March 9, 1946
February 1946. World War II is over and wartime production jobs were ending. During the war, Carl and Georgie worked a number of jobs in several places, finishing the war in Pocatello, Idaho. They elected to return to Iowa, where they both had family, but opted to make a grand tour of the west on the way. Georgie wrote a journal of the trip. The story starts here.
Left Gallup, N.M., the next morning and stopped at a trading post on the Continental Divide where I finally found a ring with a Nevada turquoise, something I’d been searching for the entire trip. Then we drove on to see the Chaco Canyon National Monument.
Drove through very rough country on a very rough road . There were no towns – came through and Indian settlement. There was an Indian school there, post office and an oil station run by an Indian woman. Saw many Navajos with herds of sheep. Finally saw a ranch and stopped to see if we were still on the right road – we hadn’t seen any person or place for such a long time we didn’t know where we were. We were still on the right road and the lady at the ranch told us they had 10,000 acres. Later we mentioned this to Jones, the hotel man in Cuba, and he said, “What were the doing there, raising chickens?” We were told it takes 8 acres to support one cow.
Finally arrived at the Chaco ruins and had a very wonderful and interesting tour of the grounds and museum with the caretaker, Theodore Sowers. We were about the first tourists through there that year and I think he was lonesome for someone to talk to. He told us many interesting things about the Navajos – for example: they never point a finger at you or at any object as that would be bad medicine. They refer to the ruins as the home of the old people. The abandon a hogan when someone dies in it. They knock a hole in the north side and no one will live in it after that. Because of this custom, they sometimes drag a sick person outside if they think he might be in danger of death. If he dies outside the hogan is still ok.
It was late when we left and the road was muddy as the snow had been thawing. We got stuck several times and Fran and I got plastered with red adobe when we had to get out and push.
Stopped at an oil station for gas and finally arrived in Cuba after dark. There was no electricity in the town and we drove around in the dark until we finally found the only hotel. However our stop here was one of the most enjoyable of the whole trip. The hotel was along building with the main room running the length of it and the rooms on both sides off the main room. There were adobe fireplaces in each room and huge fireplace in the main room built about two steps below floor level. Everyone sat in this semi-circular pit on cushions on the steps. It was real cozy but drafty.
There was one restaurant open, a combination restaurant- tavern. Since the entire population was Mexican, all signs were in Spanish with broken English translations beneath. After we ordered we started reading the sign in the booth which turned out to be an advertisement for a cure for V-D. this practically ruined our appetite although we had been starving for hours.
Went back to the hotel and went to bed by firelight which made up for the worse than primitive plumbing and other inconveniences. They had chamber pots in the rooms and the outdoor toilet was inside the hotel at the extreme end of the main room.
The man who ran the hotel, Jones, was part Mexican and a great yarn spinner. He said his grandfather had been a gunfighter but he should never have taken that up as he was too slow – he got shot.
Walt’s Comments
Mom wasn’t much of a fan of roughing it. I think probably because she had grown up with no electricity, wood-fired heat and an outhouse. Mom was striving for something better, so spending a night in a place like that probably felt like a setback. Though it sounds like she was able to see the romance of it in this case, at least.
Theodore Sowers
Ted Sowers was a National Park Service ranger, historian, and photographer throughout the western United Sates for many years. He first worked at Chaco Canyon in 1941 as a seasonal ranger and historian. He spent much of his time there doing photographic documentation of petroglyphs and documented Threatening Rock and the aftermath of its fall in January 1941. His photographs were published in the “Southwestern Lore” magazine in 1942.
He spent some time in Wyoming working for the Wyoming Archeological Survey and returned to Chaco Canyon in January 1946 and continues there until November of 1946, when he went to Great Sand Dune National Monument.
Many of his photographs and journals are kept in archives for researchers to examine. I would love to know if his notes from March 9, 1946, discuss the tour given to 3 people from Iowa.
Digging Deeper
There are archives of Sowers’s NPS Field Technicians’ Comments journals from his time at Chaco Canyon and other parks.
The Southwestern Lore Journal has been published continuously since 1935 by the Colorado Archaeological Society.
Ron Nelson
I find it interesting that Fran and Georgie had to push while Carl drove. I’d like to hear the reasoning behind this.
Walt
I wondered about that too. But I’m not 100% sure whether Fran or Georgie even had drivers licenses. I do know that as a child, Dad always drove. When he was working at the Chevy dealership he’d come home for lunch, and grab anything Mom needed from one of the little neighborhood grocery stores along the way. We didn’t own a second car until Tony and Marty were old enough to drive. Once Dad went to work at Ortho, and wasn’t coming home for lunch, Mom had to have a car so she could get groceries and such. But even then, she didn’t drive very far. It wasn’t until Dad passed that Mom started doing the driving, and she wasn’t ever a confident driver.
I knew several other women of Mom’s age who didn’t drive. And these weren’t city people – not being able to drive in Fort Madison was a serious handicap. But as long as their husbands were around, they just relied on them to drive. I’m inclined to chalk that up to a different time and a different set of expectations around gender roles and the division of responsibilities in marriage, and leave guessing at motivations to someone else.
Be that as it may, Fran and Georgie weren’t experienced, confident drivers in 1946. And the car had a clutch, the gearbox wasn’t synchronized, so you have to double-clutch to shift, and the brakes are mechanical and prone to fall out of adjustment from one another. It would be pretty easy for an inexperienced driver to drop the clutch too fast and bury the car up to its axle. If I were in Carl’s shoes I think I’d prefer to be the one driving too.