https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/f6df02712b2679c5c0e84da06a8d41a2.pdf 799fc300341c77c3992523e4e5d605af PDF Text Text PAULINE (De Herrera) RODRIQUEZ When Pauline Ruth De Herrera was born at Antonito, Colorado, on Sept. 15, 1907, Spanish people had been living in the Rio Grande and San Luis Valleys for a very long time. The dates in the graveyards, if nothing else, will testify to that. The old Conejos communities of Antonito, Las Mesitas, Mannasa and Espioza still maintain a Spanish flavor. The Las Mesitas Church with its two steeples is a striking landmark. Beside it is the church yard where generations of Paulina's ancestors are buried. Paulina's parents Alfred and Adala De Herrera, owned a home and small acreage near Antonito, but in the summer the whole family headed for the mountains. Alfred was a cowboy. "In May many farmers turned their cattle over to him to take into the high summer range near Cumbres. Dad would drive the cattle along, sometimes as many as 500, and Mother and all of us children followed in the buggy. We had a cabin overlooking a big meadow. It was such a carefree life. We picked strawberries by the gallons. They were small, but, oh, so sweet. Other days mother sent us for gooseberries. Once in the gooseberry patch my brother Chris and I got a terrible fright. We were picking when suddenly we came to a place under some overhanging branches where the grass and flowers were flattened like a nest. Some of the stems were still springing up. It was so plain we had just roused some animal (our imagination told us it was a bear.) We screamed and threw our buckets into the air and ran. Occasionally, we took off a little time for fishing. Our favorite place was La Laguna Azul, a beautiful mountain lake with gold water lilies along one side. We caught a lot of fish there. Always we wanted to see a deer, but we never saw one. I guess those mountains were hunted out in those days. About once a month we went down to Antonito to stock up on groceries. We would leave on Saturday and come back on Monday. Dad had two beautiful mares just for our buggy trips. We had such a relaxed and carefree life until the fall when the cattle were branded and moved down to the farms." Pauline remembers one time that was definitely not carefree. In the spring of 1911 there was a terrible flood all across Southern Colorado. Alfred was already in the mountains with the cattle. When Adala and the children awoke that morning the fields around them were a lake. "There was water in every direction. My grandmother Lujan was there with us and we decided it might be higher at her place in Las Mesitas, so mother went out and hitched up the mares. We went through deep water, but the real trouble came when we got to Las Mesitas Ditch (which was as large as the Allison Ditch). The bridge was washed away and the men on the other side said, 'don't come across. The mares will drown and so will you!' My mother was very brave. She said it was better to try than be trapped on the low side. The mares went clear under. Mother jumped from the buggy and lifted the heads of the mares out of the water. Finally, one of the men jumped in to help and the mares began to swim. When we got to the other shore, we were all soaked to the bone and crying. There was water around Grandmother Lujan's house, too; but it didn't get any deeper. In a couple of days it went down. All our chickens were gone and everybody's crops were ruined." 14 6 �'l 'l ....., '1 'l ' 1 l 1 J 7 ) ) ) ) } ) ) Idyllic and pleasant as a Rocky Mountain summer can be, winter is another thing, especially in the Sun Luis Valley. Then the valley becomes a cold and windy place with vast, drafty blizzards howling down its length. Every evening before bed Pauline and Chris had to peel enough potatoes for the next day and place them in water to keep them white. "Every morning the house was cold. Dad got up first to light the coal oil lamp and to build a fire in the kitchen. Then I had to get up to slice and start frying those potatoes. Then mother got up and made biscuits, white gravy, fried eggs and always oatmeal with lots of fresh milk and butter." Pauline and all the children needed a good breakfast, since they walked three miles to school at Espinoza. Sometimes it was an ordeal. "When the weather got real bad, my father wrapped our feet in gunny sacks and tied them to our ankles with wire. At school our teacher would unwrap the sacks, hang them to dry by the fire, and then help us put them back on when it was time to leave. That was all we could do because, of course, none of us had overshoes." Pauline feels that one mistake many parents made at that time was to keep their children out of school too much. "Some of the boys in the 5th and 6th grades were great big things, old enough to be in high school today and when they would get restless and bad, I can remember the teachers sending them to the river to bring their own willows to be whipped." ) ) ) ) ) ) .J ) _) _) _) J ..J J J ._J J .J J J J J ._I .J Alfred DeHerrera liked politics. In Paulina's words, "He was always 'taken' by politics." About 1924 Alfred decided to run for sheriff of Conejos County. If there was any big money around to buy the politicians into office, Alfred didn't get any of it. He had to use his own. When he lost the election, the family was nearly broke. To help recover the losses Alfred moved the family to Millikin which was about half.way between Denver and Ft. Collins where he could get farm work. "We didn't stay there very long. It was strange country to us. Dad worked long enough to buy a car and then we headed back for the valley. We stopped to visit someone in Salida. While we were there, Dad found a job in a creosote plant, so we stayed and bought a home there. I was about 16 or 17 by then." Soon afterward Pauline met Vic Rodriquez. "Vic was one of 12. His mother was dead. My mama tried to help those kids. She sewed and mended their clothes and asked them in for cookies and did many other things which only a mama can do." Vic was working on the tram line to Shirley when he turned sweet on Pauline. "He began signing his checks and just handing them to me. Mama said I better not spend any of that because if Vic and I broke up, there could be trouble over the money. So I put it all in the bank." Vic and Pauline were married in 1928. Pauline handed Vic $900.00, every penny of what he had given to her. With the $900.00 Vic set up a saw mill at Trujillo southwest of Pagosa. Whatever lumber wasn't sold locally was trucked to Juanita and shipped on the train to other markets. Later Vic moved his mill to Blanco Basin and finally to Red Creek north of Bayfield . When the government started building Vallecito Dam in 1937, Pauline got a new job. She started doing laundry for all the crews working on the dam. "I had a gasoline powered Maytag that ran from 7:00 a.m. till 7:00 p.m. every day. There were 14 7 �clotheslines stretched from tree to tree. I guess we were the first mountain laundramat. I made about $10.00 per day. Sometimes my neighbor Mrs. Millsap would help and I gave her half of what I made." Pauline has good memories of Red Creek since most of the kids were raised there. "They were good kids. We never had trouble with any of them. I guess being raised in the mountains, they would have to be good kids. We always had plenty to do, both work and fun. Every Saturday there was a dance. Someone brought a guitar and someone a violin and did we dance! But no drinking. It seems like ii snowed more then, but it didn't seem so hard on people then. We always had fun in the winter. If we needed food, we'd hitch up a team to the sled and go lo town. All those years seem so carefree. We never had any worries. I didn't think I ever had any worries until Vic died. We had just bought this house and lived here two months when he died." Pauline has seven children. All of them are married. Irene lives in Bayfield; Ernest in Bellingham, Washington; Melvin in Ignacio; Jeanie in Farmington; Helen in Los Angeles; Delia Rae in Bloomfield; and Mary Ann in Colorado Springs. Pauline has 30 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. A lot of years have passed, but Pauline well remembers the "Star" automobile Vic bought to bring her to Trujillo. She remembers the frightful, narrow road over Wolf Creek Pass and how much she really didn't want to leave Salida. "I always missed Salida. I liked it there and didn't want to leave. And I have always missed the Italians. They were good neighbors, nice people. All of the years we've spent on this side of the divide I've been happy, but I never felt really at home. I always had in the back of my mind a wish to go back over there, but the last few years I feel different. Ignacio is a nice town with a lot of nice people. I think I belong here now." June, 1975-Shelby Smith 148 � 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 Pauline (De Herrera) Rodriquez Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1975-06 Subject The topic of the resource Rodriquez, Pauline (De Herrera) Description An account of the resource Biography of Pauline (De Herrera) Rodriquez based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the June, 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 Rodriquez, Pauline (De Herrera) Extent The size or duration of the resource. 3 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