We arrived at the millsite one afternoon with all of our belongings, four children, 16 chickens, and two cats. Dogs were not allowed on BLM land because they ran the cattle and sometimes attacked them.
We had brought John's old army tent for the children to sleep in until we could get more house built, and Bruce and I decided to sleep in the truck that first night and enjoy the stars. The children decided to fight all night about who was touching who, so none of us were asleep when the rain decided to arrive about 2:00 in the morning. The rain dissolved the old material in the tent, and pieces of it started to fall off in clumps. The children were screaming and Bruce and I were soaking. We all made a dash for the inside of the cabin and huddled on the floor until morning arrived.
The next day, we started to put up a porch around all the sides of the cabin and when we had finished the floor on one side, we put up the cots and beds for the children. The roof overhung the porch enough to protect them from the rain and direct sunlight. They slept on the porch all summer while we finished rooms all around the house. The rooms were only 8' x 8', except for a living room that was about 15' x 20', but we had three bedrooms for the children and a larger bedroom for ourselves, and there was a large indoor workshop for Bruce.
First order of business was finding a source of water. Our creek was dry and we did not have a well yet, so we had to cross to the other side of the mountain to a little creek that always ran. We had two 55 gallon drums and Bruce had made a siphon to get the water out of the creek. It took 5 hours to get 110 gallons of water and it was 5 hours under the grueling hot sun and swirls of insects. Then we drove the water back to the cabin where Bruce had placed a 55 gallon drum permanently on the roof right above where the sink would be located in the kitchen. When it had been filled, again by siphoning, we set the other barrel down on the ground until the water was needed.
We learned to conserve water usage because getting water was such a hard job. We heated water in a big pot on the stove to wash dishes, our hair, and our baths. For drinking water we had several 5-gallon bottles and a bottle stand. We would take the bottles to our friends house, or the Banner Store, to get them filled once a week. Washing clothes meant taking the clothes to town every week to wash them in a laundromat. We also went to town to get the fuel for our generator-regular gasoline-that we also used 55 gallon drums to hold. It would take four 55 gallon drums to run the generator and mining equipment for a month.
We had two propane tanks and a propane business in Ramona would haul propane up to us about every six months. That was some dangerous trip up our severely rutted and torn apart roads, but they made the trips without complaint. We used propane to run our 1920 stove, and our two 1936 propane refrigerators.
The summer passed quickly and just before winter, our house was finished. It was a tar-paper shack with "windows" that were screening covering wide openings in the walls and then a big plywood board would drop from the ceilings to cover the screened "windows" during the cold or rain, or snow. It was a drafty house because the boards that we had used were sometimes slightly warped and there were some very narrow slits in some of the walls. If I sat just right in my rocking chair, I could see the moon shining outside and sometimes stars.
With the winter came the cold, rain, and snow. Bruce mined no matter what the weather was like because weather didn't bother him in his tunnel. We had an old pot-bellied stove that used wood. We used about three chords of wood each winter that was sold to us-at a discount because of our poverty-by the local tribe of Santa Ysabel Indians. They gave us an overabundant amount and became our closest friends for many reasons. They really understood us.
Tomorrow, a look at Bruce's mining operation and claim jumpers.
We had brought John's old army tent for the children to sleep in until we could get more house built, and Bruce and I decided to sleep in the truck that first night and enjoy the stars. The children decided to fight all night about who was touching who, so none of us were asleep when the rain decided to arrive about 2:00 in the morning. The rain dissolved the old material in the tent, and pieces of it started to fall off in clumps. The children were screaming and Bruce and I were soaking. We all made a dash for the inside of the cabin and huddled on the floor until morning arrived.
The next day, we started to put up a porch around all the sides of the cabin and when we had finished the floor on one side, we put up the cots and beds for the children. The roof overhung the porch enough to protect them from the rain and direct sunlight. They slept on the porch all summer while we finished rooms all around the house. The rooms were only 8' x 8', except for a living room that was about 15' x 20', but we had three bedrooms for the children and a larger bedroom for ourselves, and there was a large indoor workshop for Bruce.
First order of business was finding a source of water. Our creek was dry and we did not have a well yet, so we had to cross to the other side of the mountain to a little creek that always ran. We had two 55 gallon drums and Bruce had made a siphon to get the water out of the creek. It took 5 hours to get 110 gallons of water and it was 5 hours under the grueling hot sun and swirls of insects. Then we drove the water back to the cabin where Bruce had placed a 55 gallon drum permanently on the roof right above where the sink would be located in the kitchen. When it had been filled, again by siphoning, we set the other barrel down on the ground until the water was needed.
We learned to conserve water usage because getting water was such a hard job. We heated water in a big pot on the stove to wash dishes, our hair, and our baths. For drinking water we had several 5-gallon bottles and a bottle stand. We would take the bottles to our friends house, or the Banner Store, to get them filled once a week. Washing clothes meant taking the clothes to town every week to wash them in a laundromat. We also went to town to get the fuel for our generator-regular gasoline-that we also used 55 gallon drums to hold. It would take four 55 gallon drums to run the generator and mining equipment for a month.
We had two propane tanks and a propane business in Ramona would haul propane up to us about every six months. That was some dangerous trip up our severely rutted and torn apart roads, but they made the trips without complaint. We used propane to run our 1920 stove, and our two 1936 propane refrigerators.
The summer passed quickly and just before winter, our house was finished. It was a tar-paper shack with "windows" that were screening covering wide openings in the walls and then a big plywood board would drop from the ceilings to cover the screened "windows" during the cold or rain, or snow. It was a drafty house because the boards that we had used were sometimes slightly warped and there were some very narrow slits in some of the walls. If I sat just right in my rocking chair, I could see the moon shining outside and sometimes stars.
With the winter came the cold, rain, and snow. Bruce mined no matter what the weather was like because weather didn't bother him in his tunnel. We had an old pot-bellied stove that used wood. We used about three chords of wood each winter that was sold to us-at a discount because of our poverty-by the local tribe of Santa Ysabel Indians. They gave us an overabundant amount and became our closest friends for many reasons. They really understood us.
Tomorrow, a look at Bruce's mining operation and claim jumpers.
No comments:
Post a Comment