https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/ed5286b388de290956668b526fe7c024.pdf 5a1a8ebdd0915762077f447f01040aaa PDF Text Text JANNIE ELIZABETH (Terry) KING Janie King was born at Wheeler, Texas, on the wide plains of the West in 1911. Her father, Thomas Ethridge Terry was born at Chickasha, Oklahoma Territory in 1887 and her mother, Lenore Estelle (Bailey) Terry was born at Fayettevi1 le, Arkansas. The instinc! to go west lured the Terrys just as it has thousands of others. "In 1916," Jannie says, "my father sold his farm at Wheeler, put all he could carry in two covered wagons and started west. Though I was only five at the time, I have several clear memories of the trip. One night we camped beside a lake near Groom, Texas. With water so scarce on the plains, mother did not lose the chance to do the family washing. Except for some of our cattle dying of blackleg, the only unpleasant incident of the trip was an encounter with a Gypsy woman who picked my father's pocket. My parents were young, totally unfamiliar with the habits of Gypsies and therefore, an easy prey. This was not our last experience with Gypsies." "We settled at Porter, New Mexico, where I went to school all 12 years. All the farming was dry land. Dad raised broom corn, maize and hay. We cultivated big gardens and raised chickens, pigs and cows. For sweetening we grew sugar cane. When it was mature, we cut and peeled it and took it to my uncle, who could make the best sorghum molasses you ever tasted. He had a press powered by horses to squeeze the Juice out of the cane. The juice flowed into a gently sloping metal trough under which a fire was built. As the Juice slowly flowed back and forth down the channels of the trough, it boiled until it was thickened to the right degree. We ground our own corn with a hand mill. It made delicious bread. Life was good in New Mexico until the dry years came." "When I finished school in 1929, I married Weaver King. We did OK on the farm until the drought of the 30's when the bottom dropped out of prices. II got so bad we were selling eggs for 5 cants a dozen and ten gallon cans of cream for $2.50. We got rid of our caWe and bought sheep, thinking they could find something to eat even if the cows couldn't. In those dry summers we got the most terrific electric storms, but little or no rain. The winds would raise clouds of dust as black as night. After the wind passed, the dust stood 2 inches deep on the fence posts.' "Our son, Tommy, was born in 1935. Until then we and a lot of other folks had hung on thinking the dry years would surely end and things would get back to normal, but it kept right on. We began hearing talk of moving on. Some had done it. One of our neighbors had gone to Western Colorado to look things over. He came back excited and told us, 'That's the Rock Candy Mountain out there. Apples hang from the trees, gardens are full of everything you want to eat. Rivers are full of fish and the woods full of game. All you have to buy is coal oil, salt and baking powder. The rest is for the taking.' Weaver and I got excited too. We asked a lot of questions and finally said, 'Tell us some of the bad things', but he answered, 'No, I can tell you're coming anyway. You'll find out the bad things when you gel there.' 'Well, he was right. We sold out and came to La Plata County, Colorado in 1936. 96 �") .,,.., ") ") ~ 'l ) i ) ) 7 , ) ) .) ) ) ) Weaver sold all his sheep and got 8 horses. He and a friend made one trip to Oxford just to bring the horses. They drove to Albuquerque and up through Cuba. It was the last of September before he was ready to take Tommy and me. One of our neighbors loaded our Pinto riding horse and its colt and all our possessions into his truck and headed west. Fearing the unpaved roads north of Albuquerque if it rained, he drove straight to Gallup, up to Shiprock and then to Aztec. It was a beautiful trip. As we got to the Colorado line just below Bondad, all I could see were great bluffs and rocky hillsides. I asked 'Is it all like this?' They assured me it was not. We settled into a place southeast of the old Hood School east of Durango and later rented places near Oxford." "As soon as we got here the drawbacks showed up. On the first Sunday it snowed. The whole winter it snowed and snowed until I thought it would never quit and in the spring I thought it would never melt. That was one drawback. The other was mud. Oxford mud ought to be world famous, because it's really mud. It was unbelievable. At first we couldn't cope with it. Weaver tried to feed the stock out of the wagon. Chunks of mud the size of me fell off the wheels. He soon learned not to even try it. unless the ground was frozen. The snow could be just as rough. I've seen horses get so tired trying to pull the wagon through it, they just lie down in the snow. After we got a car, we often had to leave it parked at the Oxford Store and walk home on the railroad tracks." } ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) .J J .J ...J ...J "That first winter little Tommy (15 months old) and I were snowbound many weeks. But we didn't mind. He loved to play in the snow and I'll have to admit I did, too. We had plenty of firewood and a barrel of canned goods, so we made it through the winter just fine. During the war years we milked 14 cows. Prices began to rise. For a while it looked as if the price of cream would go to a dollar a pound, but it reached 99 cents and that's as far as it got. We bought our farm north of Oxford with cream checks. Weaver was the ditch rider, did odd jobs and worked the farm to make a living. The highlight of his year was the elk season." The King's two children still live in the area. Tommy married Janie Baird and lives in Ignacio. Beth married Jim Sower and lives in Bayfield. Weaver died in 1965. Jannie stayed on the farm for 3 years, then moved to Ignacio. When we asked whether she ever had second thoughts about moving to Colorado, Jannie says, "You see we didn't leave. I've been here 42 years and it all adds up pretty well." Shelby Smith - November, 1978 _) ...J ...J ...J ...) ...) J J J J J 97 � 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 Jannie Elizabeth (Terry) King Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1978-11 Subject The topic of the resource King, Jannie Elizabeth (Terry); Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Jannie Elizabeth (Terry) King based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the November, 1978 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 King, Jannie Elizabeth (Terry) 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