To Right the Unrightable Wrong

By Robert L. Pirtle

A century ago Americans were still moving west, settling in new states, establishing themselves in new environments. That pattern was followed by the grandparents, then by the parents of Robert L. Pirtle, the author of this autobiography. The eventual home of the authors parents and his family was Roswell, New Mexico, a sleepy little town in southeastern New Mexico. To begin with, however, the book traces the authors lineage, even including fascinating familial connections to the compilation of the King James Version of the Bible, to the Cherokee Indian Tribe and to the Commander of the Alamo. Readers will certainly enjoy the picture the author draws of small town America in the 1930s and 1940s, of the vicissitudes of growing up, of junior and senior high school days and high jinks.

The author displayed an interest in fairness and justice from his earliest days; indeed he proposes that every child has an inherent instinct for justice. As the author moved through childhood and school years he encountered numerous incidents in which the concept of fairness played a decisive part. Though such incidents of childhood are of minimal significance, yet they play a part in shaping a childs character and perception of the world, and can lead to incidents of real significance in adulthood. The author describes incidents which did just that in his own life. In one instance the author shamefacedly admits being the cause of a hurtful injustice to others; yet that incident, too, played its part in his maturation. It is said, after all, that good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.

By the time the author graduated from high school his interest in science in mathematics rose to the forefront of his mind and he entered Purdue University with a four-year scholarship from the University. Before the year was out, however, he knew he did not want to pursue science as a career and he switched to the University of Arizona where he majored in mathematics, his easiest subject, while he sampled the liberal arts and pondered what his life work would be. He first considered entering the ministry and becoming a Methodist Preacher, but little by little he decided that he could prove of greater help to people and especially to the cause of justice as a lawyer.

Accordingly, his last year in the undergraduate program was his first year in the law school of the University of Arizona. After graduating he took his commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the United States Air Force, working as a mathematician at the Special Weapons Center of Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The authors function was as target analyst, designing an atomic weapon delivery system for fighter aircraft. Fascinating is the authors description of his witnessing the explosion of an atomic bomb named Zucchini in Nevada in 1955.

The author entered the University of Colorado upon completing his Air Force term and was hired by the largest law firm in Seattle, Holman, Mickelwait, Marion, Black & Perkins, upon his graduation from law school. During his brief Air Force career, The author had studied Shakespeare at the University of New Mexico, later entered into negotiations with the popular TV show The $64,000 Question, and was being scheduled to appear on the show after his graduation from law school. But the TV show collapsed after Charlie Van Doren, son of the internationally known Shakespeare scholar, Mark Van Doren, lied to a grand jury in New York concerning whether he had been fed answers when he appeared on the show. And a year or so of performing legal work for corporate clients discouraged the author to the point that he left the Firm and hung out his shingle as a sole practitioner, but simultaneously entered the graduate school of philosophy of the University of Washington, contemplating becoming a philosophy professor.

In the end the author, d

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 16, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469100326

Robert L. Pirtle

Robert L. Pirtle, of Scottish, Irish and Cherokee descent, was reared in Roswell, New Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s. He devoted his legal career to trying to right the unrightable wrong done to Indian tribes throughout the history of the United States in the taking of their land and curtailing of their sovereign governmental rights. Retired, he and his wife are “rain birds,” spending winters in Arizona and summers on Mercer Island, Washington. His hobbies include playing early music on the viola da gamba, welding sculpture, writing limericks, bridge and tap dancing

Book preview

To Right The

Unrightable Wrong

An Autobiography of

Robert L. Pirtle

Tribal Lawyer

Copyright © 2007 by Robert L. Pirtle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Cover

Acknowledgement

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Dedication

I wish to thank Leigh Hunt for putting my dedication into poetry:

Jenny Kissed Me

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief! who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in.

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;

Say that health and wealth have missed me;

Say I’m growing old, but add–

Jenny kissed me.

Cover

The Indian blanket forming the basis of the cover is a gift to the author from Ernie Stevens, Sr., Chairman of the Sovereign Oneida Nation of Wisconsin for presenting a seminar Federal Indian Law to the Tribe on its Reservation. The mask in the upper left corner is Coho Man, carved by a Tlingit Indian of Alaska and presented to the author as a gift by Edward Thomas, President of the Tlingit-Haida Central Council for assistance in a bond issue with which to finance the new tribal headquarters building in Juneau, Alaska. The ceramic basket in the lower right corner is the creation of a member of the Hoopa Tribe of California and was presented to the author by the Tribal Council in the celebration of the author’s firm’s saving the Hoopa Reservation with federal legislation which split the Reservation away from the Yurok Reservation down river. Finally, the peace pipe is the 1908 creation of an unknown member of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation of North Dakota and was given to the author by his secretary whose late dentist husband had collected it during the 1940s.

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank the members of my former law firm, Pirtle, Morisset, Schlosser and Ayer (now Morisset, Schlosser, Jozwiak and McGaw) for permission to borrow freely from our Indian Law Seminar teaching text, Sovereignty Under Siege, for those sections of this autobiography dealing with the history and development of federal Indian law from the so-called discovery of the American Continent by European explorers to the present day.

R.L.P.

Introduction

The Quest

To dream the impossible dream

To fight the unbeatable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrow

To run where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong

To be better far than you are

To try when your arms are too weary

To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star,

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far

To be willing to give when there’s no more to give

To be willing to die so that honor and justice may live

And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this

That one man scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable star.

From Man of La Mancha

No one sets out as a small child to Right the Unrightable Wrong. No, the sense of justice comes slowly through the years; it develops in fits and starts from the vague inner feeling in a given situation that something is wrong, something is not fair. A child has no way of knowing quite why it is that something is not fair, but nevertheless feels it inside. And since a small child cannot articulate a concept like unfairness or injustice, he either protests unspecifically or lets it go. Next time the feeling comes, he tries to explain his feelings, even lashes out, childlike, in what is likely to be an ineffective attempt to right the perceived wrong. But often parents either misunderstand or disagree or know the situation more thoroughly and know that the child’s feelings are misplaced. And they may be, but unless the child has a chance to express his feelings and talk them over with someone older and wiser, he may well feel that his concerns are squashed in a second unfairness.

I do not mean to imply that parents should treat children like miniature adults and expect them to reason rationally in all instances, as seems to be the growing fashion in child rearing now, for such is to misunderstand what it is to be a child. But there is a very important middle ground which parents should not overlook. My son-in-law, Ken Moss, has grasped this elusive concept in a fine fashion and, wielding it judiciously, geared to the stage of each child’s developing reasoning power, is instilling a sense of fairness in his children in a thoroughly admirable way.

But injustice and unfairness remain a problem for us all. A small child often suffers injustice at the hands of older children and it is, after all, a chief goal of child rearing to teach a child not to be unfair to smaller children, and then, as the child reaches adulthood, not to be unjust in his treatment of any person. Ah, that we could all achieve that goal!

As this autobiography will show, my own sense of justice began at just such an early age and certainly did go through substantial and, to me now, troublesome fits and starts before it finally developed to maturity. I considered briefly the ministry as the most promising way of serving others, but as I aged and learned about life and myself, I concluded that the ministry was too sedentary for me and that I needed a profession which would empower me to participate more actively and more directly in affairs, to make events happen. The law seemed to offer the best prospect and I gradually brought law school into my sights. As a young lawyer, I was fortunate when, serendipitously, I became a tribal lawyer and was able to devote the rest of my professional life to protecting the sacred sovereignty of American Indian Tribes, attempting to strengthen tribal government and tribal economies, and thereby to provide Indians with a better way of life.

My feeling for justice began with two bees. Brother Jim, perhaps six years of age, grabbed the end of a hollyhock bloom with his hands, trapping inside two bees who had just buzzed up and crawled in. While he held the bloom by the squashed end, I blurted out,

No Jim, don’t kill ’em… they’re poor! It was all I could think of in the way of proclaiming the unfairness of it, but it worked. Jim released the bees and they flew away, perhaps unaware of the danger which I feared they might have been facing. I remember my feeling of satisfaction that fairness had been shown but as I was only five years old the concept of justice lay far in the future. I trust that this autobiography will show how it developed in me and underlay my attempt to right the unrightable wrong done and continuing to be done to our American Indians and their treaty-guaranteed rights of sovereignty.

Chapter 1

In Which Is Explained The Genealogical Background of the Pirtle and Lively Families and the Serendipitous Joining Thereof

1. Grandfather Zorobbabel Pirtle and

Grandmother Mary Edith Pirtle

I was not born yet.

But Dad was. He was born April 17, 1903 and christened James Burger Pirtle by his own father, Zorobbabel Pirtle, a circuit-riding Methodist preacher of an area of west Texas which included Anson, the little town where Dad was born. Grandfather Zorobbabel had a given name which must have made him altogether unforgettable. The name Zorobbabel (or Zorobabel or Zerubbabel) derives from Governor Zerubbabel, who, at least according to the Book of Ezra 3:2 in the King James Version of the Old Testament, was the son of Shealtiel, the eldest son of Pedaiah. In Haggai 2:20-23 it is reported that he is to receive royal status as servant and a signet ring, as executive officer of God. Zerubbabel was referred to as Governor in both Haggai and Zechariah, an office to which he was apparently appointed by Darius I, King of Persia. In the First Book of Esdras (an alternative version of 2 Chronicles which is included in the Septuagint, the Greek Version of the Old Testament) there is a fictional tale of a battle of wits at the Court of Darius to which Zerubbabel was unexpectedly the winner; as a result he was given permission to rebuild both Jerusalem and the Temple. All of this is, indeed, an obscure bit of the Bible and why our great grandfather chose Zerubabbel as a source for a most unwieldy name of our grandfather remains a conundrum. At any event our grandfather apparently went by Zoro B. Pirtle, the name which has cropped up in various genealogical sources through the years.

Before proceeding with our immediate family, I will set forth a short history of our forebears.

Jacob (Pert) Pirtle, age 23, together with his brother Peter (Partle) Pirtle, age 25, sailed from Cowes, England to Rotterdam, thence to America on the H.M.S. Marlborough, arriving on September 23, 1741. Jacob is listed in Early Records of the Revolutionary Soldiers and Patriots as a revolutionary soldier from Maryland. At that time the name Pirtle was variously spelled as Pert, Pertl, Pertle, Pirtle, Pirkil, Pirkill, Partle, Purdle, Purtle, Purtell, Pyrtle, and Turkell and Vorkel. Of Jacob’s numerous children, one, Martin Pirtle, born in 1768, is the direct ancestor of our family. Before his death at age 38 in 1806, he and his wife Margaret had ten children, listed in the 1810 Census for Caldwell County, Kentucky. Their son James was born in South Carolina in 1791; his wife, Charity Roberts Pirtle, known as a beauty, was born in North Carolina in 1795. They married in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, on September 8, 1813 and had a large family: five boys and four girls.

The fourth child of James and Charity Pirtle was Martin Thomas Pirtle, born April 13, 1826. He married Altha Virginia Lawrence on October 31, 1855 and fathered 13 children by her before his death on October 7, 1897. Altha was born March 2, 1838 and is known to have been one eighth Cherokee Indian. The family and their nine living children moved by covered wagon from Mena, Arkansas, after the 1870 Census, to McCraw’s Chapel, a small farming community near Honey Grove, Fannin County, Texas. There they worked in fields chopping cotton and hoeing corn. The adults were paid one to two dollars per day and all children over 12 received 50 cents per day; younger children received only 25 cents per day.

Although they lived in a two-bedroom house with a dirt floor, a meager beginning for the family, three of their children became Methodist ministers, Houston Monroe Pirtle, Sterling Price Pirtle and Zorobbabel Pirtle (our Grandfather), who was born October 1, 1865 at Mena, Arkansas. Unfortunately, I have been unable to unearth the facts of his childhood and Dad never got round to telling us any stories about his father.

Zoro married our grandmother, Mary Edith Jamieson, who was born in Quitman, Arkansas on November 8, 1879. Her parents were W.E. and Josephine Jamieson. Mr. W.E. Jamieson was President of the Board of Trustees of Quitman College, and his wife, nee Josephine Logan, was the daughter of John A. Logan, after whom Logan County, Arkansas, was named. She attended Quitman College and Kidd Key College, Sherman, Texas. Whether she obtained a degree is unclear.

Zorobbabel Pirtle married Mary Edith Jamieson in Die Mound, Texas, on March, 19, 1893. At the time of their marriage, Grandfather Zoro Pirtle was a deacon in the North Texas Conference of the Methodist Church, having been ordained in 1891; he was made an elder in 1895. He was transferred to the Northwest Texas Conference in 1902. During his preaching career, he was an itinerant preacher and served the following pastorates: Anson, Aspermont, Houston Street, Amarillo, Clarendon Circuit, Higgins, Knox City, Turkey, Levelland, Lakeview, Silverton, Spearman, Throckmorton and Stinnett, serving in all 40 years.

Grandfather Zoro Pirtle died in 1935 when I was four years old, so I never got the chance to know him; I have no memories back to that time. The Children of Grandfather Zoro and Grandmother Mary Edith Pirtle were:

Sydney Ruth Pirtle, born February 26, 1895, died 57497.png ; married Roland Linwood Lee, born January 12, 1905, on August 19, 1941.

Thomas Emmett Pirtle, born October 13, 1898, died 57495.png , married Helen Herbst, born April 6, 1908, on May 16, 1923.

Reuben Candler Pirtle, born December 12, 1900, died June 8, 1965; married Leota Nash, born November 17, 1904, on October 9, 1928.

James Burger Pirtle, born April 17, 1903, died November 12, 1952, married Veda Aileen Lively, born September 25, 1908, died July 15, 1985, on October 9, 1928.

Lura Grayce Pirtle, born October 5, 1905, died October, 1987, married Carl Warburton George, born March 22, 1899, on March 10, 1929.

Willie Nell Pirtle, born July 9, 1908, died November 25, 1963, married Vestal H. Lott; born July 31, 1907, on June 8, 1930.

I know that a man should remember his grandparents on his father’s side, but unfortunately I don’t. I say unfortunately because they must have been very interesting people and it would have been a wonderful thing to look for traits which showed up in Dad and in his siblings. And my speculation is strengthened by information that brother Jim and his wife, Frances, chanced to encounter in a trip through west Texas in 1996. Jim drove through the towns we knew faintly from stories our parents told us, like Anson, where Dad was born, Rotan, where Mother was born and Canadian, where Jim and I were born. While visiting Clarendon, Texas, Jim stopped at the First Methodist Headquarters for west Texas and went into the building. Inside Jim discovered a library with many old church records from the early parts of the century. But to his chagrin, he found that the room was being used as a nursery and that those in charge were letting the little tots take books out of the shelves, drop them on the floor, tear pages out of them and, in general, treat them as expendable toys. Jim researched in one of the books and soon found information concerning our grandfather, referred to generally in the texts as Zoro Pirtle. In one such reference, Jim even found a picture of Zoro Pirtle and his brother Sterling Price Pirtle and extracted the entire page out of the book so that at least that much would be saved by the family even if, as seems to be the case, the collection is finally completely destroyed by the nursery school children. How like his father our Dad looked!

Jim also managed to get his hands on the April 17, 1923 issue of the newspaper of Clarendon College where Grandmother Mary Edith served as housemother to the Girls’ Dormitory at the time of her death. A woman of much accomplishment both artistically and musically, she was very much loved by the women students of Texas’ Blanton College. She died on March 29, 1923 and the April 17, 1923 (Dad’s 20th birthday) issue of The Clarco was entitled In Memoriam and dedicated to her memory. In the lead article the author stated:

She was admired and loved for her talent, her grace of manner, and her devotion to her family. She was an ideal example of the pastor’s wife and the mother whose energy and persistence kept her in congenial touch with the human life of every grade with which she was surrounded–yet not to the neglect of her home. She could help solve the personal problems of her husband, her children, the missionary society, the college boys and girls, and the faculty. She was liberal and democratic in her views, firm in her beliefs, and was incapable of duplicity or disloyalty to those with whom she worked or to the institution which she served.

I remember neither Grandmother Mary Edith nor Grandfather Zorobbabel, but I do know that he baptized me when I was born and, from what Dad told us from time to time, he was a fine man, a good husband and father, but perhaps more devoted to saving souls than nurturing his children. Dad never talked about him much and, sad to say, Dad didn’t live long enough for us boys to grow up, begin to speculate on our roots and quiz him at length about his childhood and his family. That is just one of the important things one regrets about having a parent die at age 49. Interesting enough, I never would have suspected that I have 1/64 degree Cherokee blood, but more interesting, that is a sufficient blood quantum for enrollment in the Cherokee Tribe as a tribal member. More on that subject later.

2. Grandfather Thomas Columbus Lively and Grandmother Emma Lively

Thomas Columbus Lively, Mother’s father (whom we all called Paw Paw), was really the only grandfather I ever knew and loved and, fortunately for us boys, he lived until all but brother Patrick were grown and married. Genealogical information concerning the Livelys in America is much more abundant as there were a great many more of them and therefore their tracks are many. The following is extracted from The Livelys of America, published in 1971 by the National Association of Lively Families, Athol D. Lively, President.

The Livelys of the United States comprise a number of southern families, Virginia seemingly the origin of the majority. The European origin of the Livelys of America is, as yet, untraced, but traditionally the Livelys immigrated from Ireland, England, Scotland, France and Germany; whether several Livelys emigrated from different cities or just one is unclear. As of 1971 only five documented references to Livelys in America prior to 1755 had been found, dating back only to 1704. A John Livesley (possibly Lively) was listed on the rent toll of Prince George, Virginia as having 300 acres of land. In 1719 the Lively Furnace at Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, made the first blast furnace pig iron in North America. The list continues and The Livelys of America traces 13 major Lively lines and nine minor Lively lines with American connections.

Our earliest traceable forebear of the South Carolina-Texas Lively Line is Thomas Lively, Sr., born in 1755, place unknown, and died between May 8, 1836, the date of his will, and June 10, 1839, the date his will was probated. Thomas married Rachel (surname unknown) between 1750 and 1760, and their children include John Lively, born in 1780, Jane Lively, born in 1792, and other children whose names are unknown.

Thomas Lively first appears in the 1790 Census of Edgefield County, South Carolina as a male over the age of 16 years, and his son John is listed as a male child under the age of 16 years. Thomas next appears in the 1800 Census of Abbeville County, South Carolina as a male of the age of 45; his son John is listed as a male child between the ages of 16 and 26. Thereafter Thomas and his family appear is succeeding censuses and family tradition reports that he was born in and lived most of his life in Virginia. Tradition further holds that he was a patriot and served in the Revolutionary War, during which time his wife spun cloth and managed to slip clothes to him although she was being closely watched by the Tories. However, no official record of his service in the Revolutionary War has yet been found.

Thomas Lively and his son John, both residents of Pickens County, Virginia, sold 300 acres of land to John Clayton on January 30, 1836. Thomas’ will, probated June 10, 1839, granted a life estate in his land to his wife, Rachel. A portion of his land on the west side of Stewart’s Creek was devised to son John and land on the east side of the Creek was devised to daughter Jane Lively.

John Lively, born in 1780 in South Carolina, married Elizabeth, born in 1792 in Nova Scotia, at an unknown date. Their four children include son Thomas, born July 25, 1812, who married a succession of three wives, Betty Bolen, Emily Dickey and Janie Dotson, each of whom bore him children.

After his first marriage to Betty Bolen, Thomas Lively moved first to Georgia, where Betty died and where his second wife, Emily Dickey, also died; then in late 1850 Thomas and his third wife, Jane Dotson, moved to Houston County, Texas and settled in the area known as Livelyville, east of Grapeland, Texas. Thomas was a cabinetmaker, wagon maker and shoemaker, and a Methodist layman and leader. During the Civil War he assisted families of soldiers from the Grapeland area and made shoes for Confederate soldiers. After the War he moved his family to Dennison, Texas, where he died. During his lifetime, he donated the land for the Livelyville Cemetery.

Janie Dotson, was born July 25, 1822 in Alabama or Tennessee and her marriage date is unknown. She bore Thomas Lively 12 children, including their fifth child, Milo (Cool) Lively, born June 6, 1855 in Houston County, Texas. He married Malvina Ross, born in 1863 at Jacksboro, Texas. Unfortunately, all we know of Milo is that he was a farmer and a Methodist. Their two children were:

Thomas Columbus Lively (our Paw Paw), born August 25, 1877 in Houston County, Texas, died February 12, 1964 at Roswell, New Mexico; married Emma Edna Gilmore (our Baw Maw), born August 30, 1878 at Slocum, Texas, died 57493.png at Roswell, New Mexico;

Carrie Bell (Aunt Carrie), born August 22, 1880, died 57491.png ; married J. W. Cunningham.

Paw Paw and Baw Maw had the following children:

Travis Coy Lively (known to us as Travis C), born May 28, 1898 near Percilla, Texas; died 57489.png at Pampa, Texas; married Allye Waldron, born October 15, 1897 at Munday, Texas.

Audrey, born July 25, 1900 in Houston County, Texas, died July 1904 at age four at Grapeland, Texas.

Thurman Dennis Lively, born August 31, 1902 at Grapeland, Texas, died January 26, 1991 at Denver, Colorado; married Loretto Wheatley, born 57487.png at 57485.png , died 1996 at 57483.png .

Thomas Lawlis Lively, born July 27, 1904 in Grapeland, Texas, died June 5, 1986 at 57481.png ; married Bessie Lee Morrow, born August 3, 1906, died August 6, 1989, on June 14, 1926.

Clyde Lively, born August 21, 1906 at Dustin, Indian Territory, now Dustin, Oklahoma, died 57479.png at Roswell, New Mexico; married Ruth (surname unknown) at 57477.png on 57475.png ; married Pauline Regensburg on June 14, 1942.

Veda Aileen Lively (Our Mother), born September 24, 1908 at Rotan, Texas, died July 15, 1985 at Seattle, Washington; married James Burger Pirtle at Guymon, Oklahoma.

Nina Merle Lively, born July 29, 1911 at Rotan, Texas, died 57473.png at 57471.png ; married Reginald Dwight.

Glenwood Lively, born September 26, 1913 at Hedley, Texas, died August 1953 in California; married Willa (surname unknown).

Paw Paw and Baw Maw were married when she was only 19 and he was 20 years old. They were married in East Texas and moved west to find work. Although they reared a large brood of children, several more were lost at birth and four-year-old, little Audrey drowned when she was washed away in a freshet in a drainage ditch on the edge of a cotton field following a sudden summer rain storm.

Baw Maw’s father, Great Grandfather Gilmore I don’t even remember having ever met, but Mother told us once in a while that he was a man with an upside down temper: it seems that once he began to spank a child or swat a horse, he continued to get angrier and angrier. Once he got so mad at a horse that he beat it to death according to Mother. That fact made us wonder at what kind of person could do such a thing; thank God that now it is a felony to so abuse an animal, today he would have been convicted of a felony and sent to prison. Consistent with Mother’s impression of Grandpa Gilmore is Paw Paw’s phrase for that side of the family: those ram-headed Gilmores.

The name Travis might ring a bell–Colonel William B. Travis, commander of the Alamo when it was attacked and overrun by General Santa Ana–was our great (three or four times) uncle on the Lively side. That fact is important when one lives in Texas. But the Lively clan has a much more significant claim to fame–a direct Lively ancestor, Edward Lively, was one of the 54 scholars picked by King James I to translate the Bible into English, thus producing the King James Version of the Bible. That fact was considered very important by Grandfather and held dear by Mother as well.

In his book "The Translators Revived, published in 1858, Alexander McClure describes how the 54 King James Scholars were divided into six groups, each assigned a certain section of books of the Bible to translate. Of the six groups, the second, entitled The Cambridge Company" was assigned the books from Chronicles to the end of the Song of Songs. The eight scholars in The Cambridge Company were: Edward Lively, Dr. John Richardson, Dr. Lawrence Chaderton, Francis Dillingham, Dr. Roger Andrews, Thomas Harrison, Dr. Robert Spaulding, and Dr. Andrew Bing. McClure’s biography of Edward Lively is as follows:

"EDWARD LIVELY

He is commemorated as one of the best linguists in the world. He was a student, and afterwards a fellow, of Trinity College, Cambridge, and King’s Professor of Hebrew. He was actively employed in the preliminary arrangements for the Translation, and appears to have stood high in the confidence of the King. Much dependence was placed on his surpassing skill in the oriental tongues. But his death, which took place in May, 1605, disappointed all such expectations; and is said to have considerably retarded the commencement of the work. Some say that his death was hastened by his too close attention to the necessary preliminaries. His stipend had been but small, and after many troubles, and the loss of his wife, the mother of a numerous family, he was well provided for by Dr. Barlow, that he might be enabled to devote himself to the business of this great Translation. He died of a quinsy, after four days’ illness, leaving eleven orphans, ‘destitute of necessaries for their maintenance, but only such as God, and good friends, should provide.’ He was author of a Latin exposition of five of the minor Prophets, and of a work on chronology. Dr. Pusey, of Oxford, says, that Lively, ‘whom Pococke never mentions but with great respect, was probably, next to Pococke, the greatest of our Hebraists.’"

Sad, indeed, that our ancestor, so highly regarded as such a great Hebraist and held in high esteem by King James, died before the translation of the King James Version of the Bible was truly under way. The family must, therefore, be satisfied simply with the honor of having had an ancestor appointed to the group of King James Scholars.

The literary legacy of the Lively ancestor seems to have been the source of a genetically transmitted love of conversation in the Lively Clan. Mother always claimed it was so and she was gifted with great word skill and a lifelong fascination with poetry and prose and writing. That she never developed her talents even close to their potential has always seemed to me a great shame. It will be explained later, at least to the best of my ability and understanding.

Mother has told us of how fascinated with books she was, even at a very young age. Her mother, Baw Maw, would often look in on her and admonish her thus: Aileen, put down that book. Every time I look at you you’ve got your nose stuck in a book! Mother was almost made to feel that reading was a sort of character deficiency. She loved to memorize poetry and could do so with great facility. Once she did something naughty in school and the teacher announced that she and several other offenders would be kept after school and made to memorize a poem. When presented with the poem Mother memorized it very quickly, then recited it to the teacher. The teacher merely scoffed at her and said with disgust, Aileen Lively, you already knew that poem! and made Mother memorize another poem. Imagine a school teacher so benighted as to render the memorization of poetry a punishment rather than a privilege! Nonetheless, it seems that I came by my love for poetry and memorizing poems honestly.

Whatever the truth of the Lively claim to genetic literariness, it is absolutely true that all members of the Lively family, without exception, both up and down the line, that is, including grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and their offspring, were dedicated conversationalists. All had as soon spend their time conversing as eat or play or take part in any other activity. This, no doubt, accounts for the talkativeness not only of Mother, but of all four of her sons, and is the more striking because it contrasts so decidedly with the characteristics of the Pirtle side of the family. Whereas the Livelys talked, the Pirtles played. I can’t speak for Grandfather or Grandmother Pirtle, but I can certainly vouch for Dad and for all our Pirtle uncles and aunts and cousins–they all adored play of any kind, including hunting, fishing, football, hiking, and all other kinds of outdoor games, but also darts, pool, card games and all sorts of indoor games. The one exception was games of a literary nature such as crossword puzzles and word games, although Dad did enjoy playing I’m Thinking of a Word, a game involving rhymes and definitions which our family played on long car trips. But the Livelys could and did assemble at 2:00 o’clock on a typical Sunday afternoon and talk steadily until 10:00 o’clock at night, interrupted only by Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner, depending upon the occasion, or a simple supper of a bowl of black-eyed peas and hot buttered cornbread.

Apparently West Texas families in the early part of the last century were nomadic to an astonishing degree. The reason, as near as I can understand it, is that work was difficult to find and non-professional people found themselves forced to move often to follow jobs. I know that Paw Paw worked at a number of jobs, including, farming, running a country general store and selling insurance and that their family moved a number of times. Paw Paw was an absolutely honest, ramrod straight, devout Methodist whose word was an unbreakable bond. Abraham Lincoln could not have been more honest and upright than Paw Paw. It was in the insurance business that Paw Paw was most successful; he could sell insurance so well because he was a good talker, obviously trustworthy and honest and therefore a first rate salesman.

We children never got specifics about the many moves of the Lively family but it seems that Paw Paw was infected with wanderlust to a high degree. Moves were mostly made by families of men looking for work, however, so it is very likely unfair to judge him harshly for having done so. In about 1906 Paw Paw was struck with wanderlust and so picked up the family comprising Baw Maw, Travis C, Thurman and Lawlis, and set out by covered wagon for the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. The trip from Grapeland to Dustin, Indian Territory was some 250 miles, an arduous journey. The family stayed with relatives and friends along the way and stopped at the occasional farm for food and an overnight stay. Baw Maw was probably pregnant with Uncle Clyde during the journey. Uncle Lawlis was only two years old, but Uncle Travis was eight years old and got to ride a horse for part of the journey.

At one point they found themselves camped near a group of drunken Indians who were extremely boisterous and wild. Paw Paw was scared enough to make the entire family get under the wagon for shelter, hoping that if the Indians chose to make trouble, they would not discover them there. How long the family stayed near Dustin is unrecorded, but when Paw Paw next got wanderlust the family moved again by covered wagon across Texas to Rotan where Mother was born September 25, 1908.

Sometime after Aunt Nina Merle was born, Paw Paw and Baw Maw moved the family to Hedley, Texas, where Paw Paw went into the general mercantile business, his establishment what was then referred to as a general store. They remained in Hedley until sometime after Uncle Lawlis was drafted into the Army in 1918, but by 1921 the family had moved to Amarillo. Mother attended Wilson Elementary School in Amarillo in 1922. By 1930, Paw Paw and Baw Maw had moved into a little house with a white picket fence surrounding it on South Pierce Street in Amarillo.

When Uncle Lawlis was a young boy, Paw Paw took him to Colorado where Paw Paw was trying to market what could be called the first snow tire. It comprised short segments of an old tire wired together in a circle, the segments separated by a gaps. It was to be slipped over a regular tire to form an irregular surface which should provide additional traction, similar to that provided by snow tires or tire chains. Apparently the idea did not work as intended and soon Paw Paw abandoned the project.

At one time Paw Paw tried his hand at haberdashery–not in a clothing store, but door to door. Paw Paw was equipped with a handsome attaché case, some eight inches thick, in which he carried dozens of swatches of suit material attached to the case with a steel hanger for the customer to choose from. From time to time the styles changed and Paw Paw would be given a new case with the latest material samples and his daughters and daughters-in-law vied for the old case which could double as a small hand-carried traveling suitcase.

All of us children loved Paw Paw and Baw Maw dearly as did both Mother and Dad, but Paw Paw had a curious personality flaw–defeatism. When, at age 55, he broke his right arm cranking the Model-T, he immediately concluded that he was finished as a wage earner and sold the family general store. In those days a Model-T was started with the hand crank which was inserted into a hole at the front of the car just below the engine. Then with the key turned on and the gas and spark levers on the steering wheel set just right, you would insert the crank and crank the engine over vigorously a full turn or two. If all was really well with the engine, it would sputter to life and kick out the crank, then you would run to the driver’s door, jump in and work the gas lever to rev the engine a few times to warm it up enough to run smoothly at low speeds.

But a Model-T which would not start due to cold weather or some internal problem had to be started with more ingenuity. You built a wooden jack with two by fours, in reality, a very simply lever mechanism; the base consisted of two members four inches apart and parallel, lying flat on the ground, the lifting arm another horizontal member held 16 inches above the ground by two uprights, and pivoted between them so that you could set the notched forward end under the rear axle, then bear down on it with your full weight to lift one wheel off the ground. Then you hooked a heavy wire tied at the base of the jack over the lifting arm and it prevented the wheel from dropping to the ground. Then you went round the car to do the cranking procedure, but this time with the car in gear so that the back wheel began to spin and became, in effect, a flywheel. It provided enough spinning inertia to allow you to get the engine turning over rapidly, a considerable help to starting the engine.

On the day of the accident, Paw Paw could not get the engine to start and so kept on cranking, gradually getting tired in the process. In fact, he should have stopped and used the flywheel procedure, but he refused to do so for some reason and continued. However, the engine did not quite catch right, instead it backfired, jerking the crank backwards out of Paw Paw’s hand and, before he could jerk his arm up out of the way, swinging a reverse arc which hit his arm from behind and broke the bone.

Of all the houses in different Texas towns our grandparents lived in, and there were many, there was one, the house in Amarillo on South Pierce Street with the white picket fence around it, that Baw Maw loved more dearly than any she’d ever lived in and it broke her heart when Paw Paw decided that the family must sell the family house and move on to another city. It was in 1932 when Paw Paw broke his arm cranking a Model-T, that he decided he could no longer manage the little store, therefore sold the house and moved on to another city. Mother always spoke of the incident angrily, or at least perplexedly, because there seemed to be no real reason for Paw Paw’s feeling that the family just must move on to another city. When he got there, they bought another little house and since the family had no assets, Paw Paw got a job selling life insurance.

A part of Paw Paw’s commission for the sale of each policy was the first premium payment. But since it was in the depths of the Great Depression, most of the farm families he visited had no money for the premium, so Paw Paw generally worked out barter arrangements, taking instead chickens, a ham or other farm products equal in value to the premium; only then would he report that he had received the first premium. The rest was up to the insurance company. But Paw Paw received some small part of every annual premium paid afterward. Since he was absolutely honest and upright and obviously so, he was very successful at the insurance business and managed to accumulate enough accounts to bring him in commissions on the annual premiums year after year. I well remember his telling me he received payments from policies he had sold during the 1930s well into the 1940s and even beyond. It must be that many of his customers kept their policies until they died. Paw Paw’s selling that house on South Pierce Street with the white picket fence was the most hurtful thing Paw Paw ever did to Baw Maw and he obviously did it because he believed, perhaps mistakenly, that it must be done for the sake of the family.

Most of my recollections of Paw Paw are of a very dignified elderly man, dressed in a black suit, with white shirt and tie, and a vest, sitting in his rocking chair, pipe in hand, his demeanor, for the most part, serious. Paw Paw wore what we called grandfather shoes, black leather shoes that were high like modern hiking boots, with hooks instead of eyelets so that Paw Paw had to lace them each morning by pulling the laces around the hooks, then across to hooks on the opposite side, then back again. In keeping with Paw Paw’s style of dress, Baw Maw wore grandmother shoes which were low cut but full laced with big, clumpy heels, not at all the stylish shoes Mother wore. I never saw Baw Maw wearing any other kind of shoe.

Our cousin Phil Lively describes Paw Paw’s expression as a serious, worried look. Although Phil reports that he seldom saw Paw Paw laugh, I remember that he was greatly amused at the goings on of the Pirtle boys and would slap his thigh and grin broadly at each new report of our rambunctiousness. I must say that I have no memory of Paw Paw’s losing himself in a belly laugh, but Phil reports that he once saw Paw Paw in an almost uncontrolled laugh. It seems that Paw Paw was trying to tell Phil a story of the debut of the newly installed restroom in Paw Paw’s general store. The toilet was hooked to a sewer line and had the new-fangled flush feature, a water reservoir attached to the wall high up above the toilet seat. To flush the toilet you pulled a chain which allowed water to rush down the pipe and flush the toilet.

Paw Paw related that a woman customer went into the restroom and locked the door behind her; suddenly a terrible, frightening cry of anguish came from the restroom and Paw Paw rushed to the door only to find water gushing from beneath the door. Paw Paw was able by dint of main strength to jerk the door open only to find the poor woman practically floating out of the room on a spout of water gushing up from beneath her. Trying desperately to deal with her long skirt and underpinnings, the woman could not get to her feet. In telling the story, Paw Paw laughed so hard he was unable to tell the denouement and just sat, sputtering and crying with laughter until he could do nothing but sit in his chair, frantically trying to catch his breath. And so the story’s end is lost.

As I write this, I realize that it is impossible to imagine Paw Paw at my age of 76 running two miles on Sunday morning and pumping iron and practicing tap dancing three times a week as I do. But times have changed so dramatically that I consider myself middle-aged, not aged, and Jennifer and I are determined, along with many friends of our age, to keep out bodies in the best physical shape we can for as long as possible. Of course, advances in health care and nutrition give us an advantage people of Paw Paw’s time did not have; nonetheless, I am convinced that the larger factor, by far, is mental attitude.

As proof, I contrast in my mind Mother and Mamacita (Rena Bain), Jennifer’s mother, who were born in 1908 and 1910 respectively. While Mamacita was yet going strong, walking vigorously each morning and filling every day with exciting activities at age 88, Mother was long since dead, having died before her 76th birthday. Mamacita never once considered giving up, not even after her husband, Larry, Jennifer’s father, died at age 82 when she was 73. Instead, she continued practicing yoga every day and acted as if she were nigh invincible; even at age 90 Mamacita walked fairly steadily, without the old bounce, but also without using a cane. My brothers and I all agree that Mother seemed to have inherited from Paw Paw his defeatist attitude and we all witnessed her inability ever to overcome Dad’s untimely death at the young age of 49 when she was only 44. Instead of seizing the day and becoming financially independent, possibly remarrying and going on to a full and long life, Mother gradually sank into a crippling desuetude which spelled her too early death even though she inherited from both Baw Maw and Paw Paw a fine constitution and body. But that story must be told in its turn.

During the latter half of the 1940s Dad and Clyde built a house for Baw Maw and Paw Paw at 809 West Summit in Roswell. While I never spoke about the matter to Dad, I’m sure they took no payment for the house, just had it built out of stock of our store, Pirtle-Lively Company, and deeded it to Paw Paw and Baw Maw. Perhaps to remind Baw Maw of her beloved house on Pierce Street, they had a white picket fence built around the house.

During the 1940s we visited Paw Paw and Baw Maw at their house frequently. In addition to my memories of Paw Paw, already described, I remember sitting out in the back garden with Baw Maw on many a hot summer afternoon shelling black eyed peas. Baw Maw would sit on a low stool, her long dress draped down between her legs to form a nice pea holding lap and I would fill it with cool ripe pea pods I picked from the vines hanging on sticks and string in rows. She would sit shelling them, letting the peas filter down between the unshelled pods until the last one was finished. Then she would pour the lapful of peas into her cooking pot. The pea pods were green and firm and nearly always cool, probably from surface evaporation. Now and then I would eat an entire pod, peas, pod and all. Very tasty. Baw Maw would laugh her wonderful quaking laugh, not out loud, her shoulders bouncing up and down and she smiled hugely and enjoyed my antics.

At least twice I painted the entire white picket fence for Paw Paw. It took forever, it seemed, and Paw Paw was very particular about how it was done, but Dad had taught me how to be a good, thorough fence painter on our own white picket fence, so my work met his expectations. Paw Paw’s idea of dealing with winter weather and driving was to start his car, then immediately rev the engine up to full speed, as if to prevent it from shutting down forever and refusing to restart; then Paw Paw would sit stolidly in the driver’s seat and keep the engine running at top speed for ten minutes! Brother Jim, with his phenomenal mechanical instinct and knowledge of engines, would cringe, painfully pointing out to me that 90% of engine wear occurs when a gasoline engine is cold, and that running the engine at high speed when it is cold is absolutely the most destructive thing you can do to the engine short of running it without oil. I’m sure Jim explained all this to Paw Paw, but to no avail; he never changed even a tiny bit in his winter driving routine.

My last memories of Paw Paw, from somewhere in the 1950s, are sad, memories of seeing Paw Paw sitting in his rocking chair, smoking his pipe, no longer able to read or interested in reading, getting little pleasure out of life, his mind largely disengaged from life, resignedly waiting for death. I would park my 1950 Cadillac Coupe de Ville in front of Paw Paw’s house, open the little white gate, noticing the increasing number of bare patches on the pickets where flecks of my last paint job were beginning to flake away, and walk up to the door. After I knocked, I waited for Paw Paw to come to the door, his old pipe in hand. Hello, Bobby, Paw Paw would greet me with a dignified seriousness, come in. More often than not I was in a hurry, home from the University of Arizona in Tucson, or Kirtland Air Force base in Albuquerque, or the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder, for the weekend, and anxious to go on a date or to go out with old high school friends. But I would sit down for a short visit and Paw Paw would return to his old rocking chair.

I have little remembrance of our conversations, but I distinctly remember Paw Paw’s perennial complaint, Bobby, the days are so long. The days are so long. Paw Paw’s stretching out of the words and then repeating them must have made the passage of days seem even longer to Paw Paw, but to me, they were strangely meaningless. The days passed then, as now, with frightening rapidity, images hurtling by like those of time-lapse photography played at normal speed. Almost never in a single day of my life have I accomplished all that I set out to do upon waking; and as I have retired and aged, the problem has merely accelerated. Now at age 76 I have adopted a fierce regimen, scheduling certain hours each day for such things as viola da gamba practice and reading. While I am not always successful at working these two very important things in my life into each day, the regimen remains and is ever present in my mind, no matter what project I am about.

Oddly enough, at the time of these despairing declarations by Paw Paw, he was only some 77 years old, for in 1960 he was only 83. What accounts for it? In my view, Paw Paw suffered the horrible fate of losing interest in life because he had never developed a consuming interest in playing music or birdwatching or building home projects or any other hobby. His sole recreation was conversation and after his children grew up and scattered and his grandchildren grew up and went away to college or began their own families, family gatherings became fewer and farther between and Paw Paw and Baw Maw were left with nothing but the new entertainment medium–television. But of course it was in its very infancy in the 1950s and Roswell offered only one channel of bleak and unimaginative fare. Paw Paw and Baw Maw, unschooled in the field of music, latched onto the Lawrence Welk Show as the epitome of musical entertainment and never missed an episode.

I don’t seem to remember either Baw Maw or Paw Paw as being a reader; all I can ever remember either of them reading was the Roswell Daily Record every day. But Paw Paw had the greatest respect for learning and for reading. He said to me on more than one occasion, Bobby, I want you to read a book. It is a big book, an erudite book. Here Paw Paw paused to let the weight of his sentence sink in. Then he continued, "It is The Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus (the Jewish historian who lived in the first century A.D). Bobby, if you read that book completely through, you will be an educated man. Paw Paw pulled on his pipe, thinking of the enormity of the erudition contained in Josephus. Bobby, if you read that book completely through I’ll give you a prize." But Paw Paw never specified what the prize would be and somehow we never got round to discussing it further. But I remember and I still intend to read Josephus one day.

3. Our Parents Begin the Family

Dad, aged 25 met Mother, aged 20, on a hay ride in the summer of 1928 in some small town in West Texas, they fell in love in a few short weeks and eloped to Guymon, Oklahoma, where they were married by a Justice of the Peace. Before they were married, Dad went to meet Mother one evening at West Texas State Teachers College in Canyon, Texas, where Mother was enrolled. As he was passing the Girls Dormitory, Dad was surprised to see the night watchman up in a tree peeping in the window of one of the college girls. Dad was half amused, half shocked, but had the presence of mind to throw a brick at the night watchman who hastily descended the tree, but by then Dad was long gone.

After Mother and Dad eloped to Guymon, Oklahoma and were married by a Justice of the Peace, they returned to tell the family. But Paw Paw was much displeased by the event and even sat down and wrote a very ugly letter to Mother telling her that her action was despicable, likening her to a cow in heat, needing a bull to impregnate her. It hurt Mother deeply, and I know instinctively that Paw Paw regretted it for through the years both he and Baw Maw grew to love Dad as much as one of their own. He was always extremely loving and solicitous of them both and they returned his love

Because the Pirtle family never had much money and moved about West Texas from time to time, Dad never had the chance to go to college. While Grandmother Mary Edith did serve in Clarendon College as housemother in the Girls Dormitory in 1923, Dad took some college courses, but for only one or two semesters. But, as became clear to us boys much later, Dad was gifted in things mechanical and mathematical. In fact, he developed a gift for multiplication in his head which astonishes me even to this day. For example, Dad would say 89 times 167 is, then he would hesitate for a few seconds, then add 14,863! and slap his thigh, an indicator that he was greatly amused. At a time long before electronic calculators had been invented, this talent allowed Dad to do in his head the extensions in the several-hundred-page stack of the annual inventory taking at Pirtle-Lively Company, our hardware store and lumber yard–some 25 such calculations per page for approximately 15,000 separate items of merchandise!

Dad was only five feet nine or ten inches tall and slightly built, weighing perhaps 155 pounds at his heaviest, but extremely wiry and very strong. I suppose he developed his strength in his youth for he related to us that for at least a year or so he had worked as a cowhand on the King Ranch, the biggest ranch in Texas and in the United States, and that for another year or so he worked as a roughneck in the West Texas oilfields. Unloading and wrestling with 4 x 8s some 24 feet long will make a man wiry! And he was determined; I never knew anyone so determined except my wife, Jennifer, and, of course, our late and dear Golden Retriever, Sappho.

Dad’s determination always focused on a worthy cause or project; only once did I ever see Dad lose his temper and turn his fierce determination into a confrontation with a big burly truck driver who had rudely cursed Dad in a road rage caused by the truck driver’s own negligence. Jim and I were riding with Dad in his Plymouth coupe in downtown Roswell when a big cattle truck turned onto the street where we had come to a stop at the intersection. Realizing that his truck’s turning radius was too big for the corner and that Dad’s car, although properly stopped in the lane, was in his way, the driver came to a stop, leaned out the window, his tanned arm sporting a large tattooed rattle snake, and yelled to Dad, You son of a bitch! With lightning speed, Dad turned off the key, jumped out of the car, jumped up on the running board of the truck, jerked open the door and got in the driver’s side, the surprised truck driver sliding out from under the wheel and over to the passenger side of the truck, embarrassed at his own faux pas.

What did you call me? demanded Dad, his eyes burning with fury.

I’m sorry, mumbled the truck driver, then added disingenuously, I thought you were trying to cut me off. I didn’t mean…

Well, okay, said Dad, smiling, I accept your apology. I’ll be happy to back up and give you room to complete your turn.

Thanks, stammered the truck driver, aware that, morally speaking, he was totally out of line. Dad climbed back down to the street, got in the car, started the engine and backed up to let the truck driver complete the turn, then gave him a kind of friendly salute with his left hand, the kind of salute normally reserved for a traffic policeman or garage attendant who has helped you through some driving difficulty. Only then did Jim and I let out our breath in a joint sigh of relief. The truck driver outweighed Dad 50 or 60 pounds and probably could have laid Dad low with one punch, but Dad’s determination and his being in the right combined to defeat the truck driver’s unjustly directed outrage at the predicament he himself had caused.

Chapter 2

In Which The Matter Becomes More Complicated

With The Appearance Of James Thomas, Robert Lynn and David Lane

1. The Great Depression; the Family Settles in Roswell, New Mexico

Within two years after Dad and Mother’s marriage, the country crashed into the Depression, an economic hole it did not climb out of until the beginning of World War II in 1941. With no professional degree, Dad was particularly susceptible to the ups and downs of the times and the result was a succession of short lived jobs and repeated moves from one west Texas town to another, each time in search of a new job. I remember once in the mid-1950s Mother was reminiscing and, after thinking for a few minutes, reported that she had moved from one house to another 38 times during her married life! And she moved five times after that, ending with the house in which she died in 1985.

Dad described the Depression to Jim and me when we were old enough to understand. He recited that once he and one of our uncles were riding a railroad freight car looking for work with a total of one quarter between them. At the next town they bought two hamburgers with their quarter and Dad still remembered it as one of the most appreciated meals he ever ate. Whenever Dad did get a job he could expect to be paid with chickens or raw potatoes half the time and only to be able to work a certain number of days per week so that others could have some work too. Barter was the way of life in much of America for years. But Mother always emphasized something which I have heard seconded by many people who lived through the Depression as adults: everybody helped each other.

Ultimately, Dad found it both personally and economically rewarding to work in the retail hardware business and in the retail lumber business through a succession of jobs alternating between the two, but none lasting for very long. But when the Depression struck, no jobs at all were available and Dad joined the Great Unemployed. At the time Dad could find no employment whatsoever, but President Roosevelt had managed to create the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), designed to alleviate the devastating effects of the Great Depression by providing employment for hundreds of thousands of men to work on the National Parks, Forest Service lands and other federally owned properties to the public weal. Dad finally got a job with the government, surveying the Canadian River near the eastern edge of the Texas Panhandle. Mother and Dad took a small rental house in the town of Canadian, and a job outdoors suited Dad very well since he loved nature and the adventure of the project as well and since no job