Random Stories from My Youth – the Southwest

Please forgive me if I am rambling on too long with my memories, but once I got started, it was difficult to stop!

 

A love of Southwestern Indian culture and art.   While living in Yuma, Arizona for Dad’s last military assignment, my parents became enamored with native American Indian culture and art of the Southwest.  Their interest in Southwestern culture and arts lasted the rest of their life with the accumulation of Indian jewelry, finely woven baskets and textiles, and pottery and art that was prominently displayed in our home. 

Art and artists.  Mom & Dad were both very interested in art and they built a nice art collection over the years.  They very much enjoyed learning about local artists and visiting art galleries during our travels throughout the southwest.  They became good friends with Peter Hurd and his wife Henriette Wyeth who lived in the nearby Hondo Valley.  Peter loved to entertain at their small ranch which included a large sprawling ranch house, painting studios for both Peter and Henriette and also a polo field.  We would sometimes head down to the valley to attend one of their all-day parties that included playing horse polo (we just watched), barbeque and tables of picnic food, both inside the ranch house and outside in the courtyard with outdoor fire pits.  And Peter and others often played the guitar in the evenings. 

I remember that Peter Hurd was commissioned to paint the White House portrait for Lyndon B Johnson, but there was a bru-ha-ha about it because evidently once it was finished, President Johnson didn’t like it; and I don’t think it went in the White House.  I remember that we all got to go into Peter’s studio around that time and look at the painting which was a big deal because both of the Hurd’s rarely would allow anyone in their studios.

Another artistic couple, and good friends of my parents, was Tom & Dorothy Knapp who also lived in the Hondo Valley.  Tom Knapp was a bronze sculpture artist and he decided to build his own foundry.  Dad helped him at times, and they would sometimes have “pouring parties” to pour some of Tom’s bronze sculpture pieces.  And there was one time, a visit to the El Paso home of a well-known artist named Manuel Acosta ended up with my parents buying one of his art pieces that he was using to cover broken glass on a door.

From Arizona to New Mexico.  The decision was made to buy the ranch in Alto, New Mexico [see the blog post Aviator to Rancher posted on September 30, 2023] around 1961, and Mom & Dad began planning to build our home and the stables and fence the fields.  They hired a man, Dick Sellers, to oversee the property and animals and he moved into an old ranch house that was on the property with his wife and two children.  Bob, my older brother, and I moved in with the Sellers family in September of 1963 to start the school year in Ruidoso.  And Mom & Dad and the two younger children stayed in Yuma, Arizona for a few more months for Dad to complete his retirement and because Mom was very pregnant with Mary Ann who was born at the end of September. 

By mid-fall we were all back together in a small rented cabin in the Upper Canyon north of Ruidoso where we stayed while our new home was being built.   Just up the road from our cabin was the border of the Lincoln National Forest.  A small river, more like a creek, ran through the canyon.  Anyway, the cabin was not very solidly built as I remember that in my bedroom the walls were slatted boards with no insulation.  One board had a knot-hole in the wood that was about 2” across – and when looking through it I could see outside with the snow falling down!

Bricks for the house at the ranch.     The bricks that were used to build the ranch house and the stables were oversized, fired adobe bricks that were made in Mexico, and picked up at the border.  My older brother, Bob, shared the story of those bricks with me.  He wrote:

Back when we were building our first home in Ruidoso, Mom and Dad had spent years designing the house and having drawings made up over and over.  The final drawing that their builder in Ruidoso used showed a lot of brick for the outside.  Mom had gone with Dad to Nogales [a border town in Mexico] to pick out what brick they wanted and to buy a bunch of other stuff for the house.

Anyway, when it was time to go down and pick up the brick, Dad and I took the station wagon and trailer down to get it.  That was when we found out we had a problem.  Apparently, Mom and Dad had already bought so much stuff [for the new house] in Mexico that they exceeded the amount that they were allowed to bring into the States from Mexico in one year.

The solution was simple.  The brick manufacturer loaded it all up in a truck they had in Mexico and then drove it out to the boonies in the middle of nowhere on the Mexican side of the border.  Dad and I and a couple of day laborers that he picked up for the day met the manufacturer on the U.S. side of the border.  In those days the border was not patrolled like it is now and only a simple 8-foot fence separated the two countries.  So we spent all day with the manufacturer's men throwing the bricks over the fence and with Dad, me and a couple of guys he hired catching the bricks and stacking them on our trailer... in other words, "running the blockade of the fence." 

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Key Individuals:

     Robert Gordon Scribner  (1923 – 2006)

     Ann Hart Hughes Scribner  (1921 – 2006)

               Jane Hughes Scribner Simonitsch McCrary (1953 – and more)

               and my four siblings:  Bob, Jeff, David and Mary Ann                                  

- Jane Scribner McCrary