https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/2bdb7781b7b1f606663466f53c8cf06f.pdf 730ef9b4e359a2d8e00eaa9861b3dd2d PDF Text Text 'l "} "} "} "} ~ ' ' '' ) ) } ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) J _) _) ..J ..J J J ..J J ..) ...J J ...J J J J J J EMMET & JESSIE (Stauffer) HOTT "My dad, Robert P. Hott was raised by his grandparents in Paw Paw, West Virginia. His mother died when He was four and his father was killed in a Civil War Battle on his own land. At the age of 12, dad ran away from home and got a job on a cattle ranch in Missouri. From then on ranching was his life. He moved west to Farmington and to the L.C. Ranch in the Blue Mountains west of Monticello. He married Emma Peterson at Moab, Utah, and later came to Pagosa Springs and then to the ranch on Spring Creek." "I was born at Pagosa Springs on December 12, 1910. The physician attending my mother was Dr. Mary Fisher, a highly respected doctor and one of the few lady doctors of that time. My mother and I rode home on the train to Tiffany and then on the sled to the ranch . One of my earliest memories is of riding behind my Dad on his horse to check the cattle. When I was small, Dad owned 5,000 head of cattle, which he placed on his summer range north of Pagosa Springs. Sometimes my mother and I visited my older brother on the summer pasture. The trip took one full day with a horse and buggy. When Dad lost his rights to the summer range at O'Neal Park, he leased another range on the Little Blanco River south and east of Pagosa." "I started to school 1/2 mile north of our home place at Mason School. I guess kids always have to have their fun. Not many days went by without some one putting a skunk under the school house, or a snake in the teacher's desk or some other trick. In 1918 Dad bought a touring car from Mr. Vanbrimmer's Agency in Durango. It was a 6 cylinder Case and a very good car. Later he bought a 7 seater Jeffry. It was fancy with two jump seats in the back. Dad never learned to drive. My older brothers always took the wheel and the one time he tried, he landed in the ditch. They teased him so much, he never tried again. We still used horses and sleds in the winter. The cars were drained and put on blocks until April or May. I started driving when I was 12. Nobody needed a license. If you were big enough to move the car down the road, you could drive. When my brother, Rex, started dealing in used cars in Durango, he found a used Overland for me. It was a stylish car which I enjoyed a lot. There wasn't much time for play. My friends, Sandy Scott and Hershel! La Londe and I played baseball and went to dances when we could, but most of the time our parents kept us busy irrigating, haying, and feeding the cattle. It was hard work, but I loved my life on the ranch." "After 8 years at Mason School, I went to high school 2 years at Tiffany. At the age of 19, I was hired to work in the bank at Ignacio for $8.00 per month. The only other employees were Iva Waite, (Vida Ritter's sister) and Merrill Turner, who at that time was managing the bank for Emmet Wirt. My job was everything from cleanup to posting checks to working at the window." "I met Jessie Stauffer at a fire in Allison. We both attended a dance in Allison one evening when A.O. Young's store caught fire. We began visiting while we watched the fire and that started our friendship. Soon afterwards, Jessie and I began going to dances and to the movies at the Ute Theater in Ignacio and at the Kiva in Durango. We really enjoyed the kind of movies made then. Many of them were musicals with a lot of singing and dancing and a happy theme. We remember one starring Buddy Rogers called 'We'd make a Peach of a Pair'." Jessie was born in Ignacio on December 13, 1914. Her mother, Margaret Leota (Davis) Stauffer, was born in Belmont, Ohio. When her first husband died, she got a job at the 85 �Ute Agency in Ignacio and against the fears and objections of her relatives, moved to the far west. "While working at the Agency," Jessie related, "mother met Jesse Stauffer and they were soon married. Dad owned a barber shop in the block south of the bank. I attended school in Ignacio all 12 years. People must have considered me a tom boy because I liked every king of sport. All the kids played baseball and I was on the girl's basketball team. When I was a child at home, the town was full of young families with children. My playmates were the Andersons, Flints, Morrises, Bryans and the McJunkins. We were never bored. We were always playing kick-the-can or run-sheep-run. None of the streets were paved, but we roller skated on the sidewalks. I tried to learn to ride a bike, but the streets were so rough. Every time I tried I fell and hurt myself or ran into a car or got my pants leg caught in the chain, so I quit. The town had no water system. All water for household use was pumped from wells at the street corners and carried into the homes, but we did have electricity. The lines came down from Bayfield in the 1920's. We were so pleased to have a radio to hear Amos & Andy and all the other good shows on KOA Denver." "Dad often took us on trips. Some of them were all the way to Iowa and Wyoming. Once in our Model T Fond we met a car on Wolf Creek Pass and almost got pushed off the edge. It was really no more than a one lane road in the 20's." "When Emmet and I began dating, he had a yellow 1929 DeSoto convertible with spoke wheels. In the evenings when he left the bank to drive home, he'd open the "cutout", which let the exhaust bypass the muffler, and I could hear his car for 2-3 miles out of town." "The summer after I finished high school, Emmet and I were married on July 10, 1933. We rented the house where Lawrence and Margaret Wiseman later lived for so many years. We stayed in town until Emmet's dad died, then moved out to operate the ranch. We had two children, Margaret, who now lives in Lake Havasu, Arizona, and Bob, who now lives on the ranch with his family. The ranch was a good life for us. We never wanted anything else. Our children enjoyed it and now Bob's children seem to love it as much as we did. The depression was hard, but we always had plenty to eat. We had good neighbors. We especially enjoyed Graves and Ada Kent. Graves was one of my mother's students at the Indian School. She remembered Graves as being small, but strong as an ox. Often she accompanied the Indian baseball teams to their games. It was a rough game at times. She always told the boys, 'If they spike you, you spike 'em back'." Emmet served on the school board in the Tiffany area before the schools were consolidated. He was on the Board of County Commissioners from 1948-1964. He says that job wasn't much fun, but was more fun than it would be now. The Hotts moved back to their home in Ignacio in 1972. Recently Emmet served as mayor of Ignacio for two years. The Hotts love to travel. In recent years they have taken trips to the Caribbean, to Hawaii and last year to Australia, New Zealand and the Fiji Islands. When asked what they want to do now that they are semi-retired and out of politics, they answer, "Travel some more." By Shelby Smith, January, 1980 86 � 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 Emmet Hott and Jessie (Stauffer) Hott Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1980-01 Subject The topic of the resource Hott, Emmet; Hott, Jessie (Stauffer); Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Emmet Hott and Jessie (Stauffer) Hott based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the January, 1980 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 Hott, Emmet; Hott, Jessie (Stauffer) 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