Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Memories of Emily Esplin Adair

I'll tell you some of the things I remember about things that happened at Moccasin.

There was the time I fell in the dipping vat. What I remember about that was not the falling in or being pulled out, but it was Uncle Alvin who brought me home. I had a long brown overcoat around me and it was cold, late fall was the time.

I remember one day the men were all chasing a wild black horse, a beauty, all around the houses and corrals. When they corralled and caught him, Uncle Chris was going to ride him. The women were excited and tried to persuade him not to. They thought he might get hurt or killed. He rode the horse, though, and came out alright. That is the only time I can remember Uncle Chris.

There were times when the women went to Aunt Lucy's in the evenings to quilt or sew carpet rags. Fred, Chris, Ed and I used to make a big ring on the floor with chalk and play marbles. They were always pleasant even­ings. Fred didn't always play. When he did he was always too much for the rest of us. Chris was good at marbles, baseball, and everything. The girls played with us a little, and we played a lot of jacks, rag dolls and paper dolls. The most fun I ever had was fun we made ourselves without money, or with the tiniest bit of money, or things that cost money.

It was fun to go to the long reservoir or the boiling springs. We little ones usually went there along with the bigger girls. I suppose the bigger boys had to work in the day time. Nabbie Spencer was the largest of the girls and the leader.

One of the real interesting things was picking geese. The women, Aunt Lucy, Aunt Sarah, Mother, Aunt Persis Spencer, maybe Aunt Jane and once Uncle Alvin's, Lucy, would sit on the steps leading to the upstairs of the grainary, or on chairs, with tubs in front of them and strip the geese of all their feathers, except wing feathers. There would be two or three women around a tub. The big boys, Charl Heaton and others would bring the geese and take them away. Once I remember a goose got to flapping its wings and sure did make feathers fly out of the tub. They picked the geese in the summer time when it was warm. The grainary stood right across the narrow wagon lane opposite Aunt Lucy's house.

Nearly all the gatherings were at or around Aunt Lucy's. I guess it was the only house large enough to accommodate a crowd of people. Aunt Lucy was always so calm and comfortable to be around and good natured too.

Our house was a little bit of a thing of rough lumber boards, and batting standing upright. It was up a slope a ways from Aunt Lucy's - to the north-east, I think. There wasn't much around it except a clothes line, a tin tub hanging on the outside wall, and a few desert brush behind it (old-man, I think). There was a board running out from one side of the door step with flowers between it and the house, and had to carry water in a bucket to water the flowers.

Ed Heaton says the brush was greasewood.

The big barn had a big row of horse-stables across the south side of it. Hundreds and hundreds of horses have been fed in these stables that belonged to travelers passing through. Hundreds and hundreds of people have eaten at Aunt Lucy's table and slept in Aunt Lucy's beds, and I think none have ever been charged for it.

Some people were sure tremendous workers in those days and willing to work without pay from morning to midnight.

Uncle Jonathan was around Moccasin quite a lot, and he was the one they all looked to in all emergencies. He could do anything, set broken arms, broken legs, broken collar bones and everything. He would do it for nothing, just because it needed to be done. Or you could pay him $2.50 if you had it, and wanted to.

The fence around the big corral at Moccasin was what they call a palisade fence, long straight cedars standing upright close together. Took a lot of hard work to make one, and a lot of straight cedars. About 4/5 of the way to the top were wires that run along both sides of the fence and twisted together to hold all the posts just where they ought to be and make everything solid.

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