My career as an employee at the Heber Store began quite early. One vivid memory I have is of the “Grand Opening” of the new Porter’s Shopping Center after Uncle Donnie Porter bought it from Uncle Thomas Shelley and expanded it to its present size.

This Grand Opening was to be a very big event. Heber had a brand new “Shopping Center” and people would be coming from miles around to take advantage of the great sales associated with a Grand Opening. Sure enough, there were lots and lots of people there. Some of the special deals were really good. There were two that I remember very well. One was Refrigerator Biscuits and another was Frozen Bird’s Eye Lemonade. Both were on sale for “ten cans for a dollar”. You couldn’t beat it. In case you haven’t figured it out, that’s only ten cents a can.

Since there were so many customers, I was hired to be a “carry out boy”. Some other boys were also hired to help carry out bags of groceries. We thought it was pretty neat to be a part of the event.

The new store had wide isles, wide enough for two shopping carts to pass, and there were even shopping carts to be used by the customers. Since there were a lot of people shopping in the store at the same time, people would hurry and pick up the special sale items and then do the rest of their shopping. This was a good idea except for the canned biscuits. As people were shopping, we started to hear explosions. At first no one knew what was going on. When someone noticed biscuit dough oozing through the bottoms of some of the shopping baskets the explanation became evident. The refrigerator biscuits had heated up sitting in the baskets and had begun to expand to the point where they were bursting the containers they were in. Unfortunately, guess who got the job of scraping the dough off the floor and off the baskets? It is an event I will never forget. I also never purchase refrigerator biscuits first when I go shopping.

The second memory is about the frozen lemonade. One of my friends figured out that for ten cents we could buy a can of frozen lemonade. That frozen concentrate was just that, “concentrated”. It was STRONG!! We all bought a can of frozen lemonade (regular or pink) and sat out on the front steps of the store with a popsicle stick for a spoon. We pried the lid off and then stuck the popsicle stick into the lemonade and licked it off. WOW! WHAT A ZING!! One can of lemonade concentrate was about all we could eat during our break if we ate fast. We had discovered a new snack. Everything went OK until almost all of us started feeling a little sick to our stomachs. I guess the concentrate was a little too much for them. Anyway, we were all sick but survived. Eating frozen lemonade concentrate never appealed to me again. As I think about it, I guess it didn’t do me any harm but I wonder whether that concentrate somehow changed my genes so that my children prefer STRONG lemonade or punch. I guess we will never know.

When I was eight or nine years old, “Little League” was introduced to our area. Some of the men got together and built a Little League ball field in Overgaard and we were introduced to a fun game. The ball field was leveled, but it was just dirt and there were plenty of rocks. For the first several practices, we spent about half of our time picking up rocks and throwing them over the fence to try to make the field a little smoother. I don’t remember all of our coaches but I can remember that Chink Crandell and  Uncle Mart  were two of them. We had only one team composed of boys from both Heber and Overgaard so we were called “Hebergaard.” I don’t remember any mascot but there may have been one.

We practiced two or three times a week and had games once or twice a week. To get to practice we would load up in the back of the coach’s or one of the parents’ pickup trucks and they would haul all of us kids from Heber to Overgaard and then home again after practice. Practices were usually late in the afternoon. The ball field was just outside the Heber Ranger Station fence and sometimes the men on the fire crews would come and watch us play or help with practice after they got off work. I cringe when I think about the number of hours we spent practicing baseball and the number of trips some parents made to make it possible for us to participate.

Since we had our own ball field, the teams from other towns came to Overgaard for some of the games. In the league we had teams from Snowflake, Taylor and Showlow. We sometimes played teams from Springerville in the all-star games. We were usually quite competitive and several players from our team were usually selected to be on the all‑star team each year. I was not a great player but I enjoyed playing ball and spent lots of hours doing it. Our team did have some really good players and we won quite a few games.

As with other things, I tended to follow in my brothers footstep. Terry played little league ahead of me. He played catcher. I played first base part of the time but mostly I also played catcher. I guess I could throw good enough to get the ball to second base from home plate so they let me catch, and I was tall enough to reach up and catch high throws to first base so I got to play first base part of the time.

We had some pretty good pitchers and it was my job to distract the batters and then catch the pitch when it came. I must have done OK because I don’t remember any one else wanting to be catcher. The catcher wore all the pads and a mask and had to catch the ball trying to look through the mask. I got used to it. We only had two good baseball gloves in our family for quite a while and one belonged to Terry and the other to Ted. Ted’s glove was a larger first baseman’s glove which worked well for catching too. Later on I got a glove of my own.

One of the things I remember about trips to Little League games is that whenever the team traveled, you had to make sure you had at least a nickel in our pocket. If we could get a quarter it was even better. Whoever was driving always stopped at Zane’s store in Overgaard or Hatch’s Store in Taylor or a store in Snowflake or Showlow before starting home and we could buy something to eat. If we had a nickel we could buy five pieces of bubble gum. One of our favorite bubble gums was “Sour Grapes” or “Sour Apples” or “Sour Cherries”. They were flavored gum balls similar to what we pay twenty-five cents for now. If we had more money we could buy ice cream or pop. If someone didn’t have money someone else usually shared what they had with them.

I grew up in the town of Heber, Arizona. Heber was settled by pioneers who moved from the early Mormon settlements on the Little Colorado River like Joseph City. My grandfather was one of the early settlers. He and his brothers homesteaded land near Heber and his family, including my father, spent the summers in Heber.

Heber is in a valley and is surrounded by hills on all sides. It is located at the junction of two creeks called Buckskin and Black Canyon. Black Canyon is on the west side of town and Buckskin is on the east side of town. Our home was located on the main street of Heber which at that time ran right in front of our house. Today that road ends in front of “The Rock House Museum” which is now at the end of a dead end street.

Heber was initially settled as a farming community, but later sawmills were set up and forestry and lumbering became the major industries. My father worked in the sawmill for a few years and then got a job with the U.S. Forest Service working as a fire guard on one of the lookout towers (Gentry Tower) used for spotting forest fires. Later he worked full time doing timber stand improvement (pruning the trees with long saws so that the lumber would have less knots and be higher quality) and in fire control. He was responsible for fire crews of twenty to forty men who fought the forest fires by hand. The crews were hauled around in large trucks that had a tarp over the back. The crews sat in the back with their equipment (axes, shovels and hoes). Most of the men in Heber either worked in the “woods” (cutting logs or hauling logs) or in the sawmill. One of the sawmills was owned by Uncle Donnie Porter and his brothers, and the other was owned by a company we called “Southwest”. I believe the full name was Southwest Forest Industries. In the 1960’s , a paper mill was built between Heber and Snowflake and many of the men took jobs there because it was year round work. The logging woods jobs were seasonal. When the snow got too deep, the woods closed down or if the woods got too dry in the summer, the woods were closed down. People worked hard while the woods were open and then managed through the periods when there was no work in the woods. Dad’s job was year round and our family missed out on a lot of the difficulties other families faced at times of unemployment.

The Heber I grew up in was mostly a “Mormon Town” as were most of the towns in the northern part of Arizona at that time. Latter-day Saints (LDS) members made up the majority of the population but there were families that were members of other denominations as well. Most of them were Baptist. The non LDS were mostly from Oklahoma or Arkansas. They were good lumbermen and found work in the woods around Heber.

At that time, because most of the population was LDS, most of the activities in town were sponsored by the church. Softball games, basketball games, weekly movies, rodeos, dances, plays or other activities were church sponsored. There were some school sponsored activities as well but they were less frequent. The LDS church building was the largest building in town so that is where most of the activities were held. I believe most of the non LDS felt comfortable participating in the activities and did. The only thing they didn’t do was attend the LDS church meetings.

There weren’t very many businesses in Heber at that time. There was the general store, a post office, a service station and a small café. If we needed any other services, we had to go to Snowflake, Show Low or Holbrook. It was not uncommon at that time for families to make a monthly trip to one of the larger towns to buy groceries, see doctors or do other business.

Because of its isolation, Heber was a quiet town where we entertained ourselves or went without. At that time, it was very difficult to travel to the valley. To do so one had to travel via Globe and Superior on highway sixty. Such a trip took about five hours so people didn’t go to the valley all that often. We usually went once or twice a year because that is where Grandma Scott lived.

When I was growing up in Heber there was only an elementary school. The school was located at the end of the road that goes south behind “The Rock House”. That street is now called Reidhead Street. The school had first to eighth grades. There were three rooms. Two teachers handled two grades and Mr. Capps had three. The principal of the school was Mr. Brown Capps. He taught sixth, seventh and eighth grade. His wife, Mrs. Capps, taught first and second grade. There was no kindergarten at that time. The other  teachers changed over time but Mr. and Mrs. Capps were almost institutions. They taught all of my brothers and taught for years after I graduated. At that time we had to travel to Snowflake to attend high school. Each of the classes in elementary school had about eight to ten students. The teachers would teach one class a subject and then teach the other class a subject and alternate back and forth all day long.

The two largest buildings in Heber were the LDS church and the school house. The school house did not get a gym until I was in the sixth grade. Prior to that time, the school teams used the church gymnasium for practice and games. Up until then, we had to play outside for recess. When I was in sixth grade a gym was built onto the school. It had a stage on one end and had a basket mounted on the wall on the other end. We thought we were pretty lucky. We could play games indoors when the weather was bad. When I was about eleven or twelve, the LDS chapel burned down. For several months we held church meetings in the school until a new building could be constructed.

One very important feature in the Heber I grew up in was the ball field. For years the baseball field was located down close to where the current LDS chapel is located. It was adjacent to the rodeo grounds. When I was thirteen or fourteen the church leaders decided to build a lighted ball field. Land that had been two dirt cow tanks was repurposed and a lighted ball field was built at the end of the road that runs in front of “The Rock House”. The ball field became the site for entertainment during the summer evenings. Prior to the construction of a lighted ball field, the Heber teams had to travel to one of the other towns like Snowflake, Taylor, Show Low or Holbrook to play ball games at night. Once we got a lighted ball field, the other teams traveled part of the time to Heber to play.

For years, the rodeo grounds were across the creek and up Black Canyon a ways. Finally the church leaders decided to build a new rodeo grounds down near where the current Rim Community Library stands. It was a much nicer rodeo grounds and had a grandstand for people to sit in. Prior to that, people sat in their cars or on the fence to watch the rodeo that was held each Fourth of July.