When I was a deacon, I used to clean the floors of that church building over there. I remember one time at Hudson's store a little boy named Willy had a 22 rifle-- not a 22, but a BB gun-- that he'd got for Christmas, and I said well heck that gun wouldn't do any damage to anybody and he said I'll bet you daresn't let me take a shot at you and I said I bet I would dare. I'll get off here ten or fifteen steps away and turn up and let you shoot at my rear end. So he took a shot at me and instead of hitting me in the rear end, he hit me right in the back ot the head. And that BB really hurt.

I believe this house here was Steiner's. Grandma Baker was burried up there but I don't believe we could find her grave or anything to recognize it. That house right there was Carl Johnston's. This was White's old flour mill, and the house over there I think was Horrace Lillywhite's home. Elaine Lillywhite's dad had a home somewhere in here too, but I don't know just where at. Lillywhite's, Lees and Coplands all had some houses right in this area. (brick houses)

We lived right on the corner here, right here by the river, and you could see the river from our house, and then Nelsons had a tent pitched right along, either down this way or back that way. Bavispe river and that's the old river bed right down there. We had to carry water to the house, and we lived around that irrigation canal and the river. Barney's and some of the Fenn's lived clear across the valley there, over by those hills, on the south side over there. Bertha Barney and her brother used to ride a little bay horse from over there, over here to school every day, they crossed the river riding the horse. That's our old home, right there. I used to go up this old road and take my brother's old bicycle and get up on that little high place and coast down this little road to learn to ride the bicycle. Then up and down this street here we played at night in the moonlight with Kindness Nelson and my sister Teene, [Clementina] we'd run up and down this road here playing kick the can, steal sticks, run sheepy run and all kinds of night games. Yeah, that's the old home right there. I used to climb up the corners of this building here on those bricks where they overlap that way where the corners come from an angle. West of the home here, Negleys lived on the left hand side of the road and Steiners lived on the right hand side. Right here we were digging a well and old brother Skinner was down in doing the digging, putting the dirt in a bucket, we were drawing the bucket up with a horse and your dad was operating the horse and we were taking brother Skinner out of the well long toward evening after he'd finished his days work and he got dizzy. The bucket started to whirl around and he got dizzy when it was about half way up out of the well. I guess the well must of been 20 feet deep and he feel out of the bucket and feel back down clear to the bottom of the well, and and he was laid up for weeks after that. I remember it seems the flood started along about oh, about noon, when it first began to reach down here and it roared like a freight train coming down hill. This was the flood that washed Oaxaca away and we could stand right here and see houses, parts of houses, floating down, and a rooster sitting on top of one of the houses crowing and a dog on top of another house barking, and you'd see cows and all sorts of things floating fown the water. Right through here we could watch it right here from the house, And, of course the bank of the river used to be over there about a hundred yards, and we stood over there and watched it a lot but then they kept taking the bank away as it washed away creeping this way.

This adobe part of the house is where Grandma Baker died and I used to come around when it was her meal time. I used to come around from the other door, from the east side of the building, and come into her door to get her bowl; she had a special bowl that she ate her soup and things out of; and I always used to just enjoy to come around and get Grandma's bowl for her to get her dinner in. And that old walking stick that I've got I've got her old walking cane that your dad used to have; and I've still got it up in Salem, and I used to get that old walking cane for her lots of times when she didn't know just where it was at because she was blind.

Just a block north of us here, where the road turns for that other road to come down, Johsons used to live up there, Harrel Johnson, that is the boy, Harrell Johnson that I played with-- His dad's name was Seth Johnson-- and it was there where I set off a dynamite cap. I went right straight up this road up near the hill, and I tried to, I rolled up pieces of cotton and put in the dynamite cap, and I'd set it a light, and it burned down to the cap, and then it'd go out, I had four or five caps in my pocket and one that I was trying to fire, and the one that I was trying to fire, I went over to Johnsons place and they had a big cottonwood log out by their corral and it had a big season crack in it and I set the cap in that and I got Harrell to go with me, young Harrell, and I struck a match, and I didn't get the match within four inches of that cap and it went off and it blew that cotton wood log, big splinters off from it, and one piece hit me right down here, in the right side of my tummy, and the other piece hit me right here in the breast. And I don't know whether it was splinters from the cottonwood log, or part of the brass cap, but I bled like a struck hog, and Mary Johnson picked me up and carried me like a baby from up around that block of her house, down, clear down here to our place, just picked me up like a baby and carried me down here. And my clothes were a bloody mess from my neck to my feet.

The river bed was right here. This was where Dad had about 10 or 15 acres of alfalfa right where this river bed is now. Then about two miles, right straight through there, west and a little south of here, we had a bigger farm, probably 50 acres as I remember and at the time of that flood, we had corn in tassels and roasting ears and we had a big patch of cane ready to make sorghum out of it and we had probablly 3 or 4 acres of sweet potatoes that were ready to dig, and a lot of peanuts, and about 10 or 15 acres of alfalfa that were ready to cut and the flood just swept it all away and left a gravel bed where it was. We wanted to go down and get some of those sweet potatoes before the water covered therm, and when we got down there, we went down there on a little blue mare we had, bareback, and before we got there, the mare was almost up to her belly in water and we saw we couldn't get any sweet potaoes so we turned around and came back, and before we got back she was almost swimming.(You and Joe huh?) Yeah.

Alvin Nelson's mother and father had a tent pitched right back here behind us a little ways and that's where we used to play, up and down this road at night in the moonlight. Alvin, and myself, and my sister Teene especially used to play right up and down this road.

Just across the road here from our house was where Bowlers used to live and then after they moved away, my brother Sam and Olive lived in there for quite a while in this same house across the road.

The river, especially in the summmer time wasn't fit to drink and we used to come down here and Negleys lived right here somewhere--the road didn't go on down there-- Negleys lived right in there, and they had a pitcher pump and we came down there and carried water back up to the house for drinking.

Some men were standing in front of our house one Sunday afternoon and they looked up on the side of Hog Monutain there, and dad could see a band of horses up there and he described the horses and he said he could even see the brand on one of then, and described them and so a couple of men on horses went up there and brought the band of horses down and it was just what Dad said it was, the very same horses.

It seemed to me like they said that the earthquake crack up there in that mountain was about two or three miles long, but I'm not sure of that. But there is a crevice, what do they call it, a crevase along side of that mountain somewhere.

One time that we were going to Oaxaca to get some fruit in a wagon, and we got up around the point of Hog Mountain there, and we saw our band of horses and so your dad, Will, got out with somebody else and they went and caught one of the mares and we changed horses and we put her on the wagon and turned the one that we had on the wagon loose with the band. I remember that.

Allreds owned that place, across, straight across west from the chruch, and after school recesses and after school a lot of time, I used to come over there a lot of time and ask him to let me work the lever for the bellows on his forge.

I used to go hunting on that hill up there, and I used to trade around with the kids marbles and eggs and everything else, and even catch the red birds and mockingbirds and trade them off a kid for a few nickels or pennies and every time. Call would go out to Douglas I'd send out there for a box of .22 shells with him. They used to cost fifty cents Mexican money for a box of .22 shells. When I shot a goose with old brother Lids Thomas' shot gun, he took the goose and gave me a box of 22 shells so I had plenty of ammunition to hunt rabbits with.

When I was a deacon, I used to come down here early Sunday morning and sweep the church out for Pristhood meeting. I was one of the Deacons that did more of the sweeping out of it that any of the rest of them around here as far as I can remember.

Right down from the hill here where this road come down is where Grandpa Sextus Johnson had his farm, and he was the father of Kindness' mother--Kindness Nelson's mother was his daughter.

Nelson had a big apairy of bees up at his place just east of Morelos, right along the river, and the bee inspector who I think was L.S. Huish, I don't remember for sure, but he decalred that they had foul brood, and so they were all destroyed. (How many did he have?) He must have had a hundred hives; a big apairy of bees I remember. I remember going up there and watching them extract honey several times.

Perhaps this might be the way to the wash where my dad got stuck with a four-horse outfit, (two wagons), and broke out the tongue of the wagon and then had to wait two or three days for the mud to dry up and meanwhile he had to cut down a hackberry tree and make a tongue for the wagon; and the way he got the holes through it for the queen bolt and the wagon rig bolt for the double trees was to shoot a hole through it with a .44 rifle that he had and then put the wagon rig in the fire and then heat it up good and hot and burn the hole big enough for the bolts to go through. That's about it.

Well, he really knew how to handle horses. There wouldn't be many men that have the gumption to do things like that to be able to get into town. All he had along with him was a monkey wrench and the wagon wrench and an ax.

From notes in the PAF (genealogy) file by Pearl Jarvis Augustus.