*red mesa, new mexico

tent
If I remember right, I was about 7 years old when we moved to Red Mesa. We moved to Red Mesa and Papa had put up a tent house. We lived in the tent house. It was a big tent about 24 feet long and 12 feet wide. I can remember the wind blowing and that old tent flapping and it would first scare me to death. Papa had build or dug a cellar for the milk and I would try to get mother to go down there with me. I don't think she ever did.

That fall, we moved back to Kirtland for school and that winter, Eugene Forest Steele was born (20, Jan. 1912, San Juan, New Mexico). We lived in the tent all winter. In the spring, papa took us back to Red Mesa, Colo. The next winter we moved back to Kirtland, New Mexico. Then we moved back to Red Mesa, Colorado on a farm that papa traded uncle Frank Robert’s for.

Every time papa moved, he took the tent with him. We live in that tent for about three years. Until he built a one-room log house, which was use as a kitchen, we still slept in the tent.

hay
Milton lived on a big hay ranch. We would bail the hay, then stack it, then in the winter he would haul it to Durango to sell. I would sit on one side and poke wire through a little hole in a board to separate the bail. Alvin would tie the wire on the other side. I was around 11 and 12 years old at this time.

first picture show
The first picture show I saw and when probation was passed. Milton and Don come in a boxcar with the cows and horses.