The Five Fosters: Cowboys, Ranch Life and Growing Up

The Five Fosters

Cowboys, Ranch Life and Growing Up

Betty Foster Escapule

Revised Edition

Second Printing, August 20009

Copyright © 2009 by Betty Foster Escapule.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009906980

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4415-5473-4

Softcover 978-1-4415-5472-7

Ebook 978-1-4500-0282-0

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.

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This book is dedicated to my wonderful husband

and to my children and to my siblings

for their encouragement and support—also to a terrific man

named Keith who convinced me it was all possible.

PART ONE

The Beginning

This is the story of my first life—before—I was married. It influenced me and prepared me for my second life. I learned how to work hard, sacrifice, laugh and most of all to love.

This first life was a wonderful life. It was unique. I owe so much to my father, mother, sister and brothers—and to my step mother.

Dad believed in the old saying about sleeping dogs and he applied this to relatives—it’s better to leave them alone. We knew we had kin but Dad preferred to live life simply—uncluttered by relatives. He did tell us though, that if we met another Foster to ask them if they were related to the Five Fosters from England. If they were, we were related. He never told us why the Five Fosters were noteworthy so that remains a mystery. Dad was the second or third generation over from England.

Our father basically raised us kids. Our mother was so young, he treated her very much like he did us kids. Then after she left he had the sole care of us. Later when he remarried, our step mother stayed very much in the background. Dad was very strict and I think we were all a little afraid of him.

Dad was gone most of the time working so actually us kids raised each other. As a result we were close to each other not only in age but also emotionally.

What follows is a collection of experiences seen mostly from my point of observation as a child.

One of the guests at the Circle Z Ranch made this sketch of Dad.

1936

Dad

My father was a cowboy. He was born in 1898 near Big Springs, Texas. He was the oldest of three brothers and he had six older sisters. They lived in a remote area where there was no school. His father waited until the youngest child was old enough to start school, then he moved the family to town and put all nine children in the first grade. Shortly thereafter, he died from typhoid.

Dad was nine years old and big for his age. He quit school without having learned to read or write and went to work for a farmer to help support his family. He was given room and board and paid a dollar a day. If the weather was bad he didn’t get paid.

When he was in his mid-teens, a couple of cowboys came through town. They told Dad that cowboys were paid thirty dollars a month with room and board and the weather didn’t affect their pay. I guess he figured cowpunching was a lot more fun than farming so he left Texas and came to Arizona.

Sometime during his youth, he was snowbound in a cabin for the winter with an old man. Dad was bored and wanted the old man to talk to him but the old man wanted to read. He told Dad to teach himself to read and write. So he did. He had a beautiful handwriting but the use of capital letters and punctuation eluded him. He did math in his head and he used a series of knots tied in a piggin’ string for larger numbers and problems.

Dad drove a twenty mule team ore wagon in Tombstone. We had a picture of him standing by the front wheel of the wagon wearing a white ten-gallon hat in front of the Bird Cage Theater. Sadly this picture has been lost.

It was while he was in Tombstone that he met Sheriff Harry Wheeler—actually the sheriff put him in jail. They talked through the night. Dad thought a lot of this man and years later he named a promising young horse Harry Wheeler.

Later, he homesteaded in Patagonia. There he married a woman twenty years his senior. This marriage didn’t last too long. He wound up living in the barn and she lived in the house. He gave her everything when they split up.

In 1934, when Dad was thirty five, he met and married our mother. She was fifteen and the youngest of six children. My sister, Mary, was born the next year and Sammy was born nineteen months later in 1937. Then thirteen months later Bailey and I came along in 1938—twins. There were two years and eight months between the four of us.

Dad was the foreman at the Circle Z Guest Ranch when Mary and Sammy were born. While F. J. Frost was a guest there he wrote this about Dad, Sam is a composite of all the types of real cowboys I have ever known. Later, he cowboyed for the Hershel Ranch in the San Rafael Valley in Santa Cruz County and that’s where Bailey and I joined the family.

Dad was philosopher and humorist. He had a deep love of horses, game chickens and hounds.

Dad and his hounds

Dad with a lead horse and pack mule

Dad on a Steel Dust quarter horse named Simon Dick

Dad and Mom when they were first married.

Dad and a hound sitting in the doorway of his cabin in Patagonia

Mom with a hound pup in front of the cabin

Dad with a corral of horses at the Circle Z Ranch

Mary and Dad

Dad holding Sammy at the Circle Z Ranch

A Rude Awakening

When we were small, seldom if ever, did we have a yard fence to keep us close to the house. I don’t think a fence would have done much good. We were born free and unencumbered by civilization. This would stay with us until we were grown and beyond.

The four of us always stayed together even if Mary had to drag Bailey and me—one at a time—wherever she and Sammy decided to go. Then Bailey and I started walking and the four of us could travel much faster.

One day we slipped out of the house as we usually did and it was some time before Mom missed us. We were very good about answering and coming when we were called but on this occasion Mom didn’t get an answer and so the search began. The country was open with lots of places to go and distance to cover.

The house and nearby area was searched and all the while our mother kept calling us but got no return answer. Then it was down to the corrals and shipping pens. In circumstances like this, it’s always the worst places that are searched first. There was a dipping vat full of sheep dip where cattle were run through a chute and into the sunken vat. It was deep enough that each animal had to swim. Before they were allowed to swim out at the other end, Dad would push their head under the dip. Thus every hair on their body was wet with sheep dip. This killed the lice that sometimes infested the cattle. Between uses a dark scum formed over the surface of the vat.

Knowing that little kids like to play in water, Mom opened the gates and looked through the fence into the vat. To her relief, the scum was undisturbed. And the searching and calling continued. Finally, she found us. Bailey and I had gotten tired so we lay down in the soft dirt by the water trough and fell asleep and Sammy and Mary joined us. We were all sound sleepers. None of us had heard Mom calling us.

So great was Mom’s relief at finding us alive and unhurt that she picked each of us up and gave us a good spanking. That’s a tough way to wake up.

Early Memories

These are some of my earliest recollections. Ours was a happy family with lots of fun and laughter. We loved our parents and they loved us and they loved each other. Life was good.

Every morning Dad was up early and built a fire in the big wood heater in the living room. At five o’clock in the morning he called, Come a-running! And we did. The boys were on one side of the stove and Mary and I on the other side where we got dressed. We were very modest. From the time we could walk we got up at five in the morning and came a-running. As soon as we were called, our feet hit the floor.

We were happy children—well disciplined and well behaved. Dad had a theory. He figured we all had average intelligence and normal hearing, therefore, we should obey after being told once. Clearly, we heard him and understood what he said to us, so once was sufficient. Punishment was swift and thorough. His other theory was punishment should be severe enough that we tried no to be repeat offenders if possible. Now this may seem harsh but it wasn’t. He loved us and was very fair.

Once, Dad told us not to climb on the top of the barn roof so I didn’t. But Mary, Sammy and Bailey did just that. Immediately, I ran to Dad and informed him. He went to the corner of the barn and called the other kids to come down. As each one came down, he gave them a very hard spanking. I stood by and watched, proud of my good behavior. When the last kid had been spanked, Dad turned and picked me up and gave me twice the spanking the others had gotten. Then he told me that was for tattling.

One time, when Mom was trying to get dinner on the table, I was so hungry I didn’t think I could wait any longer so I begged and begged until I got a biscuit. Mom told me to eat it in the kitchen and not to tell the other kids. So, of course, the first thing I did as soon as Mom turned her back was run into the living room and show the other kids my biscuit. No sooner did I show them the biscuit then I felt Mom’s long arm of the law pick me up. That was a spanking to remember.

Me in a walker

Mary holding me up

Housing

We didn’t have the conveniences people have today. We never had electricity and very seldom indoor plumbing or running water in the house. When asked if we had running water, Dad always said yes—you ran and got it and it was us kids that ran and got it. We cooked on wood stoves and heated with wood. We were comfortable and we were clean. There was always plenty of water because of the livestock that was pumped from the well by a windmill. We put the washtub on the wood stove and filled it with water. When it was warm, it took two of us to lift it off of the stove and set it on the floor. We closed the kitchen door and bathed in the kitchen. Then two of us carried the tub outside and emptied it. Mary and I worked together for our baths and the boys worked together for theirs.

We kept a teakettle and coffee pot on the stove. As soon as a meal was cooked the enamelware dishpans were filled with water and set on the stove to heat while we ate. If the water wasn’t quite hot enough, we added some from the teakettle. Mary and I took turns washing and drying the dishes. The cast iron skillets were turned upside down on the wood stove to dry so they wouldn’t rust. We usually had a table at the end of the stove. This served as a work surface. We kept a large covered bucket or pot filled with water and a ladle or tin cup beside it. This was almost as good as running water. Washing up before meals was done outside at a small table with an enamelware wash basin, bar of soap and towel.

Outhouses were set off at a distance behind the house. These were kept swept out and a bucket of ashes from the wood stove sat in the corner with a small shovel. You sprinkled some ashes down the hole before you left. A Sears Roebuck catalog served as paper and reading material. Most outhouses had black widow spiders under the seat but as far as I know, no one was ever bitten. The spiders stayed back in the corners and we left them alone. Dad had a very realistic ceramic rattlesnake that he kept in the corner of the outhouse. This surprised and startled our guests. When we moved, the snake moved with us.

Some of the houses were screened and if not, there were plenty of fly swatters. We always had a gunny sack cooler. This kept our milk, butter and eggs cool. We usually had chickens of some sort but we didn’t always have a regular milk cow. Quite often our milk cow was a range cow with a big bag and enough milk for her calf and some for us. When Dad found such a cow she was brought home and broke to milk. This provided us with enough milk to make cornbread, biscuits, gravy and maybe some to drink.

Some of the houses we lived in were pretty primitive. Mom flattened cardboard boxes and lined the inside of one house to keep out the cold wind. No wonder this place was referred to as the Crack House. I remember one house or maybe several that had aging wallpaper that hung loosely from the walls with strings of cheesecloth hanging down. Although I was small, I vowed never to live in a house with wallpaper in it when I grew up and I never did. People used wallpaper for insulation and to cover the cracks in the single layer wall.

We even lived in one house with a dirt floor. I remember Mom giving me a cup of water and when I drank what I wanted, I crawled under the table and poured the rest of the water on the floor—after all it was dirt. My mother pulled me out from under the table and tanned my hide good. It seems you didn’t pour water on the floor even if it was just a dirt floor. Mom kept the floor dampened and swept clean. Dirt floors can be quite comfortable to live on if taken care of—almost as good as concrete.

Our clothesline was a long piece of wire strung between the two highest points we could find. As we hung the wet laundry on the clothesline, it began to sag. When all of the clothes were hung, we propped the clothesline up with the longest pole we had which was usually the pole from the mescal plant. We liked to put the clean wash as high in the air as possible because we thought that would help it to dry faster. If the wind came up we ran out and rescued the laundry before the pole was dislodged and the clothes were beaten into the dirt.

We may have been patched but we were always clean, our hair combed, our clothes ironed and our house clean. It seemed like times were always hard. No matter how primitive our dwelling was, it was home and filled with love. The one thing I remember most about my early childhood was that we were happy.

The Captain and the Coyote

The Second World War had started and we were living on the Sands Ranch at the French Joe Camp when Dad came riding