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We even made a small garden close to the good well over which we had erected a windmill that Bolly’s uncle had loaned us. Since we had no money to buy wire to fence this garden plot, we cut cedar staves and brush and made a fence,. This little plot was about the size of a medium-sized room but I certainly raised the vegetables. About a dozen different kinds and all we could eat. We enjoyed them so much because we were too far from town to be able to buy them.
For our fuel we burned cedar stumps which we gathered from all over the place. All it took to get them was a little hard work. We would take a crowbar, climb in our old car and strike out over the hill. Bert would pry these stumps out of the ground, split them up and I would carry the wood and load it onto the car.
One time I remember in particular though, we used a sled that Bolly made for the purpose instead of the car. Because we were having a big snowstorm and we were unprepared for it. We didn’t have a stick of wood up.
We pulled this sled up on a hill not far from the house so we could load it up and start it down the hill and it would be easier to pull home. Bolly dug out a huge stump weighing about three or four hundred pounds and with much maneuvering managed to get it rolled onto the sled.
Then giving the sled a shove he yelled, “Watch me, here I come.” Well, about halfway down the hill the sled hit a clump of brush and stopped. But Bolly didn’t stop. He went right on down the hill, head over heels, with the stump rolling and bouncing along behind him. Before the stump could catch up with him, he managed to throw himself to one side and so avoided being crushed.
Of course, at the moment it was rather frightening, but when it was all over we both had a good laugh. Bolly had started down so nonchalantly. We still have a chuckle over this every once in a while.
During that snowstorm we had about four days when the thermometer went to twenty-eight below zero be kept warm in our little canvas covered home.
After living in canvas covered housed for about two years, we were finally able to build a nice three room rock house. Of course, we built if very cheaply. We liked this location so well that we built our new house just a few feet from the other one.
The rocks we used were right there on the place too, just back up on the sides and top of the hill. They were huge flat rocks and we would climb up there, Bolly would break them up with the crowbar and we would roll them to the bottom of the hill. There we would load them on to a wagon and haul them to the site.
We bought very little material for this house. Just the windows, a little lumber for window and door casings and some tar paper to cover the roof. Bolly’s mother had owned a house in Portales, which had burned a short while before. Ironically enough, it happened one time when she was out there visiting us. And she gave us the doors and a lot of the partially burned lumber from this house. We used the lumber for the roof and covered it with the tarpaper.
We hired some cheap Mexican labor to lay the rock. Bolly’s mother gave us beans, sweet potatoes and vegetables which she had canned from her farm, with which to pay the Mexican rock layer for his labor. I know that we were two of the proudest people in that whole country when this house was finished.