Part 6

The day we were to depart finally arrived and our brave adventure began. Our Model T Touring car with its little trailer, hand made by my dad from the rear wheels and axel of another Model T, started down rutted, rocky roads towards Arizona, a strange sounding land of mystery and promise that none of us could quite imagine. We waved to grandfather as long as we could see him standing in his front yard.

Trying to subdue our excitement while lying still under the blankets mother put over us in the back seat, doing our best to keep the icy February morning air at bay, was hard for us three boys. Juanita was snugly seated between mother and Dad, while baby Betty, wrapped in warm blankets, lay on mother's lap. Unless one has experienced the smallness of a Model T seat, the 600 mile trip that lay ahead of us to Miami, Arizona over unpaved country roads cannot truly be appreciated.

The first day’s travel of 80 miles to Roswell was through familiar country. Beyond that the trip was a completely new experience. Mountains with tall pines, clean smells and curving shelf roads were so beautiful we wished we could stay in them longer. Often we stopped, our little car struggling to conquer the steepness of mountain grades. Traveling down the other side we were almost as slow. To avoid overheating the brake band and remain in complete control at all times, dad drove cautiously in lower gears.

After we were through the mountains there were long miles of perfectly straight, rough, country roads with never a rise or fall in the prairie grassland around us. This was tiresome for us boys after the excitement of the mountains. Hour after dusty hour we traveled at a deliberate pace, designed to keep our rig in one piece during the whole journey. We had flat tires to fix on occasion, and we stopped from time to time so we could eat and us boys could run off stored energy.

Night camps were orderly and comfortable. Dad made good beds for everyone while mother cooked hot meals over a camp fire. We awoke refreshed and ready for each new day. Twice we came to a windmill and stock watering tank during the day. We stopped at these places and put the clothes washing pot on a fire to heat. Mother washed and dried the baby's diapers and a few other clothes. We bathed ourselves and put on clean clothes. These house cleaning chores required several hours each time we stopped but were entirely necessary.

In 1923 there were no such things as Motor Hotels between Tatum, New Mexico and Miami, Arizona. There were not even paved roads. It is a real tribute to my father's attention to detail that he was able to make this trip over such primitive roadways with his family in our little Model T Ford without any breakdowns except for flat tires. He knew the limits of his machine and refused to go beyond them with so much at stake.

Out on the flat-lands we passed Deuring and Lordsburg, finally crossing over into Arizona on the dirt road to Safford. The land began to change into hills and valleys with high mountains in the distance. We had been on the road for five days from Ranger Lake when we camped for a final night between Ft. Thomas and Globe. We were weary of traveling, yet knowing we would arrive the next day helped keep our spirits high.

A small three room cabin in a canyon at the west edge of Miami, Arizona was our first home away from New Mexico. Going out to play us boys raced to climb the low hills behind the cabin. We had never before climbed so high a hill. The grand adventure of finding completely new things to do kept us in a state of high excitement for days. There were oak and cedar trees, red barked Manzanita, strange flowers, and rocks of all sizes, shapes, and colors.

By any modern standard of living you can compare us with we would have qualified for poverty assistance. However, one doesn't know he is poor until someone calls it to his attention. We were happy and well in our new surroundings, comfortably warm and adequately fed. Our clothes were by no means new, but were clean and neat. We had good shoes for school and no one indicated we looked at all strange. Our well worn knickers and long black rib stockings were not the kind of clothes we would find our new classmates at school wearing however.

Dad applied for work at both the Miami and the Inspiration Copper Companies. Every day he would go to the employment offices, which was a very strange thing to do in his view. He had not worked for a company since he had been a street car conductor in Dallas, Texas, before moving to Ranger Lake with mother and myself. It seemed like a long time before he came home one day and told us that he had been hired by Inspiration Copper Company, however it was actually only about a month. He was very excited to have been hired, and all of us had ideas about what he should take for lunch in his new lunch pail with its Thermos bottle inside.

I walked to the road with him early the next morning and watched as he got onto the company bus that picked up workers needing rides to the Porphyry Shaft, where he was to report. In the afternoon we went down to the road again to meet him when he got off the bus. He brought home his carbide light and showed us how it worked. A carbide light became a fact of life essential to our family's well being from that day until the time we moved away from Miami some eight years later.

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