Page 73 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

High Pockets - Chapter 17
Her real name was Shirley Imogene McClure. Her father called her Shirley, most people called her Imogene, and her mother called her “Girl”. Her parents lived about nine miles south of Datil. Their success story I shall relate later on.
Imogene runs through my memories for fifty years - as a fellow teacher, traveler, camper and friend. Her parents came out to New Mexico to homestead about the same time I did, but she didn’t follow them until school was out at Southern Methodist University in Dallas where she attended.
Imogene’s teaching career began at Plains in 1932-33, then she taught in Datil where she lived in Ray Morley’s Navajo Lodge. She taught at Claunch in 1934-35, and then again in 1935-36 when I moved there. Later she was in Dona Ana County at a school near the Tres Hermanos Mountains.
Imogene was blackhaired and beautiful and was six feet tall to my five feet. We were subject to much teasing about the difference in our heights. There was the “Long and Short of it,” “Mutt and Jeff”, and so on. My favorite for her was “High Pockets”; I guess because it matched my “Half Pint”. It was even more incongruous when I was the principal and she was the primary teacher.
One summer we decided to go camping down in the Gila Wilderness. Perhaps it was partly because everybody tried so hard to discourage us that we were even more determined to go. “Two lone women out camping in the wilds? Why, I never heard
of such a thing!” Always the theme song for my early days in New Mexico.
Several professional guides had refused to take us into the Wilderness, but when we had about reached the point where we would have walked in from Silver City, we discovered that Doc Campbell would drive us in, in his pickup with compound gear.
We took the bus to Silver City where we spent the night in a small hotel. That evening we talked for several hours with Mr. and Mrs. Fred Thomas, owners or managers of the hotel. They knew the country well and were thrilled at our chance to go.
“Have Doc take you to the mouth of Little Creek,” admonished Fred. “We’ve camped there, and although it’s a little sandy, you’ll have an ice-cold spring right at your door for your drinking water. Lots of fish in the Gila there, too.”
So the next morning when Doc came for us, our first question was where he intended to take us to camp.
“Well, I thought the mouth of Little Creek would be a good place,” he said, and we lapsed into a pleased anticipatory silence.
Before we started out to pick up the other passengers bound for Doc’s Gila Hot Springs Hunting Lodge, Doc took us by to see an old lady also named Campbell but no relation to Doc. We enjoyed our short visit with her - and she re-enters our story later on.