Saturday, June 21, 2008

Pie Town childhood was true West story

Bill Blanton of Rio Communities appeared in classic Depression-era photo

La Historia del Rio Abajo is a monthly column about Valencia County history written by members of the Valencia County Historical Society. It is now in its 10th year without interruption.

The author of this month's column is a professor of history at the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus, the vice president of the Valencia County Historical Society and the president of the Historical Society of New Mexico.

The best books on Pie Town, N.M., are Kathryn McKee Roberts' "From the Top of the Mountain," published in 1990, and Joan Myers' "Pie Town Woman: The Hard Life and Good Times of a New Mexico Homesteader," published in 2001.

Opinions expressed in this and all columns of La Historia del Rio Abajo are the author's alone and not necessary those of the Valencia County Historical Society, the News-Bulletin or any other group or individual.

Pie Town is famous in new Mexico history for two main reasons.

First, Pie Town is famous for its name, one of the most unusual place names in all of New Mexico. According to local legend, Herman L. Craig and his family made such good pies in their restaurant along Route 60 in western New Mexico that travelers and residents began to refer to the surrounding community as Pie Town.

When the town applied for a U.S. Post Office in 1927, a government official suggested that they choose a more conventional town name. Herman Craig reportedly replied, "It'll either be Pie Town or you can take your post office and go to hell." The government official took the prudent route (avoiding hell), and Pie Town has retained its unusual name ever since.

Pie Town is also famous for a series of photographs taken during the Great Depression of the 1930s. A federal government agency known as the Farm Security Administration (FSA) had hired a cadre of talented photographers to capture images of poverty, especially in the West, to document the misery of the 1930s and to convince congress that more needed to be done to assist the most destitute.

Famous photographers, including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, shot approximately 164,000 FSA photographs, now kept in the Library of Congress and other archives across the United States.

FSA photographer Russell Lee spent six weeks in Pie Town in 1940, taking more than 600 of the most compelling photos of the era. Most of Lee's photos were of struggling homesteader families, living their lives the best they could during hard economic times. Most of the 250 families who lived in or near Pie Town were so poor that only a few could afford to buy the pies for which their town was named.

One of Lee's many photos of Pie Town and its residents shows a group of 25 school children. There in the second row, third from the left, is a homesteader's son dressed in overalls and partly obscured by a pretty little girl in the front row. The 10-year-old boy was unaware of who Russell Lee was or how this picture, with him in it, would help to make Pie Town famous not only in the history of the Great Depression, but also in the history of modern photography.

The homesteaders' son in Russell Lee's photo was young Bill Blanton. Born in West Texas on May 27, 1930, Bill and his family had moved to the Pie Town area to homestead on a plot of land so isolated that it had never before had a house built on it, no less had a plow cut through its hardened soil.

Bill's father, Charlie, and his uncle, Wes, had first come to New Mexico so Charlie could file a homestead claim and the two men could begin building a two-room log cabin home. They returned to Lamesa, Texas, to move Charlie's family and to have the Blantons' cattle shipped by rail to Magdalena, about 60 miles east of his new homestead.

Charlie met the train when it arrived in Magdalena with his cattle. Unloading his livestock, Charlie began a one-man cattle drive on foot across the empty plains. The drive was so long and so grueling that he resorted to milking one of his cows just to quench his thirst. A friend finally came to Charlie's aid, bringing a horse for him to ride on at least the last 10 miles of his journey.

Charlie and his wife, Lov, were blessed with five children, including three girls (Johnnie, Nell "Pete" and Charlie May "Kitty"), all given boys' names or nicknames because their parents only wanted boys. Fulfilling their parents' wishes, two sons were born: Bill and Elton (nicknamed "Smokey"), two years Bill's junior.

The Blantons were soon joined in New Mexico by other members of their extended family, including Bill's grandparents, for whom a new, much larger log cabin was built.

The Blantons were fortunate to have cabins. Many homesteaders had only one-room dugouts to live in during the years they struggled to "prove up" or successfully live and work on their land for at least five years.

Seventy-eight years later, Bill Blanton is now retired and lives in Rio Communities. But his childhood years spent in or near Pie Town are among the happiest of his long life.

Bill has mostly fond memories of his first school, a one-room structure at Tres Lagunas, six miles northeast of Pie Town. One teacher taught all eight grades.

The school was so small that Bill's younger brother, Elton, had to attend when he was only 4 years old because the school needed just one more student to meet the required 15 to remain open. Elton was so little when he first started school that Bill's older sisters often had to carry him part of the way back and forth from home.

Bill and his siblings walked two miles to school each day. The distance became even longer when parents in their community decided to literally move the small school building to a new location where it would be accessible to more children.

Bill was a generally good boy, but managed to get into his share of trouble at school. In one incident, he was caught throwing a spitball towards his teacher as she answered the schoolroom's door. The teacher punished Bill with "a couple of licks" with a small whip. Bill's mother objected, not because he had been disciplined, but because the teacher had used a whip rather than a paddle, which she felt he truly deserved.

Living on an isolated homestead kept Bill from experiencing many things that other kids took for granted, even during the Great Depression.

Bill didn't see his first thermometer until he was about 11 years old. Seeing the thermometer placed in the fork of a tree, Bill asked his mother what it was and what it did. Bill was so impressed by the small gadget that he still remembers the temperature reading on that early spring morning: a crisp 42 degrees.

Bill and his family did not have running water, no less indoor plumbing, during most of the 1930s and 1940s. And so Bill remembers the first time he used a flush toilet. He and his family were waiting at the train depot in Belen as they began a trip west to California to visit relatives. When Bill used the bathroom and flushed the toilet, he recalls being "almost in shock." He was sure that the rushing water was about to flood the bathroom, if not the entire building.

Bill has other vivid memories of his life on his family's homestead. He remembers animals on the farm, including a favorite black pony and a collie named Baldy. Baldy often encountered porcupines in his travels in the wild, leaving him covered with quills, even in his mouth. Bill's father had to extract Baldy's many quills with a pair of pliers.

In another animal story, Bill tells of the chicks his family had ordered by mail one spring. The chicks arrived safely, but one ran off and somehow fell down the hole in the family outhouse. Bill was so upset that he volunteered to be lowered into the hole, with his feet held by his obliging sister, Pete. The chick was rescued, thanks to Bill's selfless but messy act of heroism.

The local Baptist church played a major role in Bill's early years. According to Bill, there were two main groups of Baptists: the "hard shells" who absolutely opposed smoking, dancing and drinking, and the "missionaries," who also opposed these questionable behaviors, but not quite as strongly.

Both "hard shell" and "missionary" factions approved of gospel singing, and Bill remembers many very talented gospel singers and piano players in his community. He especially enjoyed "Fifth Sundays," when neighbors from near and far gathered for extended singing sessions on those rare months that had five Sundays. As many as 200 people attended theses musical events, continuing an old tradition that many had brought with them from West Texas.

Dances were often held at ranch houses, but many Baptists opposed dancing to music. Still wanting to dance, Bill and his friends solved this dilemma by participating in what was known as "ring games." As in square dancing, ring games included someone who called out dancing instructions that couples followed, often at an increasingly quicker pace.

Unlike square dancing, ring games were performed without accompanying music, making them somehow less immoral. Saturday night ring games could last until midnight, after which everyone went home to rest up for church the following morning.

Bill and his friends enjoyed various other amusements. On Saturday nights, the Farm Bureau building in Pie Town was used to show movies. The old 16-mm film often broke, requiring frequent intermissions so the film could be spliced back together. No one complained or seemed to mind.

An oak floor rink, constructed in Pie Town's old beanery, was open for roller skating on Friday and Saturday nights. Rodeos were held in Datil and Magdalena. Community picnics were popular. And baseball was a favorite pastime as Pie Town's nine took on challengers from surrounding communities like Datil and Fence Lake.

Weddings were a time for celebration — and a type of mischief known as shivaree. According to Bill, friends of the couple often helped newlyweds celebrate their new marital status with several rounds of gunfire, the homesteaders' version of fireworks.

The Blantons owned a radio, powered by their car battery, which meant that the radio could only be played at home when the family's car was parked nearby. Bill's favorite radio show was the "Grand Ole Opry," broadcast every Saturday night. Many family members gathered at the Blanton farm to listen to the "Opry" together.

The Blantons were a close-knit, hard-working family. But they were not prepared for the tragedy that struck them in January 1940 when Bill's father died suddenly from complications from an ear infection.

Heartbroken, the family sold its homestead and moved into Pie Town so that Bill's mother could work as a teacher and his older sister, Killy, could attend the nearest high school, 22 miles to the west in Quemado.

Bill and his siblings did a variety of odd jobs to help support their family. On one occasion when he was about 15, Bill fell off a hay truck and was "knocked out cold." Not knowing what else to do, Bill's sister, Pete, carried him half a mile to the general store in town.

The store's owner, Joe A. Keele, treated a large cut on Bill's head and stayed with him until he regained consciousness several hours later. Bill was grateful to his sister and to Mr. Keele (his wound healed without even a trace of a scar), but he couldn't help but be disappointed when he learned that it had rained while he lay unconscious. It was the only rain of the season, and he had missed the entire glorious event.

Bill identifies Joe Keele as one of his most admired adults in Pie Town. Like so many others, Keele and his wife, Carrie, had come to Pie Town from Texas in 1933. They homesteaded for several years before Keele eventually became Hermon Craig's partner at the general store.

An army medic in World War I, Keele often used his medical skills in emergencies, as with Bill's head wound. In addition to the famous pies he sold in his store, Keele was known for his generosity, extending credit to many local families who might not otherwise have survived the Depression.

Homesteading in the arid country surrounding Pie Town was difficult, especially during a major economic crisis like the Depression. Often the most farmers could hope for was a good piñon crop every two or three years. Families sold their piñon for from six to eight cents a pound.

Bill recalls that when a piñon crop was ready to harvest, Indian trading post operators brought in Navajo women to help homesteaders with the work. The women used straw brooms to sweep the nuts into large piles. Placing the nuts onto flat pans, the women expertly tossed the piñon into the air to let the wind blow away loose straw and dirt.

While on the homesteads, Navajo women often held dances after work hours. The women asked local men to dance with them, requiring each male to pay a dime before he could stop to rest. Bill says that handsome men like his future brother-in-law, Byron, needed a large stock of dimes in the course of these evenings.

Interacting with visiting Navajos and their culture was an unusual event for Bill and his fellow Anglo neighbors, most of whom had come from West Texas. Few Hispanic families lived near Pie Town, and most of the travelers on Route 60 were poverty-stricken Anglos like the homesteaders themselves.

Even the arrival of a lone Black traveler caused a stir among some residents who still harbored racial prejudice from their early years living in the South. Fortunately, the Black man in this instance was able to catch a ride out of town before nightfall.

Life changed dramatically with the outbreak of World War II. Bill can still list many of the young men who joined the military and went off to war from Pie Town. He can also recall the names of those who were killed, never to return to their rural homes in western New Mexico. Bill's good friend, Delbert W. Perry, miraculously endured both the Bataan Death March and the ordeal of life in Japanese POW camps until he was finally liberated at war's end in 1945.

Back in Pie Town, citizens experienced shortages similar to the rest of the country. Meat was so scarce that many men resorted to shooting game long after the hunting season had ended each year.

In a humorous incident during World War II, Bill was out hunting rabbits, but didn't think that his gun was yet loaded. Turning the weapon towards a family pig, Bill squeezed the trigger and, much to Bill's — and the pig's — surprise, shot and killed the barnyard animal. Bill's family never let him forget his "big game" hunting accident.

Rubber and spare parts were in such short supply during the war that Bill still marvels that the mail truck that came through Pie Town once a day was able to function for hundreds of thousands of miles, never failing to bring news of the war and letters from loved ones stationed around the world.

In another wartime change, many homesteaders gave up or sold their land to join the exodus on Route 60 to secure good-paying jobs in the war industry on the West Coast. Most of these families never returned, especially after the drought of the late 1940s and when most piñon trees were killed by an infestation of destructive worms.

Some homesteaders were glad to leave, even if they had successfully "proven up" and finally owned their own land. As he departed, Faro Caudill reportedly scratched a message on his gate: "Farewell, old homestead. I bid you adieu. I may go to hell, but I'll never come back to you."

Bill was among those who left Pie Town in search of better job opportunities. But instead of heading west to California, Bill moved east to Socorro, where he worked for two years before he was drafted into the Army during the Korean Conflict.

Bill married beautiful Mary Wisdom in 1951 and raised a family of their own, with two boys and two girls. While Bill was stationed back East, his and Mary's first child was born in St. Albans Naval Hospital on Long Island, N.Y. — about as far as young man from rural Pie Town, N.M., could get in size of community and culture.

After two years in the service, Bill returned to New Mexico and began a 39-year career with the telephone company, installing many of the first phones in villages like La Joya in the Rio Grande Valley. Bill and Mary retired to Rio Communities in 1992.

Images of Pie Town during the Great Depression are well documented, thanks to Russell Lee's amazing photographs of the town and its hard-working, diligent men, women and children. Using his artistic skill and keen eye, Lee captured many of the town's most private and public moments on film.

But as good as Russell Lee's photos are, they sometimes pale in comparison to the vivid pictures that Bill Blanton can paint with his descriptions of people and events in Pie Town. Bill's memories are like captions to Lee's photos, adding dimension and insight that no photo can capture on mere film.

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