I was a kid when the Disney story of “Old Yeller” came out. You may remember that before Old Yeller died, he had an offspring. That offspring was named “Savage Sam” and there is a story about him that Disney also tells. We had our own “Savage Sam” and I will tell you about him.

One day Ted brought home a pup and asked Mom if we could keep it. I think to fool her and to get her to give her OK, he called it an “Australian Shepherd” or something like that. It didn’t have its eyes open yet and it didn’t look like any breed of dog we knew about. It turned out to be a coyote pup that we named “Savage Sam.”

Marion Despain had a ranch at Dry Lake. He had shot the mother coyote down on his range just as she was going into her burrow. Marion dug out the pups and took them to Heber and gave Ted one of them. Ted brought it home because he knew Vard wanted to have a wild animal for a pet in the worst way. Anyway, we took care of the pup. I can remember feeding it with a little baby bottle used for dolls. The pup could drink and drink and drink. One time I remember that I left it sucking on the bottle and had to go and do something else and when I got back, it had drunk the whole bottle. It was swelled up like a balloon. I wasn’t sure what to do so I just started squeezing it like you would a water balloon. It didn’t pop, but it didn’t go down very much either. It finally burped and that made me feel better. I learned it didn’t have good judgment about how much to eat at one time.

The coyote grew to be a good sized pup, probably twelve to fourteen inches tall. We treated it as if it were a dog. It followed us around about like a dog would. We didn’t have a dog at the time so it sort of became our “dog.”

We learned that if we howled like a coyote, it would join in and howl with us. Because it was small, its voice was high and shrill. We howled with it and laughed and laughed. We also discovered that if someone played a horn (trumpet or trombone) it would also cause it to howl. I suppose we provided quite a bit of entertainment for Heber with our howling and playing horns to the accompaniment of our coyote.

Everything was going pretty good until Sam got a little larger and people began to be afraid of him. He would go into our friends’ houses and go to sleep on their beds. We’d get a call to come and get our coyote off the bed. They were afraid to move him. About the same time Ted came home one day and told us to get rid of Sam. It seems the game warden had heard rumors that someone in town had a wild animal as a pet and that was against the law. He was trying to find out who it was.

Mom and Vard took Sam in the car and went up to the “Old Ranger Station” up Black Canyon and turned him loose. That evening after work we went back up there and called Sam and he came running to us. There wasn’t any water around there so we took him out of town toward Snowflake and turned him loose where there was a “trick tank” that had water in it all the time. We figured he could manage on his own.

I don’t know whatever happened to Sam. Whenever we saw a coyote in the wild after that, we always thought it must be “Savage Sam” but we never knew for sure. Vard got to have a “wild animal” for a pet. We didn’t have to go to jail for breaking the law. The whole town of Heber got free entertainment. Our friends’ parents got scared to death. Sam got to experience what it was like to be a pet and we learned to love him. I guess it turned out OK in the end for everyone. When you hear a coyote singing in the evening, just remember “Savage Sam” and realize that his earliest singing lessons were given by us boys in Heber.

The details of my birth are of special interest only to me and my family, but I have included them as an example of how delivery of babies was handled in the late 1940’s in Heber. By 1949, here is how it went, at least for me.

I arrived on this earth—and in Snowflake, Arizona to be exact—on a cold January morning in 1949. As recounted by my mother, it was very possibly the coldest morning in 1949. At least it was very cold. It was so cold, in fact, that the doctor’s car would not start and he had to walk to the hospital for the delivery. Well, not exactly a hospital…..maybe I better start over.

In 1949 my parents were living in Heber with my three older brothers. My two oldest sisters had passed away as children. My brothers were about nine, five and four, or thereabouts. Since there was no doctor in Heber, mothers had to go to one of the nearby towns if they wanted to be close to a doctor to attend the delivery of their baby. Snowflake at the time had a full time doctor (Dr. Shumway) and what was called a “maternity home.” It was a two-story brick building designed for taking care of women who were having babies. It was located a block or two behind the Snowflake Stake Center which is located on Main Street in Snowflake. If you take the road on the south side of the Stake Center and head west a couple of blocks, the maternity home was on the southwest corner. I don’t know which story or room I was born on or in, but that doesn’t matter much.

When it got close to the time for delivery, and since it was winter and road conditions were unpredictable, Dad took Mom to Snowflake so she would be close to the maternity home when I decided to come. Mom stayed with Aunt Larue Bigler. She was really not an aunt but she lived in Snowflake and she was a relative in some way or another. Anyway, Mom went to stay with her.

I guess I was in a hurry to get here because I didn’t wait for a convenient time. I arrived in the early hours. As mentioned, the doctor about froze walking to the maternity home. I don’t know whether Mom had to walk or not. I hope not.

I arrived safely. I don’t know any of the details about the delivery. I don’t know how much I weighed or how long I was. I don’t even know exactly what time I arrived. I just know I got here. I do know that I was given the name of Kay Scott Porter. I think I got the name Kay because Mom liked it. The Scott was Mom’s maiden name. Porter was Dad’s name. I don’t know how long I stayed in Snowflake but eventually I got to go home to Heber.

A lot of people in states outside of Arizona have commented that it was neat that I was born in “Snowflake” Arizona since they picture it as a hot place. I guess I think it was pretty neat, too.

Years later the “maternity home” was demolished but it served its purpose. I don’t know what happened to Dr. Shumway. I don’t remember a doctor in Snowflake when I was a child. We always had to go to either Holbrook or McNary to see a doctor. I am still here and writing about this blessed event. I am grateful to have a chance to spend some time on this planet. I know I have been given lots of opportunities to grow and develop. I hope I have taken advantage of many of them. I am grateful for a chance to come here and get a body and I am especially grateful to my parents who have sacrificed so much in so many ways in my behalf. I love them both more than I can convey. No one could have had better parents than I had. This part of my journey all started on that cold morning in January, 1949.

I look back on my time at home in The Rock House with very fond memories. Life in Heber at that time was slower paced and there weren’t as many distractions as there are today. For example, there was not a single TV in the whole town. There weren’t even telephones until I was partway through school. We had lots of family time and those were pleasant times for me.

Dad usually got home from work about 5:30PM. Some nights he had church responsibilities that took him away from home but many nights we had time to spend together as a family. Family Home Evening was not as formal a program then as it is now but we used to have “Family Night” on Wednesdays. We would play games or perform skits or do charades or make some type of refreshments. Mostly we just spent time together.

It was common, especially during the winter months when it was cold outside and it got dark earlier, for Dad to settle down in the “Big Chair” after supper to read out loud to us. Those were special hours. One of us would perch on the arm of the big chair and others would be arranged around the front room. The stove was in the front room so that is where it was nice and warm. Dad would read aloud to us books like “Little Britches”, “Man of the Family”, “Black Stallion”, “White Fang” and others. Dad had a loud voice so it was easy to hear no matter where we were in the house but most of the time we were in the front room. It was the responsibility of the person sitting on the arm of Dad’s chair to keep him awake. Sometimes he would doze off while reading. We never could understand how he could do that just as we got to the most exciting part of the story. The person on the arm of the chair would shake him and wake him up so he would keep reading.

Sometimes we would just talk. Dad liked to crack nuts and we usually had a big bowl with nuts in it beside the stove and the big chair. We would sit around and talk and Dad would crack nuts and pass them out to us like feeding a bunch of hungry little birds. He got some himself, too. Sometimes Mom would peel apples and cut them into sections and pass them out to us also. We would sit and munch and talk or listen to Dad read. Besides reading the books we especially liked as boys, Dad also read church books, church magazines or lesson manuals. We got to hear lots of the gospel even if we didn’t have lots of formal gospel lessons. He also told us stories which we enjoyed.

Mom liked to have us play music. It was not uncommon for everyone to have to perform something. It could be a piano piece, a song on the trumpet, lead a game, recite a poem or whatever. Dad used to sing us songs sometimes. One of our favorites was the “Stuttering Song”. Another of our favorites was the “Bible Sunday School” and “I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago”. Sometimes he would sing us old cowboy songs. We also sang as a family. Sometimes it was the hymns and sometimes other songs or rounds.
We played lots of games. Some of the ones I remember are “I challenge,” spin the bottle, and charades. We also played card games like ROOK and SCRATCH as well as board games like MONOPOLY, SORRY and others.

The day always began and ended with family prayers. Sometimes we were up in time to have prayers with Dad before he went to work. If not, Mom always had prayers with us before we left for school. We had evening prayers before going to bed. Life was good! All was well in The Rock House!

When I was growing up our family didn’t buy much laundry soap. We made it ourselves—or I should say, Mom made it with our help. The type of soap she made was called “lye soap.” I will try to explain how it was made although I may miss some of the steps.

To make lye soap you had to have a large pot or barrel (about fifty gallon capacity) for cooking the soap and a good supply of oil or lard or fat. You needed several cans of lye and wash tubs to pour the finished soap into for cooling. You needed a long stick for stirring and someplace flat like a floor, where the soap could be dried. I think it also helped to have a few kids around to watch the pot boil and to stir the soap mixture occasionally.

In the section where I describe the butchering process, I explained that when pigs were butchered, the layer of fat below the pig skin was “rendered” or cooked so that the fat was separated from the skin or other meat. The fat or lard or grease (whichever you want to call it) was placed in a twenty-five gallon barrel on the back porch. Other fat from cooking could be added to the barrel at any time. When the barrel was full, it was time to make soap.

Dad had cut a large barrel in half and we used one of those half barrels for the cooking pot. We set the barrel on top of several large stones or bricks and then built a fire underneath the barrel. We then poured the lard or grease from the twenty-five gallon barrel where we had collected it into the larger cooking pot. Once the grease began to boil, we could skim impurities off the top and discard them.

I can’t remember exactly the consistency required or the time needed to get the grease to the proper stage or thickness for making soap, but we stayed close by to stir the grease occasionally and to skim off any impurities that came to the surface. The process took several hours. Mom would watch and test the boiling oil until it was at the right stage and then she would add the lye solution. As far as I know, it was just lye and water but there could have been other ingredients. Lye is a very corrosive material and dangerous to handle so Mom did the mixing of the lye solution. Once the lye was added, then it was a matter of stirring the mixture until it turned to soap. As it turned to soap, it became a light creamy yellow color and got much thicker.

Once the soap was ready, we lifted the half barrel with the soap off the fire and poured the warm soap into two or three large wash tubs to a depth of about four or five inches per tub, where it was allowed to cool. As it cooled, it got thicker until you could cut it with a large knife. It was more or less the consistency of cheesecake. It usually took a couple of days for the soap to cool and become hard enough to cut. When the soap was cool, we cut it into square pieces about four to six inches square. The soap was taken out of the tub and the pieces were laid out on newspaper on the wash house floor to dry and cure. As the soap dried or cured, it became harder and shrank some in size. When it was completely dry, the soap was stored on one of the shelves in the wash house.

Whenever Mom was ready to wash clothes, she would take a piece of that soap and just throw it into the washer where the agitator was swishing and let it provide the soap for washing the clothes. When the wash was finished she would fish out what was left of the piece of soap and use it again the next time. It was not uncommon for one of us boys to find a small piece of reused soap in a pocket of our jeans. When the piece of soap got small enough, it could get hung up in a pants pocket and we would find it when the clothes were dry. Lye soap was very good for washing dirty clothes. It was so strong in fact that it ate up our clothes. Our Levi’s always had that washed out color and eventually the soap would just eat through the material and we would end up with holes in our clothes. Later on Mom used laundry detergent for washing some of the clothes but not until I was in high school.

The making of soap is another example of how Mom and Dad tried to be self‑reliant and thrifty. I don’t think I or any of my brothers came out any the worse for wear. In fact, we may have been cleaner than our friends who used Tide or Breeze or Cheer or some other sweet smelling soap.

All the time I was at home Mom used the old “wringer washing machine” for washing clothes. You have probably never heard of a “wringer washing machine,” much less seen one in operation, so I will try to explain how it worked. The machine itself consisted of a few key parts. The main part of the machine was a “tub portion” where the clothes were agitated to get out the dirt. The other major mechanism was a “wringer assembly” made up of two hard rubber cylinders that had a narrow opening between them. When engaged, the cylinders turned and the wet clothes were fed between the rubber “wringers” which squeezed the water out of the clothes as they passed from the washer to the rinse water or from the rinse water to be hung on the clothesline. The rinse water was held in a wash tub on a chair next to the washing machine and was not a part of the washing machine itself. The agitator and wringers were run from a small electric motor mounted under the tub. All water for the washing tub and for the rinsing tub had to be filled by bucket or we could use the hose and run hot water from the kitchen sink to the washing machine and rinse tub.

The dirty clothes were put in the tub portion where the agitator was. There was a gear lever on the side of the tub that put the agitator in motion or stopped the motion. When the clothes had been agitated in the tub long enough, the clothes were taken manually out of the tub and fed between the two rubber cylinders or wringers. The wringers squeezed the soapy water out of the clothes. The soapy water went back into the washing machine tub. The wash tub with clean rinse water was on the other side of the wringer so that the squeezed clothes fell into the rinse water. Someone had to slosh the clothes around in the rinse water to rinse out any remaining soap. The clothes were then run back through the wringer in the opposite direction to squeeze out the rinse water. The clothes were then hung on the clothesline to dry. We never had a washer or dryer when I was at home. All of the washing was done with the “wringer washer”. Care had to be taken not to get fingers in the wringers.

One of our jobs was to help with the wash. We carried water to put in the rinse tub and to fill the washer and we carried water to empty them when the wash was completed. We helped with hanging out the clothes as well. Usually everyone got to help. We competed to see who would get the batch of clothes with large items so we could hang them faster and get on to doing something we wanted to do. If you got the socks, it took forever to hang them out to dry because there were so many of them. When the clothes were dry, we had the job of taking them from the clothes line into the house for sorting and ironing. We learned to carry arm loads of dry clothes without dropping any of them on the ground. There was no such thing as fabric softener then because there was no clothes dryer. The clothes were sometimes pretty stiff when we took them from the clothesline. In the winter they sometimes froze on the clothesline. Because we had a clothesline and used clothes pins to hang the clothes on the line, we had a ready supply of clothes pins for making rubber guns, but that is a different story.

I have nothing but fond memories of my childhood in The Rock House. I can recall that we always had some responsibilities around the house like cleaning a room of the house or working in the garden or carrying in the wood, but when the jobs were done, the time was ours to spend more or less as we chose. We spent time reading, making things, playing with friends or just wandering the hills around Heber without very many restrictions.

In Heber, everyone knew everyone else and many of the families were related in one way or another. The raising of children was a community affair. Parents watched out for, fed, taught or corrected not only their own kids, but any other kids who needed it or happened to be handy. Just because you weren’t in view of your parents didn’t really matter too much because some other adult was likely watching out for you. As a result, we could wander around town or play in someone else’s yard or barn and nobody seemed to care.

As a small child I played a lot at home (The Rock House) or across the street at Uncle Laurald and Aunt Vera Bigler’s house, saddle shop and barn, or across the back street at Charlie Reidhead’s house. The Rock House seemed to be a center of activity for boys my age because I had older brothers who were always doing something, or making something, or playing something, and others wanted to see what they were doing. I was lucky to have very patient older brothers who let me “tag along” or “help” with projects.

The Rock House was on the main street of Heber and it wasn’t paved. The main road coming from the east crossed Buckskin Creek on an old metal bridge that crossed the creek about a hundred yards south of where the highway bridge is now. The road ran in front of our house and in front of the store and church and crossed Black Canyon Creek and went on west out of town. There was no bridge over Black Canyon Creek at that time. The road went down through the wash. The logging trucks, which constituted the majority of the traffic on the road when I was a kid, would drive right in front of our house going to or from either the “Porter Sawmill” (which was located near where the Mogollon High School is located now) or the “Southwest Sawmill” located in Overgard.

One of our favorite activities was to “play trucks”. We built our own logging trucks by cutting a section of a two-by-four about eighteen inches long. We would nail a smaller piece of two-by-four about three inches long on top of the longer one to represent the cab of the truck A long nail represented the smoke stack of the truck. We then pounded a row of nails into both sides of the back part of the board behind the cab so that we could put “logs”(small sticks) in there and haul them around. The trucks had no wheels. They were just flat on the bottom and we would scoot them along the roads we built by digging into the dirt bank just outside the fence that ran across the front of The Rock House property.

We used old, broken hoes or spoons or sticks or just our hands to build the road system. We had a road that ran all the way from in front of Uncle Mart Porter’s house (the house to the west of The Rock House) to in front of The Rock House. It was a long enough road that every kid in town could work on it at the same time without encroaching on the road building of the person next to them. We often had several kids working on the road or playing trucks and hauling logs along the road at the same time. We got pretty dirty but we spent hours running our trucks up and down that road. We built bridges, had hills and valleys and we even put up signs made out of sticks.

Every time a log truck went by on the main street right next to us, regardless of whether it was full or empty, we got fresh inspiration and kept working. At that time, in our little minds, driving a logging truck was about the “ultimate job” and one we dreamed of doing when we grew up. We knew every model of logging truck, we recognized every driver, and we loved to watch them drive by in front of The Rock House.