:Alpine Ranchos:
They called them, sold the 40 acre parcels; Alpine Ranchos. They were neither Alpine nor little ranches. There is no such thing in a state like Arizona where it takes one section, 640 acres, a mile on a side, to grow 6 grazing cows. This place was covered with cinders several feet thick from a volcanic eruption 600 years before. Lava rock outcroppings punctuated and defined the area. Only rabbit bush and some grasses and Utah junipers grew; no alpine firs or aspens or spruce, not even ponderosas except in a few small pockets tucked in the north side of craters or even up inside the blown out tops. No alpines, no ranches except the old Joe Kellum ranch that ran 3,000 herd of Mexican steers on the unfenced properties and all the sections of state land in between. This is checkerboard country when the US of A gave alternate full sections of land many miles on each side of the railroad (Santa Fe) to the private builders of the train line. The 3,000 skinny multicolored steers were watched over by one cowboy-Joe Waddell and a well/stocktank man with his French war bride wife who wore long johns most seasons under her dresses. No pants for this lady who still spoke with a heavy accent.
Joe, the hired hand of the ranch owner, was short, maybe 5’7”, in his sixties also maybe. But I rarly saw him standing on the ground. He did most of his talking horseback and was in a saddle of one of 5 rotating quarter horses he used each week to ride the entire ranch all day every day. That’s how he was seated when hearing hooves sinking into cinders outside my doorway I climbed out of the tipi that was snuggled amidst the green green junipers and stood looking way up there at a cow boy. The first person we had seen in weeks. Joe had come with his family by wagon from Texas via New Mexico many decades earlier. “ Cows is all I know and I don’t know near enough about them!” His wrists , what showed sticking out of the always buttoned long sleeved shirt were huge and red and hands freckled with thick fingers. “The biggest mistake I ever made was having all my teeth pulled and dentures put in.” Those are not many memories of a man who certainly belonged there on the Land more than I did.
John Yazzie who lived across the Little Colorado river that ran 4 or 5 miles to the north ,was a tall, stocky big nosed quiet Navajo who worked for the National Park Service..He had built the Ranger’s house and headquarters building after the war, there at Wupatki. Sandstone..they looked like a cross between Frank Lloyd Wright and Anasazi ruins set down in a hollow out of the southwest wind. John drove me home one day when I had gotten my sky blue 1970 Ford long wheel based 2 wheel drive ,3 on the column pickup truck stuck in my front cinder road driveway, after the October rains of 1972 started and didn’t stop. I had walked the hour or two to the Park. He reached in to his truck bed and pulled out with one hand a High Lift jack and said,” You’ll need this”. “Be careful of the handle, it’s a jaw breaker.” The jack worked , I returned it the next day after buying a new one in Flagstaff, 32 miles away at Pennie’s general Store. When you kicked the release pin off to lower the vehicle you had better keep a strong hand or two on that handle or step back quick! That 30 ‘ steel pipe could start flying up and down up and down as the pin popped in and out of the holes in the tall jack frame. I know nothing more of John Yazzie