One of the things that is unique to little boys is their attraction to guns. This takes the initial form of pointed fingers with accompanying sound effects and progresses through cap guns to BB guns and eventually to actual weapons that shoot real bullets. I was no different than most boys.

I won’t spend much time on the pointed finger stage, but after that my brothers and I and our friends moved on to the rubber gun stage. Rubber guns could be made out of a piece of board and an old car’s inner tube. The tube was cut cross wise making bands about one-half inch wide. The rubber rings were the ammunition. The gun could be shaped almost any way the owner wanted it. The trigger was a clothes pin. It was tied to the handle or stalk of the gun and the rubber bands were stretched over the end of the barrel and clipped into the clothes pin. To fire the rubber gun, we just pressed on the clothes pin to open it. A good rubber gun could shoot fifteen to twenty feet. They didn’t hurt much unless you were really close to the shooter, but we spent hours playing with them. We used them to shoot at targets and at each other and at whatever else we could think of to shoot at.

About the same time we were into rubber guns, we also used the metal cap guns. I had a number of different cap guns. I had the typical forty-five revolver model like the cowboys used in the movies. I even had holsters to carry them around in. One of the other cap guns I remember was a little silver one that had a single long trigger without a trigger guard and two short barrels. It took a special type of cap rolls that were narrower than the normal red caps. Those particular rolls of caps came in colors other than red. That type of gun popped almost every cap and you could shoot it very rapidly and it almost never had a cap misfire. It was pretty inexpensive yet it was a neat little gun.

When I was about eleven years old the toy makers came out with miniature guns that used round single caps only. The guns were miniature replicas of different guns including revolvers, Winchesters, Tommy guns and other types. I had a Tommy gun model. You cocked the gun, inserted a single round cap and then fired. The resulting pops were very loud. We used to hang out of the car windows driving down the road and shoot at passing objects or we would use them to play around the house. They were very small (three to six inches long depending on the type of gun they were trying to copy), and easy to carry in our pants pockets.

When I was pretty young I got a BB gun. Charlie Reidhead also had a BB gun and we would wander the hills or wander around town and shoot them for hours or until we ran out of BB’s. One of the favorite places to go shooting was to the Heber dump. It was located across the creek to the north of town and up a draw and it was full of old bottles and cans. We would line them up and shoot at them. Later, we both got twenty-two caliber rifles and we used to spend a lot of time at the dump, shooting at bottles and cans. The only problem with the twenty-two rifles was the cost of shells. As I recall, it cost about one dollar for a box of fifty cartridges so we had to be selective about how much shooting we did, but we had fun with the rifles. My brother Ted had a twenty-two caliber pistol and sometimes he would let me shoot it. He also had a thirty-thirty Winchester but I didn’t get to shoot it much.

Probably the “ultimate weapon” we ever fired was my brother Vard’s cannon. Vard had made a cannon barrel in metal shop. It was about eighteen inches long and about two or three inches in diameter. The hole in the barrel was about a half inch across. There was a small hole drilled in the top of the cannon that went through to the hole in the barrel. We could put a fuse in that small hole, then pour gun powder down the barrel and then add cloth or paper and tamp it nice and firm using a ramrod. The explosion that occurred when the lighted fuse hit the gun powder was pretty amazing. We used to shoot it off on the Fourth of July to wake up the town and I think it did a pretty good job. It was a not-so-subtle way of punishing those in town who were too lazy to get up for the “Early Morning Fourth of July Flag Raising Ceremony”. They were awakened whether they liked it or not.

We even tried shooting bolts with the cannon. If you look closely there is a hole in the garage door at The Rock House where a bolt we shot went sideways through the garage door. When we saw the power the cannon had, we quit shooting objects and just settled for making loud noises with the cannon. Vard may still have the cannon he made. We had a lot of fun with it.

One other experience I should relate is the time my brother Ted put a bullet through the front window of The Rock House. It occurred shortly after he got his twenty-two caliber pistol and holster. He liked to practice the “quick draw” and play with the gun. One day he had it in the front room. I guess maybe he was practicing with it. Terry was asleep on the couch in front of the big front window. Ted initially aimed his pistol at the sleeping Terry and then raised his pistol to aim it at something across the street thinking the gun was empty. When he pulled the trigger, the gun went off and the bullet went right through one of the narrow window panes of the front window of The Rock House. I think it scared Ted more than it did anyone else in the house. He realized that if he had pulled the trigger when he had it aimed at Terry, he might have shot his own brother. He was much more careful after that and we all learned an important lesson about being sure guns were unloaded when they were brought into the house. The window was never replaced. The bullet hole is still there to this day as a reminder to all of us about gun safety.

Heber is in an area of Arizona where “wild animals” were numerous and common. It was not unusual at all to see wildlife as we drove to Snowflake or Holbrook or as we drove through the forest. Most common were squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, skunks, buzzards, deer, and coyotes, but once in a while we would also see wild turkeys, raccoons or elk. Although we seldom saw a live mountain lion, they were in the forest and occasionally someone would kill one and we would see it in the back of their pickup. Uncle Alma Bigler killed several of them. There was a bounty on mountain lions at that time so some of the men hunted them in the winter when there was snow on the ground. I think they were paid one hundred dollars for killing a lion because the lions killed the cattle and calves and could do a lot of damage to a herd.

Although we saw wild animals quite often, my older brother Vard decided that he wanted to have a wild animal for a pet. I think somewhere along the line he had seen a pet bobcat someone had, and it sparked a desire in his heart that was very strong. Nothing would stop him from trying to find a wild animal to be his pet. The rest of us were recruited to help find one.

I can remember our plotting and planning. We decided that the best options would be to find a baby raccoon or baby skunk to make into a pet. We knew that baby skunks didn’t develop their “stink” until they were older and we figured if we could catch one before it did develop the ability to spray, we would be OK. Raccoons were another option. We also knew that the best time to see wildlife was after sundown and before it was too dark to see.

With this information in mind, we went out night after night and roamed the hills around Heber looking for a baby skunk or a baby raccoon. I don’t remember how many nights we looked, but our search was in vain. We never even saw a mother skunk or raccoon, much less a baby one. We finally gave up.

We finally did get to have a baby wild animal years later. To learn more about that, you can read the chapter titled “Savage Sam”.

My junior year was the funnest year I spent in high school. It was probably because I was an “upper-classman” and because I could drive and participate in more activities without having to ride the bus all the time. By driving myself, I could leave Heber about thirty-five to forty-five minutes before an activity started and make it on time, whereas on the bus, I had to leave at least a full hour early. That wouldn’t work because I didn’t get off work early enough. By driving, I could work at the store until 6PM and still make it to the school activities that started at 7PM.

In Snowflake Union High School there were also some definite advantages to being upper- classmen. By the junior year we knew the teachers and they knew us, and we could get away with some things the freshman or sophomores couldn’t get away with. I also pretty well knew everyone in the school. The seniors were worrying about graduating or giving the freshmen and sophomores a hard time so they ignored the juniors. We didn’t have to worry about graduation and college so we could just sit back and have a good time. The fact that many of us had cars we could drive also gave us a sense of independence which we really enjoyed.

As freshmen and sophomores we were not able to leave campus at lunch time. There just wasn’t enough time if we had to walk to the drive‑in, eat and walk back to school before classes started up again. We were consigned to eat in the cafeteria whether we liked it or not. By the junior year, we had “wheels” and we could drive to one of the drive-­ins if we wanted to and quite often we did. Oh, the joy of being mobile!

A lot of the juniors had steady girlfriends. Some of them went on to marry their high school “sweethearts” as soon as they were out of high school. Most of the group I was in weren’t into that. Most dated, but were not “going steady” with one person.

By the time I became a junior, our school class had pretty well segregated into several different groups. There were those who were constantly in trouble for one reason or another. Many of them just squeaked by in school and a few even dropped out before they graduated. There was the Native American group although at that time we just referred to them as “Indians”. (Our high school had dormitories where the Indian students lived during the school year to attend high school. The government paid for them and it helped the school financially). They tended to stay pretty much to themselves but occasionally fights would break out between the Indians and the first group. Snowflake High School didn’t have many students of different ethnic backgrounds except for the Indians. The third group was made up of those “going steady” who more or less took themselves out of the larger group. Their world revolved around themselves as far as they were concerned, and they were mostly oblivious to what else was going on around them. Then there were the rest of us. It was by far the largest group and I was part of that group. We were focused on getting out of high school and going on to college. I thoroughly enjoyed my junior year of high school.

 

When I was a boy one of my dreams was to be a cowboy and have a horse and spend my time riding the range. Ted had owned a horse called “Bluebird” but it was gone before I was old enough to remember so it didn’t count. I guess that experience was enough for Mom and Dad because we never had another horse except in my imagination.

Uncle Laurald Bigler and Uncle Alma Bigler were brothers and both had horses and ran cattle. Uncle Laurald and Aunt Vera lived just across the street from The Rock House. Out behind their house was a big barn where they kept their milk cows and horses and it was a place where we spent many hours playing. Just in front of the barn and next to their big garage was the “Saddle Shop.” The saddle shop was where they stored the saddles and other tack for the horses like bridles, saddle blankets and ropes. It was like a wonderland to me and whenever I could talk Elsie (Elsie was their daughter my age) into it, we would go into the saddle shop and play cowboys.

The saddle shop was arranged with saddle stands along one wall. When the saddles were not in use, they were stored by putting them on the saddle stands in a line, all facing the same direction. We would go in and select the imaginary “fearless steed” we wanted to ride and climb into that saddle and the fun would begin.

Sometimes we were cowboys rounding up cattle. Sometimes we were cowboys fighting off bands of Indians. Sometimes we just raced our saddles (horses) to see which one was fastest. Sometimes we were roping calves for branding. Sometimes our imaginary horses were gentle and well behaved. Sometimes they were wild broncos. We would spend hours in the saddle shop riding those saddles and making believe we were riding real horses. If our parents couldn’t find us anywhere else, we were usually in the saddle shop.

When I got a little older I got to borrow a horse once in a while and I was in “hog heaven” or should I say “horse heaven.” I remember one time when I borrowed one of Uncle Laurald’s horses called Flash to help drive some cattle up the canyon to a pasture they were using. Flash was an old and experienced “cow pony” and when we got the cows into the pasture, one of them decided to take off. In a flash, my horse lived up to his name and took off after the misbehaving cow. I found myself riding down the field at a gallop chasing this dumb cow. I was hanging on for dear life. I remember hitting my foot on one of the fence posts as we galloped by. I almost got brushed off with some low tree limbs as well. It was a wild ride but after it was over, I loved it.

When I was in my teens, Uncle Mart Porter asked several of us boys if we would like to help with roundup at his ranch down at Young. A bunch of us eagerly volunteered. We rode to Young in the back of his pickup. We got to stay for two or three days. We each got assigned a horse. Mine was named Crescent. He was a sorrel color. I never could decide whether he got his name from the crescent of white on his forehead or from being as hard headed as a crescent wrench. We got up early in the morning and rode out and spent all day rounding up the cows and calves from the hills and valleys on their ranch. We drove the bunched cattle back to the ranch by evening and did the same thing the next day. After two days of it I had about had my fill of being a cowboy. We got to help castrate, brand and dehorn the calves. It was hard work but we had a good time. That was about the extent of my “real cowboy” days.