My 70 Summers in the Mountains

by Erwin Hansen as told to Karen Thure My seventieth summer in the mountains? Well, in some ways it's not so much different from the old days up here. For one thing, I'm living in the same house as I did then. My daddy built it for a man named Bill Amos around the turn of the century. When Bill gave it up, daddy took over the place and brought my mamma and us kids up from Show Low to homestead here in Lakeside in April, '06.

I was just two years old, but I can remember that first summer, when my daddy was building the dam on the little creek to make our lake. I used to like to go down there and squish the mud between my toes. My daddy used that mud to make adobe bricks for the house.

Daddy was a builder a mason by trade. Niels Samuel Hansen was his name. He was a real artist; everything he built was a work of art. He constructed lots of the old places you see around here.

Daddy's pa was Mormon bishop of this country for miles around. After granddaddy took up a homestead right near ours, I used to see him going out to visit his flock on muleback.

Those were the days of great big families. My dad and mom had eleven kids eight boys and three girls. I was number six. Besides us, there were always cousins, neighbors, Indians, and even strangers to take care of. My daddy always was a neighbor-lovin' man. But, shucks, back in those days everybody helped everybody else. We had to.

For instance, if all your neighbors were down with the flu and you weren't feelin' so hot yourself, you'd still go out and try to hunt up some grub. Maybe it would be nothing' but a crippled rabbit, but you'd find something. You always fed your neighbors first. That was how we got along.

With all that mutual helpin' our yard out there by the corral was always full of coming and going. During those early summers and on into the fall, the Indians would come here to trade their wheat and wild grapes for fruit, vegetables, meat I guess they'd trade for just about anything. Alchesay, the chief of the White Mountain Apache, came around a lot, but I most of all remember old "Biscuit John." He'd go from house to house with a little sack and ask for corn, carrots, onions, biscuits anything he could put into a big mulligan stew at the end of the day.

Those Indians were smart. They knew how to make do before we came here, and they had a religion and a certain amount of law. The trouble was brewed when we came along and spoke with a split tongue and got their land, and run off their game, and cut their timber, then never gave them the rights of real citizens.

My daddy always got along real well with the Indians. He figured things were jes' fine when there were only Indians and sheepmen and wild-horse men in these mountains. He was a wild-horse man himself. When he first came to Lakeside, people would ask him, "Niels, what are you gonna do with this country around here?" And he'd say back, "I'm gonna make three blades of grass grow where there was only one before." And he done it, too. But today there's only one blade of grass left growing where there used to be three. He did what he said he'd do, but now it's all gone back.

When I was thirteen, my daddy came up and put his arm around me and said, "Son, see that five acres over yonder? You go see what you can do with it!" So I went out there with a plow and a team and sowed some corn. I cultivated with a horse-drawn cultivator, and I irrigated it from the lake in July. Finally around September I cut it by hand with a sickle and put it up in the shack.

My daddy came up to me and said, "Son, you done a real fine job. Now what are you aimin' to do with all that corn?"

I said, "See that stock over there? I reckon they're gonna have enough to eat this winter." Was I proud! I've planted some crop or other every summer since then, without missing a one.

During those early summers I helped put in the orchard and tended the vegetable garden too. Sometimes we'd go off into the woods to gather honey, acorns, walnuts, or wild grapes. We had to learn how to make do mighty young in those days.

My daddy was always going off on some masonry job, and us boys were left alone to run the homestead. Just before he'd ride off, he'd always come up to me and say, "Erwin, I got to go. But you jes' stay here and keep the ball a-rollin', you hear, son? Jest keep the ball a-rollin'." And I did.

Of course, those summers when we were kids weren't all work. Lotsa times we boys would go out camping. Once when we were havin' some fun on a little peninsula in a dry wash near Corduroy Creek, the thunder commenced and the rain started. Pretty soon a heavy flash flood came up. Most of the kids climbed trees to get away from the raging water, but I had to jump in and swim across to move the camp. It makes me shudder today when I think of how I easily could've drowned! I took care of the camp and bedded down on the bank, but the others stayed out on the peninsula without food until the water went down.

Besides the campouts, we always had lots of dances and picnics and all kinds of other summer fun. When the first little schoolhouse was built right beside our house, it became the center for all those monkeyshines.

We used to store Aunt Amanda's homemade root beer in one part of the schoolhouse, for drinking at our little celebrations. People used to come to those shindigs from all around in buckboards, on mules, on foot any way they could. We would have a fiddler, maybe someone who could chord on the piano, maybe a guitar. I used to play the saxophone. How we'd kick up our heels! The little girls would start dancing when they were about seven or eight years old, and the old ladies would keep a-goin' until their legs plumb wore out.

Yep, I sure do remember those good old summertimes. We used to have base ball games right out here by our corral the Indians against the horsemen against the sheepmen. Later on the cowboys and the loggers got into the act anyone who came along was welcome. And of course there were horseshoe tournaments and cowpony races. Our racetrack was the dirt road in front of the house. On the Fourth of July we always had candy races for the kids. Then there'd be a rodeo, with the meanest little Holstein bulls!

Once when I was almost growed up we had a "June Moon Celebration." We even put on a stagecoach holdup over on the other side of the lake. First I "shot" the driver, then my band came sneakin' up to strip the passengers of their valuables. You can bet there were some real fisticuffs that day! I guess we got sorta carried away.

After all the baseball games and other things were over, my mother and the rest of the ladies always laid out a great big picnic, with fried farmyard chicken, homemade pickles, home-baked bread with strawberry preserves everything fresh as could be. My daddy had a little dairy herd, and we always made ice cream for those summer shindigs.

But the best ice cream in the country used to come from my Aunt Retty's place a few miles down the road. You see, my daddy's brothers all started homesteading around here about the same time we did. So I had uncles and aunts all around. Over and over we used to say, “Hey, let's walk down to Uncle Hans' house and get some of Aunt Retty's homemade ice cream!” Uncle Hans' homestead is abandoned now, just goin' all to seed. It's a cryin' shame that place used to be the prettiest little farm you ever did see. And, believe me, it takes lots of elbow grease to make something of a homestead here in these mountains!

I should know when I was young I was always tryin' to homestead too many places to keep up. I was the fastest man ever with a jackass team, running to milk the cows at one homestead and haul hay from another.

Besides workin' my homesteads, I was always doin' wage jobs, trying to earn the two bits it took to get into the dances at the schoolhouse on Saturday nights. My brother and I hauled rocks out of old man Porter's fields and did combining for him and for the Indians. Sometimes we would take Mama's homemade ice cream around to the loggin' camps in a buggy. When we had finished our peddlin', we'd come home with our pockets just bulgin' with silver dollars. Later we used the A-Model Ford to peddle ice cream.

Of course I also did my share of loggin' nearly every man around these parts has put in a summer doin' that at one time or another. The sawmill was built in McNary around 1924. The whistle of the loggin' train would blow around 6:30 every morning, and you had to be on it or miss a day's work. I remember foolin' around over breakfast one morning and having to run to catch one of the loggin' cars as it went by. It was rough, and I vowed I'd never do that again. My friend's daddy got his leg cut off with those kinds of monkeyshines.

Another summer job was fire-fightin'. When one of those big fires would break out, those old ranger-boys would run down the street collectin' every man or boy who was loose. If he wasn't loose, they'd take him anyhow. Sometimes we'd fight the flames all night and into the day, but other times we'd just let the brush burn, so long as it didn't get out of control. We burned during the wet season to keep down the thickets.

As for me, like I said, my seventieth summer here seems to be goin' about the same as all the others. I just put in my fifty-seventh crop of alfalfa, and I've been busy tending to the old orchard. I got chickens, cattle, horses, and a fine young black mule that promises to be one of the best in these parts. In between workin', I guess I'll be taking dudes out riding, probably spinning them a few big-un's about the old days in the mountains. I suppose it's like my daddy used to say - I'll be a-settin' here, keepin' the ball a-rollin' jes' like I've always been keepin' the ball a-rollin'....