https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/9d4d026ad7bd8a144f6f2d4586a0cd7c.pdf 43f9539a2134a7f095a1072f5457aa4c PDF Text Text I") 'l 'l 'l i ,, J i ' 1 ) l 1 ) ) . JAMES (JIMMY) SPENCER BAKER James Spencer Baker, known to most Ignacio people as Jimmy Baker, was born on August 12, 1899, the son of James Baker and Lucy Spencer Baker. "I was born in a log house at Caracas. I think the house is still there. My father built a good barn and corral. We had chickens and milk goats and hogs and range cattle and riding horses and draft horses. The draft horses were "Perch" (Percherons) and weighed 1500 to 2000 pounds. They could really plow and pull the wagons. My father raised wheat and hay for the animals and potatoes and beans for the family." When Jimmy's mother Bessie died in June of 1907, Jimmy and his father and his sister Grace and his brothers Julian, Frank and Cassey faced a lonelier world. It was still two years until Jimmy's father took him to the Indian School at Ignacio. During summer starting at the age of 12, Jimmy was sent to the hills to herd the cattle. ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) J _J J ...) ..J ..) ...) ...) ...) ...) J J J J J J "I rode my horse up to the Vega every week to count the cows. Some of them would be way up in the brush. When we went up some of the steep hills, I would get off the horse and grab a hold of his tail and he would pull me right up. The first year I went out I was afraid a lion or a bear or a bobcat would get me, but I never had any trouble." One of those trips Jimmy will never forget. He was late getting started back and then it started to rain and how it rained! "Before I got out of the Vega, it started to rain and by the time I got to the Dipping Vat on Cat Creek my horse and I were both soaked and it was so dark we couldn't see anything except those big lightning strikes coming down. I didn't get home until 1:00 or 2 :00 a.m." In the days when Jimmy was a boy, one of the best ways and certainly one of the most exciting ways to obtain new wealth and valuable property was to hunt the wild horses in the hills above Caracas. Jimmy and his father and brother sometimes were gone several days patiently tracking, listening, stalking and then off on a wild chase to rope a few horses or, if possible, to drive a herd into a box canyon. "Our friends Tito and Tony and Narcisso Gomez sometimes went with us. Then we all got together to brand the horses and break them. Our brand was a curved arrow with a split tail. ln the winter of 1915 we went out one morning and all our horses were gone . We told the Marshall, Porfirio Chavez. There was deep snow and he tracked the men all the way to Lumberton and brought our horses back and put the men in jail in Pagosa . They turned out to be some of our neighbors. After the trial, they were put in the pen." Jimmy lived at Caracas until 1916 before he moved over toward lg nacio. In 1918 he was drafted and sent to Brownsville, TX, then to Laredo, then to San Antonio and finally to Ft. Riley in Kansas. Jimmy was in Company A, 9th Engineers and was trained to be a blacksmith. During the First World War the army had some motorized vehicles, but it also retained many horses and mules and wagons. Therefore, blacksmiths were needed to shoe the horses and to keep the wagon wheels in repair. Jimmy would have been sent to France soon, but as he explains, "Woodrow Wilson and Kaiser Wilhelm signed the peace." 9 �When Jimmy was mustered out of the army in 1921, he decided he wanted to see the country, so for a while he rode the rails. "I went all over the country as far as Bismarck, North Dakota, but I never got caught by the railroad bulls because I moved like the coyote." Next Jimmy got a job on the D.& R.G.W. Railroad on the line between Denver and Steamboat Springs as a member of the Extra Gang. Jimmy's crew spent a lot of time on the lines around Moffat Tunnel 13,000 feet up on the continental divide west of Denver. Jimmy enjoyed the changeable weather and the beautiful sunrises and sunsets visible from the divide. He remembers one morning when "the sun came up pale, so pale over the lake. (Yankee Doodle Lake) it looked like the moon." After working a while on the railroad, Jimmy went down to Denver and got a job with the Public Service Company till 1926. The next year Jimmy's father died and Jimmy came back to Ignacio to stay. He married Bessie Box. They lived on his place about a mile east of Ignacio where he raised cattle and hogs and chickens. This month Jimmy celebrates his 76th birthday. He has been alone for some time. Of course, he gets lonely sometimes, but he is still strong and healthy, likes to walk a lot for exercise, and has a wonderful sense of humor. We wish him many more years of good health and good times. August, 1975 -- by Shelby Smith 10 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource James Spencer Baker Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1975-08 Subject The topic of the resource Baker, James Spencer; Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of James Spencer Baker based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the August, 1975 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baker, James Spencer Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby