Page 249 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

by way of Old Town (previously known as Mowry City) on the Mimbres “a little disfigured but still in
42 the ring.”
Not all the entertainment was limited to socials and
dances. In 1902, an election year, Cooks was
stumped for votes, first by the Democratic can-
didates and the following week by the Republican
aspirants. During the summer of 1903, the little
community received its only confirmed visits from
theclergy. InMaytheReverendsDr.ThomasHar-
wood, of Albuquerque, and Dionicio Costales, of
Dyer, held joint services and preached, respectively,
in English and Spanish to “a large and attentive
44
audience.”
and his wife were at Cooks for a week of preaching, having stopped there in their travels about the
45
country by wagon.
Lighter entertainment was also to be had in
Deming when the circus or other notable performers made a stop there. In the fall of 1901, the Deming newspaper noted that Cooks had sent a large delega- tion to the circus on the preceding Wednesday. The following year, responding perhaps to a three- column advertisement for “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World Exhibi- tion,” all of the Grover boys went down to Deming from Cooks to marvel at the cowboys, Cossacks, Indians, Bedouins, and others perform their feats of
46 daring horsemanship.
Despite an obvious need for medical personnel at the mines, little information was available on this subject. In 1901 it was reported that Dr. W. W.
of Saturday at Cooks on professional business. Later there probably were no physicians at Cooks because Mary Grover, who was born at Cooks in 1906, indicated that her Grandma Grover (wife of T. J. Grover) was the only doctor at the camp. If anyone had a problem she could not cope with, that person had to go to Deming for further treatment. Mary claimed that she never saw a doctor, other than
49
her grandmother, until she was 18-years old Sometimes even a “real” doctor’s expertise was not sufficient to the task encountered. Before Dr. Jones disappeared from the scene, he was called on to minister to George L. Lofton. The 37-year-old bachelor had been driving his team from Florida
Station to his hay ranch when he was struck by
George and Fred Grover inherited their mother’s medicine chest and remained at Hadley for a num- ber of years where they dispensed medical advice and potions to people in the area. In 1925 or 1926, Elizabeth Hyatt’s son, Thomas Leedrue, was ill with an earache and exhibiting considerable distress. A visit to the Grovers resulted in the prescription to dissolve a little bit of badly dehydrated laudanum in a glass of water for Tommy to drink. Somehow, while Elizabeth was attending other chores, her son filled the laudanum bottle with water and drank it. Upon discovering this potentially fatal action, she used some ipecac, on hand at the ranch to break a dog from sucking eggs, to make Tommy vomit. For- tunately he recovered, and his heirs still ranch at the base of Cooke’s Peak.51
Freighting by Albert Wallis remained integral to the mining at Cooks. In 1901, prior to another build- up of production, he had reported to Deming that business was slow at Cooks, partially because the El PasoSmelterwaspurchasinglessore. However,he apparently did not sit and wait for business to pick up at the mines, because that fall he completed a big contract for the Bisbee and Deming Railroad. This probably saved him financially because he indicated that his freighting at Cooks at the time netted only about $20 a day.
In the spring of 1903 a group of Mexican teamsters from Mimbres, hauling ore from Cooks to Florida Station, may have been either a part of Wallis’s operation or that of another independent operator. Whoever was managing the freighting efforts, an unseasonable four-day June rainstorm rendered the road to Cooks impassable, and the teamsters had to leave their wagons on the road and walk home. By mid-July, however, not only was the road back in shape, but it was definitely Wallis’s crews that were
53
hauling the ore
A mail and express line to Cooks operated for at
least certain periods during the town’s existence. During more lucrative times, a stage operated by Brockou Mitchell carried passengers between
47 Jones was seriously ill.
Only three weeks later, a Mr. Yeager
Although the outcome of the Doctor’s ailment was not reported, it may not have been good, because a year later it was noted that Dr. Resford of Deming spent Friday and part
48
Chapter 8
235
He was found several hours later,
lightning.
prostrate in the wagon bed, and taken to Hadley. The bolt had struck Lofton on the head and traveled down his right arm and leg, magnetizing his pocket knife in the process. The eight-year resident of Cooks expired the following evening without regain- ing consciousness.50