April 2, 1935 - Where Time Is Plenty
Nobody seems to care very much about anything in the desert country of southern Arizona; and that’s the reason it’s so nice.
Let’s just get started, shall we?
Washington Daily News — Tuesday — April 2 1935 Page 15
MY FRIEND’s ranch is about half way between Antelope Peak on the east and the Barkerville Federal Building on the west, five miles in each direction.
In that part of southern Arizona the “Federal Building” is always mentioned with a smile, because it is nothing but a board shack, about six feet square, sitting beside a cactus in the desert. It used to be a post office for four hours one day each week, when the mail carrier came 40 miles out from the nearest town. But he doesn’t come any more, and the pack rats have undermined the “Federal Building” until it is about to topple over. And nobody cares especially.
That’s what makes southern Arizona so nice; nobody seems to care very much one way or the other about anything. My friend who owns the ranch doesn’t worry much about anything either; in fact he is the kind of a guy you read about in books. He sits all day rolling cigarets and smoking them, and as far as I was able to observe after considerable study, he does absolutely nothing at all.
Southern Arizona is a land of little rain. Water, being scarce, becomes the source of all prosperity down there. THat;s where my friend on the ranch has the situation sewed up. He has a deep well. His well is the only one for miles around. So he sells water. And since there are thousands of thirsty cattle roaming the range thereabouts, he sells a lot of water.
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I HAVE just recently spent some time with my friend on his ranch. His part of Arizona is all desert, and very beautiful. The average easterner thinks the desert is barren, but that isn’t exactly true. It is rolling, sandy country, with small mountain peaks sticking up here and there and the ground is covered with cactus (in most of its 75 varieties), with mesquite and [illegible - cat’s claw?] trees, with many kinds of small grassy shrub, and, after rains, with a small spreading grass called filleree.
It is cattle country; mostly still unfenced. My friend’s own ranch is small (a mere mile square). He homesteaded it seven years ago, he and his wife, and altho they say it’s just a haven during the depression years. I’ve an idea they’ll be there a long, long time. Their life is a far cry from the bubble and trouble of eastern cities.
They have a grass-roofed porch on the west side of the house. Here they have a swinging davenport that came from the mail order house, and a canvas-wrapped water keg which the sun, by evaporation, keeps cool. On the side of the house is a thermometer three feet high. The highest it has ever gone was 107; [? or degree symbol and comma?] the country is 5000 feet high, and the heat isn’t as ghastly in the summer as you would imagine.
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ON TOP of the hill above the house is a big steel water tank, and near it is a cement basin which, in the summer time, is a combination storage basin for water for the cattle and swimming pool.
Down below the house, at the foot of the hill, is the well, the cement water tanks, a corral, a small barn, and the cowboys’ bunk house. A barbed wire fence encloses the whole assemblage.
My friend arranged things very nicely for my visit. He arranged for the sun to go down just as he has written me it would, casting for a few minutes an almost purple haze down the little valley to the east; he arranged for a full moon to come shooting up over Antelope Peak like a ball of gold, coming up so fast you could cont one, two, three and actually see that the moon had gained altitude in those few seconds; he arranged the combination of full moon and desert cactus into soft, weird shadows the like of which you cannot see east of the Pecos; he arranged for the coyotes to come and yell their ghostly yodel just at bedtime, and not a hundred yards from the bunkhouse; he arranged just the proper amount of loose cactus needles on the bunkhouse floor for me to put my bare feet on and make me feel very, very wild west, sleeping with saddles hung on the foot of the bed and owls hooting in the rafters.
My friend really has only three things to do — cut and carry in enough mesquite wood for the cook stove, feed the chickens and start the gasoline engine to pump water every other day.
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HAVING so much time, he is an expert on many things. He takes Time magazine, The Sunday New York Times, and The National Geographic. He knows more about the Washington situation than most of us here in Washington. He has very definite theories on what should be done to get us out of the depression; he thinks the NRA hurts the little man, and he doesn’t like so many foreigners in the country.
He is a connoisseur of guns. He owns two six-shooters, a French high-powered rifle and a shotgun. He always carried a six-shooter with him for snakes or jack rabbits, or something bigger. They don’t shoot very many men down here like they used to.
One of his six-shooters has a solid copper handle. My friend made it, fashioned it with file and sandpaper out of a hunk of Arizona copper. The gun with the original handle was worth $35. Now, with the copper handle, it is worth about $60. It took him nearly six months to make it.
My friend is under 40. He is tall and good-looking, his face is the color of his copper six-gun handle, he wears a 10-gallon hat and cowboy boots. He has learned to take his time. When his wife needs wood for the cook stove he smokes three cigarets before he goes and gets it. He is always smiling. He hates to go to town; not especially because it’s so far (40 miles), or because the town isn’t much when you get there, but because it’s so much nicer just to sit and smoke.
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HE DOESN’T have many neighbors. Adjoining him on the west is a ranch of 100,000 acres, extending 80 miles to the south. A cattleman’s widow has an immense ranch to the north. My friend waters their cattle for them, for a fee that gives him a comfortable living. Once, during a drought several years ago, he really had to work. His gasoline engine ran steadily for 48 hours, and for 48 hours without stop they were handling cattle in and out of the corral, past the watering troughs.
My friend likes to have company, for he likes to talk. He has some very funny stories about the cowboys and the Mexicans. My favorite is the egg story.
It seems there is a cowboy living a few miles from him, a cowboy who has grown to middle age on the Arizona range, who has been to Tucson only a couple of times in his life, and who is a very fine man, but a very primitive one indeed.
One morning this cowboy rode up to my friend’s ranch. It being the custom to invite any visitor to stay for the next meal, this cowboy was invited to breakfast, and accepted.
As he was washing up, my friend’s wife said to the cowboy:
“Jim, how do you like your eggs?”
“Oh, I like ‘em fine,” was Jim’s answer.
“But,” she said, “how do you like them cooked?”
“Oh,” replied Jim, “I like ‘em better that way than any other way.”
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