang Kai-Shek. Visitors usually find Herb and Lucile on the glassed-in north porch of their home where they both have typewriters and working space. The Santa Catalina Mountains rise above a lush growth of desert plants and no other homes are nearby. There's plenty of activity, however, as a wide variety of wild life comes in twice a day for a hand-out of milo, rabbit pellets and meat. As many as 200 quail and doves show up at mealtime, then quietly retreat to a sanctuary under cacti and spiny plants. Harris ground squirrels, gophers, cardinals, linnets, thrashers and cactus wrens wait until the rush is over and come in most any other time. There's a sudden exodus when bobcats come in for a drink at either of the two pools maintained for the wildlife.

<< All in a day's work on the Rancho El Alamo in Sonora, Mexico.

It is difficult to evaluate the Herberts' contribution to Arizona. Perhaps a quotation from Senator Barry Goldwater does it best: “For many years I have watched your progress in the photographic and public relations field, particularly in relation to Arizona.

As an Arizonan, I am very proud of the accomplishments that have been yours in both these fields because they have meant so much to Arizona and will add greatly to her future. The thousands of pictures and the hundreds of thousands of words that have gone out of your office about Arizona are all making a terrific impact on the nation, and for this you have my congratulations and thanks.” The Senator said this 19 years ago, but he might well have said it yesterday.