Heading
Out
Friday morning, April 18, I loaded up my pickup truck and headed
south. My first stop would be in southeastern New Mexico to locate
where my grandfather, Hubert Newton McMullan had homesteaded in
1920. The day before I left, my mother had called and she had
just been admitted to the hospital with severe abdominal pains.
She lives in Lubbock, Texas which is approximately eighty miles
east of my destination in New Mexico.
This first leg of my trip would be the longest at almost one
thousand miles. After an eighteen hour drive, I spent the night
at the Billy the Kid Inn, in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico.
The Bureau of Land Management has an excellent web site and through
it, I was able to find the description of the land my grandfather
and grandmother homesteaded in New Mexico. The BLM mailed a copy
of the original applications my grandfather filled out on August
26, 1920. This brings up an interesting story about my grandfather.
As I stated before, Grandad’s father (William Rufus McMullan)
died June 13, 1906 in Henderson County, Texas when my grandfather
was only ten years old. Even though my grandfather went to live
with his sister, Annie McMullan Pyle, he spelled McMullan with
an “en” instead of “an”. It was not until
he came into possession of his father’s Bible that he realized
he had been misspelling his last name. Why his sister did not
correct him on this, I may never know. When the homestead applications
were filled out, Grandad was still spelling his name with
“en”.
I phoned the New Mexico land office in Albuquerque and asked
them if they could give me the latitude and longitude coordinates
of the land using the land description. The land office employee
gave me the coordinates and I entered them into my GPS (Global
Positioning System). This amazing technology gives me the ability
to connect my small, handheld GPS unit to my laptop computer.
Using topographical maps of the United States on the computer,
I can locate any point in the country.
After a good night’s rest in Ft. Sumner, I
headed south for Elida, New Mexico, the closest town to where
Grandad had dreamed of becoming a farmer and rancher. My aunt,
Zuma McMullan Sutton, my grandparent’s oldest child, told
me that Grandad had applied for the homestead in New Mexico without
ever having seen the land. Some of my research has shown that
at least one of Grandad’s siblings had settled in that part
of New Mexico earlier in the century. As I drove
south of Elida, the paved highway turned into a gravel road and
then finally, to a small sandy road. At this point, I was glad
that I had decided to drive my pickup which is highly customized
for off-road use. The closer I got to the homestead, the worse
the roads were. Luckily it had rained the day before and the sand
was wet enough to keep the dust down but not enough for it to be
muddy.
As I approached the northern border of the section of
land I was seeking the roads became narrower and I had to open
a couple of barbed wire gates to get in. I wonder what Grandad
thought as he saw so much sand and cactus. I’m sure he was
not as worried as my grandmother was with her young baby in her
arms. As I wound my way to the center of the section on the
only road that I could find, I found a small pond with a windmill.
Living in the desert, my grandparents would have had to live near
a water source. Beside the modern, steel tubed windmill were the
remains of a very old wooden windmill. I would imagine that these
remains were the watering source for my grandparents, their baby
and their animals. Grandad was able to secure employment with
a water well drilling company in nearby Portales, New Mexico while
they were homesteading this land. I can only imagine how lonely
my grandmother would have been on that piece of desert. The closest
neighbor was over six miles away. I will forever be grateful to
my mother for taking the time to question my grandfather about
his life and keeping good notes.
“They married Dec. 12, 1916 at Snider, Texas out on a
country road. They found a farmer/preacher plowing in the field.
They made their home at Fluvana, Tx.
On Jan. 1, 1917 (probably 1921 since the homestead papers were
signed August 26, 1920), they left to homestead twenty-one miles
south of Elida, New Mexico. The Post Office was in Valley View,
NM. The mail box was four miles from the house. They went out
in a covered wagon with Mr. & Mrs. Arthur Taylor. (I don’t
believe the couple went all of the way). They went out with one
cow and one pig. They lived in a one room shack. They had $20.00
to buy groceries. Hubert got a job drilling water wells. They
took a trip to Sacramento, New Mexico, which is close to Cloud
Croft. They had two horses and a wagon. They would have to stop
and soak the wooden wheels to keep them from coming off. Zuma
was one year old (probably less than one year old since she was
born September 6, 1920). They built a campfire when they stopped
for the night. A man who saw the fire came to check it out. He
had not seen a woman for six months. He wanted them to camp in
his yard. Nettie refused. Hubert would laugh when he told about
that. Zuma got sick but they went on the next morning. They camped
for two nights in a pine log cabin with a fireplace. Zuma got
sick and Hubert had to ride a horse to find a doctor to bring
back. It took until the next day for him to get back. They made
several trips back and forth from New Mexico to Erick, Oklahoma
(over 240 miles) until they finally settled in Erick. The last
time that they left New Mexico, they left in a covered wagon.
They had to sell their chickens to get back (to buy horse feed).
Hubert stopped in Amarillo, Texas (possibly Clovis, New Mexico) and Hubert traded
the covered wagon for a car (Ford Model T).”
The harshness of the southeastern New Mexico desert finally won
and my grandparents gave up on their dreams of being farmers and
ranchers. Apparently, they lived in Portales, New Mexico for a
short time because my uncle J.W. (James William) McMullan was
born there April 12, 1924. Grandad and Grandma finally moved back
to Erick, Oklahoma after trading their covered wagon in for a
Model T.
My father, Jack Murrel McMullan, was born in my grandparent’s
home in Erick, Oklahoma on May 21, 1930. Shortly thereafter, they
moved five miles north of Erick and Grandad walked those five
miles to work and back in Erick, every day. During the depression
Grandad worked for the WPA as a foreman over a crew of men that
would plant shelter belts. A shelter belt is a wide row of trees,
probably around one hundred feet wide and sometimes one half mile
long on each side, usually fashioned in the shape of an “L”.
This part of the country was experiencing severe and devastating
dust storms and the trees would help deter the winds that were
carrying away the farmer’s very valuable top soil. Grandad
was given a pickup to drive and a shotgun with all of the shells
he needed to kill as many rabbits as he could. The rabbits ate
the vegetation and contributed to the dust bowl. Those were definitely
different times. Today the animal rights people would throw a
fit if the government commissioned the killing of animals! My
father tells me that my grandfather was always able to drive a
nice car because of the work he did and the family was worried
when Grandad quit working for the WPA.
After that job, Grandad owned a paint store for two or three
years in Erick and then he worked the rest of his life as a carpenter.
Grandad was quite a fisherman and he never let work interfere
with fishing! If he decided it was a good to day to fish, he would
hang up his tools and go. As far back as I can remember, in Grandad’s
carpentry shed in his back yard, there were dried heads of large
mouth bass that he had caught.
My grandmother had stomach problems as far back as I can remember
and because of that she was always very thin with loose skin hanging
from her bones. Grandma was an excellent seamstress and added
to the family’s income by sewing for the public. Both Grandad
and Grandmother dipped snuff. They always had a Folger’s
coffee can, for a spitoon, beside their chairs and the first thing I heard as
kids, when I would visit, was, “Watch out for the spit
cans!”
My grandmother developed cataracts on her eyes and when she went
for the simple surgery, something happened with the anesthesia
and she never quite recovered. Finally in May 1987, she passed
away at the age of 88. My grandfather did not take my grandmother’s
passing well. After almost seventy five years of marriage he was
devastated by her loss. Grandad lived four more years and died
at the age of 95 on May 6, 1991.