Page 35 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

The Coming of the Family - Chapter 8
Diamond
In my “new” used car, I drove back to Elmer and joined the frenzy of packing that was going on there. My Dad had bought a used Model A truck with a cover over the bed, like a covered wagon. The plan was for everyone except Dad to return to the homestead for the summer. Since he couldn’t leave his work, Mother would be starting the residency required by the Homestead Laws.
The truck was loaded with beds, bedding, mattresses, and other things needed at the cabin. We drove the two vehicles back to New Mexico together and Mother and Sally took turns riding with me. The three younger boys thought it was a treat to ride in the back of the truck on the mattresses.
We entered the state near Clovis and drove west until we reached U.S. Highway 85 near Bernardo. There we turned south and traveled through all the little villages now bypassed by I - 25 (Polvadera, Lemitar,
Escondida) as far as Socorro. There we turned west again to Magdalena and about twenty miles beyond, and southwest on the Beaverhead road.
When we arrived at the cabin, George, Sally, and I felt as if we were returning home, and Mother, Red (17), Van (14), and Jack (8), were as excited and thrilled with their new adventure as we had expected them to be. All of us set to work at once with a will, unloading the truck, setting up the beds and moving in generally.
George hauled water from one of Dub Evans’s windmills in a fifty-five gallon drum until he had time to dig and concrete a new cistern. After that it was easier. When we had a good rain, we let it wash off the roof, then turned the flow into the cistern. In the wintertime, water was no problem for we kept a big pot full of snow on the stove at all times, and as it thawed we poured it into the cistern.
All of us helped plant a garden and tend and water it, but after it was ready to start producing, the wild animals made forays every night until we had nothing. The deer ate the corn and the greens (beet tops, bean vines, turnip greens, radish tops), and gophers ate the underground crops (potatoes, radishes, carrots, and beets).
The boys hurriedly put up a fence to keep the deer out, but they sailed over it as if it weren’t there. For several nights the boys took turns lying in wait for the culprits, to catch them at their lives of crime, but not an