January 5, 1995

 

 

 

Dear Mother and Dad:

 

We had a heavy snow last night, and I am one of the few faculty in this building this morning.  I am proud to be a Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico, and I know I wouldn't be here except for the values you inculcated throughout my life.  I am keenly aware that I owe much of my career and good fortune to your guidance, to your values, as well as the sound advice, continuing support, and constant love I have received for the past 45 years from my wife Nedra.  And, of course, I owe my genes entirely to you!

 

Mother, you left us on February 1, 1990 at age 88, but the memory of you is with me many times daily.  I never did say a proper farewell to you, and I regret it.  I had no guidelines or experience to deal with the terminal illness and death of my mother and my father.  I did tell you that we all loved you and appreciated everything you ever did for all of us, and you simply said, "I love you, too."  But that brief exchange wasn't nearly enough to say about your lifetime of love and concern for your family.  I know it's too late now, but I should have expressed myself better, and shown appreciation for your lifetime of love for your family, and conveyed much more about my lifelong good fortune in having you as my mother.  The day before you passed away, our verbal exchange was limited to your concern about me being able to locate all your financial and property records.  You said, "I worry about the records."  Well, it did take a lot of time to piece all your records together and determine the status of your estate.  Your records were in various places.  I know that all your hard work and self-denial devoted to building a sizable estate were for your two sons --- my brother Ladd and me --- because you never chose to enjoy the fruits of your success.  Your enjoyment was in the pursuit of success, rather than the fruits of your financial success.  I know that your family was your lifelong concern and priority.  You passed away before my brother Ladd, who died prematurely at age 66 on October 16, 1991 (my birthday) from emphysema caused by the insidious, toxic effects of tobacco.  I had repeatedly admonished him to stop smoking as far back as the late 1950's.  But tobacco creates a fatal addiction, resulting in slow suicide.

 

Dad, you left us on October 25, 1992 at age 91.  As with Mother, I wish we had had a better farewell.  I did see you almost daily following Mother's death, so we certainly visited a lot.  But we avoided the subject of good-byes until we ran out of tomorrows.  You had suddenly become comatose and unable to communicate when I last saw you.  I told you I had to leave town for a few days to do some consulting work at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, but I doubt that you understood me.  Shortly after I arrived in Knoxville, I called home and Nedra said you had passed away that afternoon.  You had never recovered from the anguish of Mother's death, and subsequently from the trauma of losing Ladd.  Ladd and I always knew we had a real man for a father; a father who was a role model for his sons; a father we were proud of and bragged about; a father who cared; a father who would do anything for his family. 

 

The older I get, the more I am aware that most of my traits were acquired from the two of you.  I am proud of this fact.  When I was younger, I did not fully appreciate this.

 

As I left home to follow my own trail in life, I forgot some of the wonders of my younger years at home and the importance of your love, support and family roots.  Developing this document has helped me re-live and better remember the wonderful and happy days when we were all younger, and enjoyed traditional family values.

 

Developing this document has been a rewarding labor of love.  Dad, shortly after your death, I started this as a short tribute to you.  The minister asked permission to read the tribute at your memorial services, and a few copies were distributed to friends and relatives.  A later version included remembrances of you and Mother, was distributed to relatives and friends.  Several people requested that I significantly enlarge the document and reorganize some of the material. 

 

Following your deaths, I realized that I wanted to remember and know more about you.  This is always the case following the deaths of loved ones.  And we always wish we could have done more.  We think of the things we wish we had done or said to make a life happier or easier.  Developing this manuscript has helped me to better understand you, your uniqueness, your successes and your contributions, as well as your failures. 

 

Fortunately, I have been able to draw on some of your letters and other documents, as well as my memory, for much of the content.  Many of the letters were addressed to my brother Ladd, (March 9, 1925 - October 16, 1991), as they were written during World War II when Ladd had joined the Navy about 18 months before I enlisted.  Many more letters exist, so I found it necessary to be selective in quoting parts of your letters.

 

Whenever any member of your family was away from home for any extended period, letters were exchanged almost daily.   While Ladd and I were serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, at least 2,500 letters were exchanged among the four members of our family.  These not only detail routine experiences, but more importantly, they deal with all our hopes, dreams, and aspirations. 

 

This manuscript will be distributed to your survivors so that they too will have a sense of family roots, family support, family history, family love, and family identity; and so that they may continue to love, honor, respect, remember and understand An American Family:  Not Merely a Couple with Children.

 

I will always love you!

 

Your son,

 

 

 

Larry

 

 

 

An American Family:  Not Merely a Couple with Children

by

Larry J. Gordon

1995

 

 

 

My Father, Andrew Jackson Gordon, Jr.

 

            On a cold, windy day in March, 1901, there was considerable hushed excitement about a little half dug-out which was located more than thirty miles from the nearest habitation on the wind swept prairies of western Oklahoma Indian Nation.  A very anxious man, dressed as the average cow puncher of that time, stood in front of the dug-out scanning the horizon for sign of a coming horseman.  On the inside of the dugout, an expectant mother was lying on a bed, attended by two Indian women of the Caddo Tribe.

 

            Finally dust rose in the distance, and in a few moments, two horsemen could be distinguished.  One was a lean, wiry man riding a big red-roan horse white with lather from traveling more than fifty miles in less than four hours.  The other horseman was an Indian who had been sent post haste several hours before to Fort Sill, for the only physician in the area.  Pulling his horse to a sliding halt, the doctor dropped his reins and hastened into the dugout.  In a short time, I was ushered into this world with lusty cries.

 

            My parents were very proud of their first-born son, and I was christened after my father, Andrew Jackson Gordon, Sr. My mother was the former Blanche Thomas.     My father and mother were of pioneer stock, which had originally immigrated to America from England, Scotland and Ireland.  My mother was born in Texas and had been reared in a mission school near Anadarko, Oklahoma Indian Nation.  The school had been established by the Presbyterian Missionary Society for Indian and white children whose parents found it necessary to place them there for education.  My father was reared in Texas, and like most young men without education of that time, had followed the only vocation open to him ----- range riding.  At the time of my birth he was managing his ranch, the Diamond A.  He was also Deputy United States Marshall in the Kiowa-Comanche territory that was to be opened to settlement by the whites in August 1901.

 

            In 1907, the railroad built west to Mountain View where we lived at that time.  I well remember the prevailing conditions.  Trail herds of cattle comprising from small groups to ten and often twenty thousand head would wind their way through to our town and the end of the railroad, to be shipped to northern markets.  After these herds arrived, the town would be filled with noisy cowboys, and I remember many instances of "shooting up the town" by rowdy punchers who had imbibed a few drinks too many.  It was my father's responsibility to uphold law and order in town, as he was at that date the only commissioned peace officer in western Oklahoma.

 

            During the first ten years of my life, one brother and three sisters had arrived to fill places in our family.  The days of my childhood passed happily.  Each succeeding year found me attending school during the winter months, while each summer vacation brought the jolliest rounds of duties and pleasures.  I was allowed a pony when I attained my eighth birthday, and each summer we moved out to the ranch, where we children would "work off" some of our surplus energy doing many helpful little tasks.

 

            The beginning of the World War I found me able to ride range for my father, and to help farm the feed crops he raised each year.  I would have graduated from high school in May 1918, but the patriotic spirit got the best of me and I enlisted in the United States Navy on April 17, 1918.  Later, I was given an honorary diploma from the Mountain View High School.

 

            I found life in the Navy thrilling.  I had enlisted as a ship's cook because I had experience cooking in cow camps and there was a shortage of cooks in the Navy.  I had been in the Naval Training Station at Algiers, Louisiana, only two weeks when I was ordered to report for duty aboard the gunboat "Comanche" which had come up the Mississippi for part of a new crew.  In less than three weeks we had made port at Bordeaux, France.  Before the end of the war, I had glimpses of Cuba, Mexico, Central America and France.

 

            I will never forget November 11, 1918.  Our ship had docked at La Havre, France.  I heard a sailor yelling at the top of his voice, "It's all over!"  I stepped out of the galley and asked him what the **##??? was all over, and to my surprise, he told me to listen to the Frenchmen celebrating the close of the war.  Our ship returned to the United States on December 24, and I was released from active duty February 14, 1919.

 

            After being discharged from the Navy, I went home.  I had expected to work for my father, but found that he had sold the old ranch place as farms, and farmers who had gone crazy over high prices of wheat had rapidly plowed it.  I had no special training for earning a livelihood, so I had to do the only work that I knew.  I did range work, broke horses and competed in rodeo contests for almost three years.

 

            In the fall of 1921, I contracted with Carr and Driggers of Chichasha, Oklahoma, to break their broncs on their 71 Ranch in the Wichita Mountains, near Saddle Mountain. 

            I had never been much of a ladies' man, but the local schoolteacher, Miss Deweylee Stewart, soon had me terribly "wrought up" and trying to compose poetry.  We gradually became better acquainted, and one day shortly after I had acquired a badly broken leg caused by a horse falling on me, I got around to the subject that was uppermost in my mind. I told Miss Stewart how badly I wanted to marry her.  To this she replied that she liked me, but would not consider marrying me, as I was not earning enough to support a wife.  I began thinking seriously of how little I was earning and later, after talking the situation over with Miss Stewart, she consented to marry me some day, provided I quit breaking horses and returned to school.

 

            The following fall, when the long term opened at Oklahoma University, I enrolled in the regular freshman course.

 

            College life was almost grievous.  I had become so accustomed to living and working outdoors that the four walls of a classroom seemed to stifle me.  My skull was non-absorbent, and my brain resembled a sieve.  I suffered such throes of love sickness that my temperature seemed to increase.

 

            When the Christmas holidays rolled around, I hastily dropped books, inkhorn, etc., and rushed madly away to Dundee, Oklahoma where "she" was teaching in the largest rural consolidated school in Oklahoma.  We entered the Holy bonds of matrimony on Christmas Day, 1922.  Mrs. Gordon resigned her position in the Dundee school and returned with me to the university city of Norman.  At the opening of the spring term, we both enrolled in the University and continued our studies there until the end of the summer term.

 

            We then located a school at Arlington, Colorado.  The school was in need of a Superintendent and intermediate grade teacher.  Upon applying for the positions, we received contracts to sign.  The total salaries were $2,385.00.  With my wife's advice and coaching, I made a wonderful success of my work as a teacher, much to the surprise of friends who thought a cowpuncher was unable to do anything but ride a horse until becoming so bowlegged that he could not catch a grown hog between his knees. 

 

            In May 1924, we returned to Oklahoma and purchased the old MK ranch in Comanche County, with a small down payment and the balance to be paid in yearly installments.  Our ranch included 1,280 acres of grass and farmland, and we were allowed a grazing permit on the Wichita National Forest adjoining our land.  I also became a Ranger for the Forest Service, and in that capacity worked for the Government and also managed our ranch.  Payments were met promptly and the deal went smoothly for two years.

 

            In the spring of the second year of our residence on the ranch, a tiny son, "Laddie Boy", was born to us on March 9, 1925.  I spent several hours each day trying to teach him a few cowboy yells.  He was a smiling toddler when financial reverses overtook us.  I had dealt for three hundred head of Mexico cattle.  Deflation of cattle and land prices sunk us.  We lost the cattle and our equity in the ranch.

 

            Life assumed a gloomy aspect for a time.  But on October 16, 1926, our second son, Larry, arrived to cheer us.  He was in possession of a goodly number of cowboy yells, ---- inherited, no doubt.   

 

            The beginning of a new year found us living near McGaffey, New Mexico, where Mrs. Gordon and I taught at the Page School.  We lived in the teacherage a short distance from the two-room school.  Additionally, I worked as a Brand Inspector for the New Mexico State Brand Association.

 

Andrew J. Gordon, Jr.

 

            The foregoing excerpt from a short autobiography my father, Andrew Jackson Gordon, Jr., wrote as a term paper while attending Texas Tech University in 1931, provides some insight regarding his early years.  Dad wrote well, and he also had the ability to embellish his stories, including the foregoing, to make them more interesting.  Dad always earned excellent grades on his papers.  It is reputed that his English professor at the University of Oklahoma used some of Dad's ideas for his own publications. 

 

            My father lived an interesting life as a cowboy, Navy veteran of World War I, rancher, farmer, school teacher and principal, brand inspector, forest ranger, conservationist with several federal agencies, New Mexico Boys Ranch Father and Ranch Manager (my mother was Ranch Mother), farmer and rancher, and property owner and manager.  His avocations included trick roping, fly fishing; hunting; and, most interestingly for him, water witching --- the art of rhabdomancy.  He successfully located hundreds of water wells for farmers and ranchers throughout the arid southwest, often after geologists and others had failed.  Only in his later years did he even bother to accept expenses for his efforts.  He enjoyed the hobby!

 

            Later in life, Dad wrote:

 

            I learned how to use water witching techniques, called by some dowsing, at age 6 or 7, from an old man whose name was Tom Jordan.  He was better known as Slough Foot Jordan.  I well recall when the Kiowa-Comanche part of Oklahoma was just beginning to settle with homesteaders, when one day a wagon, pulled by two sore-necked horses, pulled into Mountain View.  It was summer time and I, as a kid, had to take notice of the newcomers.  Particular interest was noted of the wagon sheet over the wagon bows on which was painted "Water witching, $5.00". In this wagon, beside the bewhiskered man wearing brogan shoes, patched homespun, tight-legged breeches held up by one gallus, was a fairly nice looking plump woman whose face peered from under a calico sunbonnet.  There was one boy, heavy set and ornery looking, and his sister 2 or 3 years senior to the boy.

 

            The man asked of the local hanger around kids where the Marshall's office was.  Feeling important, I replied that the U.S. Marshall was my papa, and pointed to a small office down the street.  The sign and the office said "A.J. Gordon, Marshall, Ice and Dray."  I tagged along just wondering how soon the newcomer would be locked up.  Well, he wasn't immediately locked up.  He informed my dad that he was from Tennessee and that he had driven all the way to file on a homestead.  My dad told him that homesteading was no good and that if he wanted to stay he had better camp at a wagon yard and look for local work.  My dad saw the witching sign on the wagon and stated he didn't believe in such damned idiocy.

 

            This was at the time when Mountain View was planning a water system and had drilled several dry holes in the heavy red hardpan with little success, using horse power to turn the well rig.

 

            School soon started and I had already matched several nose flatteners with the Jordan boy, but one day he told me that his paw, old Slough Foot, was going to witch a well and guarantee plenty of water for the town that afternoon.  This I had to see!  Well, a lot of others had to see too, so we went to the wagon yard where old Slough Foot was sitting on the wagon tongue trimming on a hackberry forked limb about 2 feet long.  He finally stated he was ready, so the crowd followed, some with doubts, others with apprehension.  He sent north, past the dry holes, studying the lay of the land, finally mumbled that here was a likely looking place.  He struck the ground three times with the forked limb.  Why, I couldn't discern.  He then lovingly placed the forked limb, one fork in each hand, raised it high and a peculiar light shone in old Slough Foot's eyes.  He lowered the stick to waist level and held it in front of his gaunt body.  He couldn't hold that fork!  It kept bouncing.  He tried to hold it still to no avail.  Believe it or not, the skin from the old man's hands was pulled loose (This was to happen to me many times in the years to come).  Well, anyway, he said "Drill right here", and placed a pile of cow chips to mark the right spot.  It did develop that the town fathers did drill the well, found plenty of water, and paid Slough Foot $25.00.  They erected the first water tower, and I decided to be famous as a water witch.  The forked stick would, and did, work for me too.

 

            That Jordan boy and I had lots of fist fights, mainly because he would kick at my pet coyote.  Slough Foot witched or hung paper in houses and was often put in jail for rustling --- usually a calf or pig to feed his hungry family. 

 

            But I owe debt of gratitude to Slough Foot, as I became a full-fledged witch.

 

            In the summer of '71, Deweylee and I stopped in Mountain View to visit boy-hood brothers named Kalb who owned the First National Bank, which their dad started in 1902.  We had quite a reminiscing of days gone by.  One of them referred to the Jordan boy with whom I had so many fights.  He said that in 1926, the poor devil had been working in the oil fields in Texas, finally came back leading a mule.  It developed that the mule had a Texas owner and the Jordan boy was taken back to Texas and jailed for mule theft.  Old Slough Foot just stole for food, but the boy didn't eat the mule.

 

            As I continued to grow up, there were more people moving to the new country and, as a result, there was a corresponding need for farm and ranch water.  I often rode horseback to witch a well for some fellow who had spent his last dollar on a dry hole.  Before I went to the Navy in War I, I had become a pretty good cowpuncher and bronc rider and, often on weekends or after school, I would be called upon to locate an underground stream of water for someone.  Often I would locate several locations for wells on one trip.  Seldom was I paid but, at least, I made a lot of acquaintances.

 

            After we moved to New Mexico in 1928 to teach school, I continued weekend excursions as a witch, and my reputation as a witch grew.  I had studied enough geology in school that I knew where underground water should be, so that I saved a lot of time bypassing non-productive spots.  I continued this while I was a Forest Ranger and a U.S Conservationist, during which time I probably witched 1,000 wells in New Mexico and Arizona, as I worked primarily with ranchers.  I resigned in 1945; we began the New Mexico Boy's Ranch and later developed our land at La Joya.  There I witched our two excellent irrigation wells and, as a result, I was frequently called upon to locate irrigation wells for others.  Later, I joined the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and then transferred to the Bureau of Land Management, and later to the Corps of Engineers.  I continued to enjoy locating water throughout the southwest.

 

            (Many scientists commonly deride Water witching, also known as water dowsing or the art of rhabdomancy.  However, in 1995, a German physicist confirmed that water witching works!  Reporting on a 10-year German government study of dowsing in arid regions, Hans-Deiter Betz of the University of Munich wrote, "it works, but we have no idea of how or why.")

 

            While young, life was not always smooth for Dad and his family.  While Dad was in the Navy in 1918, his older sister Mary wrote:

Fay, Okla.

June 14, 1918

Dear Brother -...

            .... Mother has sued for a divorce...You wrote a letter saying you were sending some money.  It was sent to Mr. or Mrs. Gordon.  Mamma opened it and there was no money in it.  She just supposed you were sending it to the bank.  She gave the letter to Papa and he accused her of stealing it.  Then the little thing began.  He gave her a black eye and she fell, he jumped on her and stomped her.... they got some papers filled out and the Justice of the Peace came and got him.  Then Papa came back and said they wouldn't do anything with him.  He then cursed and fitted around about her having him arrested.  She told him if he didn't hush that she would shoot him (they were out doors at this stage of the act).  She went in the house and got the shotgun.  He reached in his pocket and pulled out his .45 wrapped in a handkerchief and ordered her to drop the gun.  Uncle said ‘For God's sake, drop it’, and she did.  The next morning the, 13th, she went to Watonga and had him arrested and sued for a divorce.  Mamma came to town Tuesday and got another letter from you.  It had the money in it and she banked it to her name....

 

If you go over there, hope you get a Kaiser!

 

From way out west where the hop toads wink,

He was six feet two in his stocking feet,

And kept getting thinner the more he'd eat.

 

Goodbye, Ma, Goodbye Pa

Goodbye mule with the old hee-haw.

I may not know what the war's about,

But you bet by gosh, I'll soon find out.

 

But he was brave as he was thin,

When the war broke out he got right in.

Unhitched the mule, put the plow away,

And then the old folks heard him say:

 

And, oh! my sweetheart don't you fear,

I'll bring you a King for a souvenir

I'll get you a Turk and a Kaiser, too,

And that's about all one fellow can do.

   

            If all the soldiers and sailors wanted to come home, the darned Germans would get over here.  So stick to it brother and help bring it to an end that I hope will be soon, because Mother will need you.

With Lots of Love,

 Mary

 

            One of Dad's first jobs when he was young and before attending college was with the U.S. Forest Service on the Wichita National Forest near Cache, Oklahoma. The Forest Supervisor wrote:

 

Mr. Andrew J. Gordon

Fay, Oklahoma

 

Dear Sir:

 

            Your letter of March 3 is received.

 

            From the description you have given of yourself, I believe I can give you work as soon as you can get down here.  However, I can only give you work by the day at $3.00 per day and you will have to board and sleep yourself.  A house is furnished for you to live in.  The nature of the work is building houses, fences and roads.

 

            I will always remember Dad holding me in front of him in the saddle to teach me to ride shortly after I was able to walk.

 

            I will always remember Dad teaching me to handle a rifle as soon as I was able to hold the gun to my shoulder.

 

            I will always remember Dad wearing western boots, and his pride in his +A (Cross A Bar) brand stitched prominently on the front of his boot tops. 

 

            I will always remember Dad running beside me while helping me learn how to ride a bicycle when he was U.S. Forest Ranger on the Tijeras Ranger District near Albuquerque.

 

            I will always remember hunting with Dad and admiring his accuracy with his L.C. Smith double barrel 12-gauge shotgun as a covey of quail flushed from a nearby mesquite bush.

 

            I will always remember Dad trick roping from the ground or on horseback.  He could jump through or over the large loops of his own constantly swirling rope, or would tell my brother Ladd and I to run by him and "beller like a calf" as he playfully threw a loop around one or both of us.  I doubt that Will Rogers had anything on Dad when it cam to trick roping!

 

            I will always remember Dad shoeing neighbors' horses, or castrating their livestock without any thought of recompense.

 

            I will always remember Dad grabbing a camp stove that had caught fire in our tent and tearing through the tent's canvas side with the burning stove in his hands.

 

            I will always remember Dad sleeping in his bedroll and cooking over an open fire (usually fueled by "buffalo chips") in order to save his per diem while working and traveling for the government.

 

            I will always remember Dad teaching me the concept of "carrying capacity."  As we hunted or fished, he also identified the various range plant species, noted their palatability ratings, and mentally converted these into a statement of "x" head of cattle or "y" head of sheep carrying capacity for a given area.  In this manner, he taught me that every animal species, including the human animal, must live in harmony with its environment in order to survive and prosper on a long-term basis.  Dad also taught me the concept of "home range", or the space required by every animal to prevent violence within its own species.

 

            I will always remember Dad breaking his leg while attempting single-handedly to stay a flood that ravaged much of their Amber Acres farmland near La Joya.

 

            I will always remember Dad becoming unconscious from the effects of carbon monoxide working on a pump motor in an irrigation well-pit by himself.  A cowboy happened to come by and pull him out with a rope.

 

            I will always remember the glint of the sun on Dad's silver-mounted 44/40

Smith and Wesson Peacemaker as it suddenly appeared from under his shirt when a malcontent itinerant farm laborer threatened me with a pitchfork.  That individual was never seen around there again!  Dad always termed his single-action pistol his "resolver".

 

            I will always remember Dad's enthusiasm upon receiving another request to "witch" a well.

 

            I will always remember Dad enjoying every position he ever held.  He should not have retired in 1969, as his job was his primary interest.

 

            I will always remember Dad having a wide ranging knowledge of history and geography, and his pertinent comments and questions regarding any area any of his family might visit.

 

            I will always remember Dad invariably asking how he could help others or me even after he was too feeble to walk without assistance.

 

            I will always remember Dad inquiring about his grandchildren and great grandchildren every time I would visit him at the retirement center.  He always asked about every family member, and continued to want to be helpful and supportive in any way possible.

 

            I will always remember Dad being good natured, exhibiting good manners, and expressing appreciation for help and visits right up until the end of his life.

 

            Dad had so many interesting and varied experiences and could write in such an interesting manner, that we always encouraged him to write articles and books.  But the years went by, and the writing became increasingly impossible.  A wealth of knowledge, love, and good advice went with him when he passed away.

 

            In his own words, from a letter he had written almost fifty years earlier on May 6, 1945, Dad

 

            "--- took the long ride over the sunset trail, and galloped into the land of the waving blue grama and unbranded calves"

 

on October 25, 1992.

 

            Following Dad's death, his cousin Mary Coker Daly wrote, in part:

 

            The first time I remember seeing your dad, I was a very small child when a handsome young man rode to our place on a beautiful horse.  My mother was so excited to see her nephew and she told me, ‘This is your cousin Andrew’.

 

            Another cousin, Zuleika Coker Cullers, wrote:

 

            Andrew came to see us once on the farm when I was a little girl and I remember what a handsome young man he was.  He looked so much like his father, Andrew.  You have certainly had a family to be proud of.

 

            Stanley Fish, Dad's friend and long-time associate wrote:

 

            Andy and I became friends somewhere around 1935.  He was my supervisor in the Soil Conservation Service in Las Cruces from 1937-39.  We had many good times together, and he encouraged me on many occasions.  You and Ladd were fortunate to have had such good parents, and they were always proud (rightfully so) of both of you.

 

Dad's cousin Homer Halverson wrote:

 

            ...Andrew certainly never let moss grow under his feet.  Just recently, he remarked to me about what a wonderful life he had had.

 

Sarah Kotchian, a friend of mine, wrote:

 

            He was a very special and original person from all you have told me about him, one of the last of the early pioneers in the state - I have mental pictures of him tromping over miles of forest and range land teaching you things, and of your parents teaching in the out of the way places.  They gave you so many things - values, ethics, good genes, independence, perseverance - what a legacy to the family and the state.  As you say, we celebrate 91 years of life and love of the natural world.

 

 

 

My Mother, Deweylee Stewart Gordon

 

            My mother, the former Deweylee Stewart, was born September 5, 1901 in Oklahoma Indian Nation.  Her name was a contraction of those of Admiral Dewey and General Lee.  Her parents, the former Birdie Little and Thomas Bailey Stewart, were Oklahoma farmers.  Like the Gordons, the Stewarts were primarily of English and Scottish ancestry, and were born in Texas.  All of Mother and Dad’s ancestors were “Founding Citizens” who had been in America prior to the Revolution. Three were members of the Jamestown Colony, the oldest continuous English colony in America; five were on the Mayflower and were residents of the Plymouth Colony. 

 

            Mother’s father, T.B. Stewart had managed to obtain an education through some two years of college, which was unusual for that time and place. 

 

            The Stewarts and their three daughters Adelia, Deweylee and Grace moved by covered wagon to New Mexico Territory in 1908, and homesteaded near San Jon in eastern New Mexico. Finding it impossible to survive on the arid prairie homestead, they soon returned to Oklahoma. 

 

            In 1990, my Aunt Adelia Stewart wrote:

 

            -----Dewey had first been taken to New Mexico as a 2-month old baby in 1901.  Grandma Stewart leased land about one mile east of what is now a town (Portales), but was then a very small trading post on a railroad.  Grandfather had a lot of cattle.  He and Papa (Dewey's father) drove the cattle through and built a two-story house.  When things were ready, Grandmother Stewart, Mama (Adelia's mother) and I and baby Dewey went there on the train. I have forgotten about train connections, but for some reason we had to spend a night in a hotel near the train station.  The room partitions were made of 1 X 12" boards and the occupants of one room could see the happenings of those in the adjoining room.  Every room had a pot-bellied stove for heating.  In the adjoining room to us were 2 men and 2 women and several other men.  The men were gambling and drinking.  Just as we were about to go to sleep, the law officers broke into the other room to arrest the men.  The men resisted, the officers beat them with Billy Clubs, the two women cried, "Oh, please stop, you are killing them."  In the melee the stove was tipped over and hot coals spilled onto the floor of that room.  The officers handcuffed the men, set the stove up right, put the coals back in the stove and left with the men.  But Mama and grandmother had re-dressed all of us and were ready to take flight when the hotel manager came in and assured all of us that all would be well.  So we managed to get some sleep before we boarded a train to finish the journey.

 

            When I was teaching in Hope, NM (in the 1950's) I drove to Portales and grandpa's house was yet there on the east side full of hay bales. 

 

            We were all there when an attorney from Henderson County, Texas came to buy grandmother's inheritance from Champion Choate's land.  The attorney convinced grandpa that the land was worth only $25.00.  So a deed was made to the attorney.  Several years later, the heirs learned that oil wells were on the land at the time of sale.  The heirs sued, but the court decided in favor of the attorney.  There go riches.

 

            Just because we have all lost Dewey, my last sister, please don't forget me.  I love all of you.  I'm awfully lonely now, and not young. Excuse my writing.  I realize it is failing just as my health is.  I know so much interesting about early times.

Aunt Adelia Sallee

 

            Mother was an excellent student, but frequently had to miss school in order to perform necessary farm work, including chopping and picking cotton.  She did not graduate from high school, but took college entrance exams and passed with flying colors so that she could enter Oklahoma State Teachers College with advanced standing. 

 

            Mother's childhood work and deprivations shaped her character and life.  She thirsted for knowledge, was inordinately ambitious and imbued with the zeal to work hard and succeed even if it required self-deprivation.  Mother literally "pulled herself up by her own bootstraps" throughout her life, and believed that adversity created strength of character.  Throughout her life, her efforts and interests were focused on the well being of her family.  She firmly believed that no one with any of her genes could be a failure!

 

            Mother attended Oklahoma Central State College, the University of Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and the University of New Mexico, as well as taking numerous correspondence courses.  She taught school in various locations in Oklahoma and Colorado, and in New Mexico at Page, Coolidge, La Joya, Riley and Mountainair.  During the formative school years of my brother Ladd and I, she either taught where we attended school or did not teach so as to be home when we arrived home eager to discuss our new knowledge, experiences, and ask questions. 

 

            Mother enjoyed music, and loved to sing.  She insured that my brother and I learned to play several musical instruments, and she always had a piano in our home.

 

            Mother was unusually beautiful.  As a nineteen year old, she was chosen Queen of the 1919 Cotton Festival for the southwest area of Oklahoma where the Stewart family farmed.

 

            Mother worked side by side with my father when it came to painting, carpentering, roofing, farming or plumbing.  She was obsessed with achieving and providing a sizeable estate for her sons and grandchildren.  The numerous homes and buildings that my parents personally constructed at Coolidge, Las Cruces, Roswell, Safford, Albuquerque, the New Mexico Boys Ranch, and La Joya attest to their hard work and constructive lives.

 

            Mother was unparalleled in her business affairs.  Starting with very little capital from my father's salary, she invested wisely in real estate over a period of some thirty-five years and developed sizable property holdings.  She did not believe in investments that she could not see and touch.  She accomplished this with a keen business acumen, self-discipline, hard work and consistent self-denial.  In her mind, the self-denial counted toward a larger estate for her children and grandchildren.  She said she wanted to travel, but would never bring herself to spending the necessary time and money.  Mother was the driving force and decision maker in all my parent's business affairs. 

 

            My mother could do anything, whether it was building a house, knitting, sewing, crocheting, plumbing, riding a horse, using a gun, or being shrewd and successful in business matters.  All of this while being a devoted, full-time parent.

 

            Mother

 

            "slipped the surly bonds of earth --- and touched the face of God"

 

on February 1, 1990.

 

            One prominent community leader simply said,

 

            "She contributed." 

 

A lady whom Mother had taught as a first grade teacher in Oklahoma in 1919 wrote:

           

            I want to express my deep feeling of gratitude I have to that dear teacher I had in the first grade.  She not only taught me to read, she instilled in me the desire to do a lot of it.  She went out of her way to give a little girl a feeling of warmth and value.  She would write letters to me during the summer while she was in school, and I learned to write letters at that early age.  I have her to thank for that and also the ability to write legibly, for she did stress penmanship.  I've tried to pattern some of my teaching after the things I remember from my first grade teacher.  I'm sorry I wasn't able to tell her just how much she meant to me and the influence she had on my life.

 

            My friend Sarah Kotchian wrote: 

 

She was a wonderful pioneer woman who left many gift to New Mexico and the other places she taught, and a great history of strength and pride to you, your children and grandchildren.  They are all fortunate to have had her in their lives for so long.

 

Mother's friends Ruth and Stanley Fish wrote:

 

You and your families meant much to her and she was very proud of each of you and you accomplishments.

 

Albuquerque Mayor Louis Saavedra wrote:

 

It was inspiring to read of her pioneer life and her exemplary work.

 

            Among mother's treasures, as she called them, we found the following which were read at her memorial services:

 

Dear loves, dear hearts, when time is fled

And I no longer sing,

I leave this message to be read

In sunlight and in spring.

 

Of life, of faith, of years content

Because our love was so,

That when the form in anguish went,

The spirit would not go.

 

And on this page, in very truth

A lyric and a flame,

Immortal April and a kiss,

The music and your names.

 

 

High Flight

 

Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings:

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds

and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of, wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence.

 

Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting winds along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high-untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

 

John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

 

            Another instructive item which Mother had copied in her handwriting:

 

            He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than when he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

            Bessie Anderson, 1904

 

            Without attribution, Mother's personal belongings also included the following in her handwriting, well worn and stained:

 

Our Anniversary

 

There are nice young men who are nice pro tem,

But look what happens when you marry them!

They turn into husbands - A sordid tribe

Who gloom and yammer and rant and gibe,

And grouse 'round the house like a wounded bear,

And acquire that woefully wedded air.

 

So I haven't the least excuse, it's true,

For the weak, rash moment when I married you.

I knew misgivings; I crawled with qualms;

I kept humming that minor lament of Brahms.

So imagine, darling, my pleasant surprise

When you didn't changeling before my eyes.

 

For you were the nicest of nice young men -

But now you're just ten times nicer again!

You don't barge 'round like a tin King Kleagle -

Maybe the ceremony wasn't legal!

No husbandly halo obtrudes its pall,

And marriage has ruined you hardly at all!

 

 

 

My Parents, Andrew and Deweylee Gordon

 

            Mother was teaching school in Oklahoma near the Carr and Driggers cattle ranch where my father was working as a cowboy.  They met at a box supper, where Dad paid $3.90 (all the money he had, but he said he "would have tried to borrow $100") for the box supper prepared by Deweylee Stewart.  Snapshots taken during their courtship show them riding horses and enjoying picnics.  After Dad attended college, they taught school in various locations in Oklahoma and at Arlington, Colorado.  They then had enough money for a down payment to purchase the Medicine Creek farm and ranch near Saddle Mountain, Oklahoma.  Falling cattle prices, plus the grasshoppers devouring their crops as the seeds germinated, made it impossible for them to meet their payments, and they lost the ranch.  (In their late years after they had become financially successful, they frequently talked of buying the ranch again, but realized you really "can't go home again.")

 

            Andrew and Deweylee Gordon, along with their young sons Laddie Stewart Gordon and Larry Jean Gordon (I was supposed to be named Lassie but fate and chromosomes interfered), moved to New Mexico in August 1929.  Andrew and Deweylee had been offered a school at Hope, New Mexico, but they selected the Page school because it opened earlier and they needed pay checks as soon as possible.  They were pulling a four-wheel trailer containing their worldly goods including Dad’s saddle horse, Nester.  Their mattress, in the moving style of that era, was tied to the top of their car.  Despite over-heating of the over-stressed engine, they made it to the Page school and two-room teacherage near the small lumber and sawmill community of McGaffey at the top of Zuni Mountain.  But they first stopped in Gallup to sign their teacher contracts.  As they were financially destitute, they contacted banker Glen Emmons on a Saturday afternoon at his home.  They requested $50, but after looking them over and hearing their story, Emmons retorted, "Hell, you don't need $50, you need $350."  He promptly wrote a check and a deposit slip to be deposited in their new bank account the next Monday morning. 

 

            Dad nominally served as principal teaching a small number of high school students in one room, and Mother taught grade school in the other room of the small building. 

 

            The first brutal winter storm found my parents in Gallup obtaining winter supplies.  The storm was so severe that they had to borrow McKinley County's only Caterpillar tractor to return to the teacherage where they had left Ladd and me with our Aunt Billie.  The Caterpillar remained in the schoolyard all winter, because impassable roads precluded it being returned.  The wooden teacherage walls were covered on the interior with newspapers that did not prevent snow from sifting in and covering our beds during the frequent storms.  All water for the teacherage and the school was carried in buckets from the nearby manual pump.  Students drank water from a bucket using a common cup, except during recesses when they could drink from small holes drilled into a water pipe connected to the pump while some other student worked the pump handle.  My parents found that most of the students had offensive body odors, so they brought in washtubs so that my father could scrub all the boys, and my mother scrubbed all the girls.

 

            During storms, students arrived at school on horses, snowshoes, or home- made horse-drawn snow sleds.  Dad kept a tunnel open through the snow from the teacherage to the school, and the tunnel walls were considerably taller than I was. 

 

            Saturday nights were family bath nights.  Dad would carry water to a large wash tub, heat the tub and contents on the pot-bellied wood heating stove, in the living room, and we would all take baths. Being the youngest, I was first; and subsequently Laddie, Mother, and Dad.  Beware of sitting on the edge of the tub that had been near the stovepipe!  Laddie learned the hard way, and experienced painful burns.  Laddie also learned that "caps" for his "cap-gun" would ignite in his back pocket as he warmed his posterior by the stove.  We were rather elite, as we had a "three-holer" for a privy, instead of the more common "two-holer." 

 

            We had a radio that was powered by dry cell batteries, but the radio didn't always work.  Dad built a crude wooden snow sled that was pulled by our horse, Nester (which he had brought from Oklahoma during a later trip), when we occasionally visited neighbors.  But best of all, we were happy, confident, secure and self-sufficient.  We didn't have any health insurance or doctors, and we didn't have any social do-gooders telling us we were deprived, or needed empowerment.  Life was good, and we were all happy and secure! 

 

            Dad was also a Brand Inspector for the New Mexico Brand Association.  Additionally, he leased land and raised potatoes that he sold to grocery stores in Gallup.  Sales were frequently difficult because some local potato farmers added a few rocks to their bags of potatoes to increase the weight.

 

            I had the opportunity to return to the site of our Page home and school in the summer of 1996.  I could only see where the foundations of the two-room school had been, plus some weathered remains of the teacherage and outbuildings.  Most people would not imagine that a happy family had lived there.

 

            During the early thirties, amid the Great Depression, my mother taught six elementary grades at the Coolidge one-room school at an isolated location near the continental divide east of Gallup, New Mexico, while my father returned to school at the University of New Mexico.  Mother had the title, "Principal of School District 8", Coolidge, New Mexico.  We carried all water for the school and the one-room teacherage from a "section station" on the AT&SF railroad about a half-mile away.  Dad moved the "teacherage" from Fort Wingate on a flat-bed wagon pulled by two borrowed giant Percheron horses which had such immense hooves that they didn't need to detour around cattle-guards, but simply walked across them.  The teacherage was simply the shell of a house when moved, but my parents completed