TRANSCRIPT of reflections of Earl Ashurst (my Grandfather) and his brother, Julian. Recorded on tape in 1969.
We were on an old ranch in West Texas when any of us can remember, and
then what we heard the folks tell about the Abilene country when they
first come out there. But I, ... a lot of little things went on over the
years, but in 1910, the folks had begun to have California fever. Los
Angeles was advertised pretty big in that country then, and everybody had
to go to Los Angeles. And then drouth in West Texas at that time - most
of the time - and we took cattle out of the pasture on our old ranch
there, took them North about 75 miles, up on the foot of the pan-handle
country and found pasture for 'em up there and kept 'em there until Fall,
and took the sheep up later on. Then my Dad sold the cows and we brought
the sheep back to the ranch, and we got on the train ... and the Orient
Railroad had come through San Angelo by that time. San Angelo had been
for years, the end of the Santa Fe Railroad, but the Orient had come in,
and we boarded the train across the river at the new depot for the Orient
Railroad, and headed for Los Angeles. We had been growed up out there in
the sticks, and we didn't know houses had numbers or streets had names.
We always just said you go over yonder, and that the thing's right there.
But we got into Los Angeles, and it was quite a village then, even in
1910. We'd go downtown, and start standing looking and gawking, and
stuff, and an old policeman would come along an says, "No loitering on the
streets. Keep moving." We, we thought that was pretty bad, for, and we
wanted to get back to Texas. But, then we went on out to Whittier, and
picked walnuts out there that Fall, and finally went on out to Pomona,
where my Dad finally settled there, and had an orange grove. But, back on
the ... we just went out here to visit then, and we stayed about - instead
of staying the year, we stayed about 14 or 16 months in Pomona. And then
went back to the ranch. And, stayed about a year, then finally moved
permanently, back to Pomona. And then later on, the folks, of course,
come to Imperial Valley. But, they was a lot of little deals went on in
Texas there when we was kids - growing up together, and, my older brother,
Brook, he was married when we went back there, the last year, and lived on
the ranch there, about a mile from our old house, and I lived down there
with them about as much as anywhere else, until we moved back to
California, after about a year.
I don't know where I got started there, but when the folks come to
Abilene, why they did live there for a while, but it was open range then,
and they moved West with the - and the range was beginning to fence up -
and did finally, everything was fenced, but my Dad had about three years
there of open range, and built up quite a herd of horses, and some sheep.
And later on, wound up with mostly sheep. And stayed with the sheep until
we sold the ranch in 1914, and moved to California permanently. And
that's about all I know to talk about.
pause
Julian asked a question - inaudible
I seem to be always, where the action was on there. Claude was - maybe
the year we moved the cattle up to Mary Neal, Claude stayed, I guess to
help around the home place, but Julian went with us up there, and then as
soon as we got the cattle settled, the windmills greased up, and the water
started, Julian and my Dad went back to the ranch, and I stayed there with
the sheep. And Brook was - that was the year that Mona Rea was born. And
Brook was supposed to have met them on the day that they left, up at Mary
Neal, ... Brook was supposed to have left the ranch and come up there and
stayed with me, but Myrtle was sick. Mona Rea was just born then, and he
was having quite some troubles, so he stayed another week, and that left
me up there a week by myself with the sheep. But we had some neighbors,
that had moved up there from Robert Lee, they lived - they had a place
about a mile from there and they had kids my age, and I went over there
quite a bit. Otherwise I was by myself there until Brook came up about a
week later.
And, I don't know whether Julian remembers that or not, but we had what we
called a gramophone, and it had rubber cylinder records. And we could -
we could make records with that, and the Loughlin kids' folks was gone one
time, and the Loughlin kids was there, and we got that thing out and got
it started going, and made some records. I guess Julian wouldn't want to
tell what was on them records, but we didn't - to be sure nobody else
heard 'em, why we broke 'em before they ...
He, when he was a kid, he wanted to plow up corn - and drive the one
horse, and plow corn, but he figured his Dad ... but his Dad went to town
one day, so he hitched up the old horse and got out, and was plowing
corn. And about that time, his Dad was coming back. He thought he was in
trouble - his old man showed him just how to tighten and set the line so
it wouldn't be too tight or too loose - showed him just how to plow - and
he's been plowing corn every since. (laughing) That was one story they
told about ... (Arnold C.: It didn't upset things, at all?) No, he got
Julian Ashurst - Reflections
(Earl was there and commenting in the background)
My mother's name was Alice C. Sparks, And my Dad's name was Joseph
William Ashurst. My Dad and Mother, when they left Kentucky, they came to
Abilene, Texas, and settled on Spring Creek. And they used to have this
spring with ice-cold water, and it flowed through a little, clay trough,
and my mother would put her milk in there and let the cream raise, and
she'd make butter then out of the milk which we had - where we lived. And
she had a windmill that did that after we came to West Texas. But my Dad
went into the sheep business there in Abilene, Texas, and he got his start
in sheep there. And then, later they moved to West Texas and fenced five
sections of pasture with fold-tooth wire. And then he run sheep then, in
West Texas, and then finally got into the cattle business there.
My Dad quit smoking and chewing tobacco when he was about 50 years old.
And, that was here in Imperial Valley, but before that, there in Texas, he
used to eat all fried foods, and everybody told him he'd die young, and
after he got to California, he lived happy ever after - 82 years old when
he died.
inaudible question
Yeah, my Dad used to like biscuits, made with a lot of dough, kind of
high-rising ones, and I didn't like 'em with dough in 'em, and he would
get Irma to cook them - Irma would cook the biscuits like he liked 'em,
and then I'd take the inside out of 'em and roll it up into a dough-ball
and throw it at Irma. My mother seemed to allow some things like that,
but she didn't allow us to complain about the food. She'd never allow any
of us children to say it - when we got up to leave the table, if we
complained about the food - she had too many mouths to feed to put up with
youngsters complaining about the food.
This is about Earl. He used to sit - there was a couch right behind the
table, next to the wall, and he'd always get mad if someone would fall on
that couch, and then he'd pout. And my mother wouldn't give him no
breakfast, and he had to do without his breakfast. And I guess then he
got in a good humor about noon. Now Earl, I'm telling this, but I don't
want you to whoop me now.
Earl, do you remember when we went up and baled hay at Woodville? And you
didn't have no socks, and we slept in a horse manger. And we baled hay
and we made exactly $57, and we came home and the pump had - a gopher had
let water run into the pump and burned the pump out and it cost $57. Do
you remember that, Earl?
My Dad had 4 brothers that were bachelors, and they lived in Kentucky.
And they all lived in one house, and they wouldn't speak to each other,
and they all lived there for a long time. He grew up there, and they were
an Uncle of his, and he grew up with them in Kentucky. I don't what
finally ... they never did marry - they were always bachelors. And they
tried to run their business together and that didn't work, yet they still
kept living together. And that's about the story that my Dad told it to
us. He was always marveling how clean they kept everything. They'd
pick up every little stick and twig that was around, on the ranch, and
taught him to do that. And he thought there was a real saving because
they didn't allow any sticks to lay around or anything. Kind of an
interesting story about them. My Dad always told me about these four
uncles of his, that was were real prosperous, and yet they couldn't get
along.
When we lived at Pomona in the orange grove, my Dad's three sisters came
out. Lula, Anabelle, I don't know what the other one's name was, but they
were real good to get along with. They helped out in the house, and they
wanted to do all the work. We always liked them, - and my mother didn't
get along with them too good, but, we could see why. So we all lived
there in the orange grove for - they visited here for about a month. And
then they went back to Kentucky - they lived in Kentucky. They were old
maids - lived in Kentucky there, and came out here just to visit. My Dad
wasn't home at that time. He was up North raising cotton, up in San
Juaquin Valley, and so that was the only close relatives of my Dad that we
ever knew - was these three old maids. (inaudible question from Arnold
C.) they lived between Lexington and Paris Kentucky.
This one Aunt lived in Paris, Ky., and we were visiting there, three years
ago, and they was always friendly. They came out to Pomona and visited
with us. He was an engineer on the railroad there - he owned a little
ranch there, 2, uh, 80 acre ranch. Kentucky was beautiful country. But
we never did get acquainted with many of Pappa's kin folks. They were of
the William Penn tribe - they married into the Penns. My Dad's Dad
married one of the Penn girls, and they lived in Paris, Kentucky and were
raised there.
(inaudible)
My Dad said, in Texas that he was beginning to have stomach trouble, and
he wanted to come to California where he could eat fruit. And my Mother
said, Yeah he just had stomach trouble to come to California, and that was
all. But anyway, he come out to California, and he had a - bought a 20
acre orange grove. He had all the fruit he wanted. Then, they came to
Imperial Valley from the orange grove and went to raising cotton and sheep
here in Imperial Valley.
(inaudible, something about staying a year so nobody could say they
didn't like it there.)
And that's when he bought the orange grove. The first time he come out
here, he bought 5 acres down on Grand, and then Claude stayed out here.
(indaudible)
Earl Ashurst
Funeral remarks by family members.
Arnold C. Ashurst:
We are here to remember a remarkable man, my father, Earl Ashurst.
Throughout his working life, he was honest, hard-working, and fair in all
his dealings. It seemed as though he would rather that the other fellow
got the advantage, if there was one. I think there was no one on this
Earth he owed anything to. So I would like to think of the good times we
had when he was younger and healthier. He was a farmer and loved to see
crops growing, liked the freedom of the life, and was always interested in
his and his neighbors' success in growing. He loved fishing, hunting,
camping with his grandsons, and visiting with his granddaughters. As he
had grown up with horses, he liked to ride and was good at it. My
grandfather, Joseph William Ashurst, married Alice Cochran Sparks in
Kentucky, and they brought sheep and breeding horses to Texas where there
was open range for a few more years. They settled near Abilene, near
Spring Creek, later moving west near Brownwood. Their children, including
Earl, were born there, and they prospered with sheep, cattle, horses, and
cotton. There was drouth in 1910, causing Grandad to move the cattle, and
later the sheep north to the higher pan-handle country where there was
pasture. That Fall, after selling the livestock, they boarded the Orient
Railroad for Los Angeles. Grandad bought a 5 acre orange grove and tried
some cotton in San Juaquin Valley, until 1912, when most of the family,
including Earl, went back to Texas. In 1914, after selling their
property, they moved to California for good, and Grandad bought a 10 acre
orange grove in Pomona. Earl worked around Pomona area, with the good
team of horses he owned, and met my mother, Othelia. They were married in
1916, and moved to Strathmore, where Earl farmed. Their first son, Earl
William, was born there, and later they moved to Delano where their
second, and last, child was born (Arnold C. who is relating this
account). My Grandfather was farming, and in the bee business near
Brawley by then, and as Earl thought the well water was being depleted
there in Kern County, he brought the family and a herd of sheep to
Imperial Valley in 1928, and stayed the rest of his life.
The following is by James Ashurst, his Grandson:
...Grandfather, but he was also... to me he represented the link with the
past. He was a contact with the time that has disappeared, or is rapidly
disappearing, and with a set of values that went along with that time.
And this was quite important to me. I used to try to get him to tell me
about those early days and the things that helped to form him the way he
was. He grew up on a ranch in West Texas, with his family. They were
quite self-sufficient out there - they lived a long ways from town, and
they had to rely largely on their own resources. They didn't have many of
the conveniences we have now days. The shopping wasn't close by. There
wasn't any doctor within 30 miles, and of course, in those days, with
their transportation consisting of either traveling by horseback or by
buckboard, that was a considerable trip. They had a good, strong
community in that area, even though it was quite thinly strung. There
were people lived a long ways apart on various ranches. The ranch they
lived on consisted of 5 sections, or 5 square miles. But the people there
were supportive of each other. And they would help each other a lot, and
they were dependable. They, quite often, if someone was heading into town
and they would pass by the ranch, they would do little chores for each
other, and sometimes they would save money up that needed to be deposited
in the bank, and they didn't figure they'd be heading into town to go to
the bank any time soon, so they would send that money with a neighbor, if
a neighbor happened to be passing by. And at times they trusted their
neighbors with thousands of dollars, which was a considerable sum of money
in those days. But they never lost any money doing that. The money
always made its way to the bank, and the people were supportive and
dependable.
He attended school in the one room school house there on the ranch. His
father built the school house and hired the school teacher, and the
school basically consisted of his family. At times there were other
families that had kids they send to that school if they lived in the area,
with kids. Basically, it was a school that was set up for their family.
The school teacher lived with them, and was part of their family. And I'd
imagine that would make it rather difficult for him to cut up very much
the way kids like to do in school. It couldn't have been very practical
to cut classes or got very far out of line knowing that very evening their
school teacher would be taking their meals with their parents. The church
that they attended every Sunday was a community, non-denominational
church, and it was a little over an hour's ride by buckboard, to the
church house. People took turns preaching there. As often as not his
father was the preacher. His father was considered to be kind of a
part-time preacher, but at times they also had circuit preachers, who
would be traveling through the area. These were people who would travel
into an area and preach for a Sunday, or maybe two Sundays, and then
they'd travel on to another community. With that sort of variety, with
people who came from all kinds of religious backgrounds, and different
preachers there was bound to be conflicts from time to time, and he told
the story of one time in particular, when a traveling preacher got up and
was preaching a sermon and made some statement about baptism, that maybe
reflected his own opinion. One of the ladies in the congregation had
pretty strong opinions on the subject herself, and jumped up and pointed
her finger at him, and told him, "That's a d--- lie!". I think that was
probably pretty entertaining to those young cowboys.
He learned responsibility at an early age, living on the ranch. He
learned how to work very early. The chores were shared by all the members
of the family. When they had a drought one year and they had to move all
their livestock - they'd leased some pasture up in the Texas Panhandle and
moved all their sheep up there. Then the rest of the family returned home
to the ranch and left him by himself to look after that herd of sheep for
a couple fo weeks. He was about 13 years of age at the time, so this was
a considerable responsibility for boy of that age. He was not only
responsible for his own well-being and sustenance, but for the well-being
of those sheep, which represented a substantial part of the family fortune
at the time. There was a family that he knew, in the neighborhood -
living in the area, but he took his meals with them at times, but he was
basically on his own.
When they decided to move to California, he decided that he didn't want to
go. He decided that everything a young man would want was there in Texas,
and so he determined to run away, and he hatched a plan to do so, that
involved a friend of his, and the friend was going to
come to the railroad depot the day they were scheduled to leave, and he
was going to bring an extra pony with him. And just as the train was
about to pull out, he was going to jump off and get on that pony, and they
were going to gallop away. And they felt that the rest of the family
wouldn't have time to try to run him down, because they had a train they
had to catch. But the plan didn't come to fruition, because his friend
didn't show up. So he ended up in California, in spite of his efforts,
and that may be how some of us ended up to be here, too.
He worked a wide variety of jobs and did a lot of different things in his
younger days, before he was settled in to owning his own farms. One time
when he was staying with his brother, Brooks, in East Texas, for a period
of time, he got a job working on construction, on a bridge. He was
working for salary, but most of the other men working on that job were a
prison labor force - they were a chain gang. So in the evenings, they
would be put in their manacles and taken back to prison, and he would
simply go home.
He worked as a goat herder for a period of time, in the Pomona area, in
California. He herded goats up on the Forest Service land, on the
fire-breaks, to keep the vegetation down in those fire breaks. And while
he was doing this, he stumbled on a mystery that, as far as we know has
remained unsolved every since. He had a dog named Taft (named after a
President of the United States) and him and his dog were up herding goats
one day, and they came upon an old abandoned shack, and laid down to rest
beside that shack. And the dog started to kind of digging under it,
whining. So he took a look under the shack, and he found a man's leg.
So, of course, he notified the Sheriff. But that was all that was ever
found, was the leg, and nobody ever found out who it belonged to, or what
happened to the rest of the body, or anything. And as far as I know, it's
still a mystery.
He had good times and he had bad times, and I believe, probably, about the
lowest time of his life was during the depression. At that time he owned
a herd of sheep, and he brought them down to the Imperial Valley, and he
leased some pasture land, to raise them out on. And he found that he
could not sell those sheep for as much as he owed on the pasture bill.
And he had shorn them and had the wool stored, and he found that he
couldn't sell that wool for as much as the storage fee at the warehouse.
So he was hopelessly in debt, and he lost most of what he had. And he had
been brought up to believe that a man could succeed by hard work and by
being thrifty, and by being honest, and he found that this wasn't working
anymore. That by working hard, he was only getting himself in deeper.
And it caused him a considerable amount of mental agony, I suppose. And
when he was telling me about this a year or two ago, it was - he was
visibly shaken, even just recalling it, even though it's been 50 years or
more. But he stayed with his values, and he kept on working hard, and was
thrifty and was honest all his life. And this started paying off from
that point, and every since then, I think he was - steadily improved his
lot, until eventually he prospered pretty well.
He always treated us Grandkids good. In fact, I think he may have spoiled
us at times, more than he should have. But I don't think I ever heard him
say anything bad about any of us, or to any of us. It was a lot of times
we probably deserved to be read out a little, but he never would do it.
He was always - treated us wonderfully. Us kids from California (Utah)
used to come down here during the summer to visit Grandma and Grandpa, and
he always treated us to a real good time. He used to take us to San Diego
at least once a year, and we'd go over there to the zoo and various
things, and see all the sights in San Diego. And he went to quite a bit
of trouble to do these things for us. And, of course, then we'd go back
to Utah, and a lot the kids that stayed up there had not done much in the
summer, so some people considered that we were pretty cosmopolitan and had
been aorund a lot.
We used to love to have him come up to Utah to hunt with us. He like to
go up there and spend a little time camping out in the mountains with us,
and with companionship and all. The hunting seemed to be just kind of a
side-light. He didn't really seem to care whether he got a deer or not
that much, it was just mostly the idea of coming up and participating in
it with us. There was one year, we was up there and he hunted a little,
and then he kind of decided not to take it too seriously, and he'd
returned to camp and was doing some of the camp chores. He had the
coleman stove going, and was washing dishes and what not, by himself. He
looked and saw a deer on a hill just outside of camp, just looking down on
him, washing. And his gun was off in one corner of camp, and his bullets
was put away, and he didn't even try to take a shot at it. He just kind
of watched the deer, and the deer watched him until they both seen all
they wanted to see.
He never in his adult life attended church very much, or if he did, I
don't know what church it would be. He never talked much about what his
religious beliefs were, or what denomination he was, if any. Church
didn't seem to play an important role in his life, as an adult. And yet,
at the same time, he was an extremely moral man. He had the highest of
moral statures. He was absolutely honest in everything he did. He didn't
seem to be capable of lieing to anyone, about anything. He was easily a
patient man. He was thrifty, and he believed in hard work. He believed
strongly, that a man should work hard to make his own way in the World.
He believed in paying all his debts. And if he had what HE considered to
be a debt to someone, he would arrange, one way or another, to even
accounts. It may take him decades to do so, but he would do it in the
end. He was a charitable man, after his own fashion, but he didn't like
open charities, or charities with a lot of show. He preferred, if he was
going to give someone something, to do it quietly and under the table, and
with as little fanfare as possible.
He had a strong sense of humor, and he had a dry, slow way of talking,
presenting stories, but he liked to always put a little, clever twist to
it. He had a dry sense of humor that was really enjoyable to be around.
It made his stories something that we always liked to hear.
So, I think that to me, he was more than my Grandfather, I like to think
he was also my friend.
