Arrival in the Hondo Valley and Making a Living (Sanchez 1)
SRB: When did your family first come to the Sunset area and what brought them there?
PS: My great grandfather, Camilo Nuñez, came to Picacho – I don't know exactly what year – looking for a place to live, just like anybody else, a place to settle. There was a river there, so that made logical sense. He came through Vera Cruz, Mexico, from Portugal. Dad and Mom saw his ledger from that trip. It was burned in a house fire. The earliest documentation that we have of them is this house that he built in 1890.
SRB: What did they do to make a living?
PS: They raised sheep and goats.
SRB: Do you know how large the herds were?
PS: No I don't. I recall my dad talking about, when he was growing up, how they used to trap skunks and other animals to sell the hides for income.
SRB: And so that would supplement their income from the ranching?
PS: Yes. I just know my dad grew up with sheep and goats.
Making a Living (Sanchez 2)
SRB: Did you grow up in Sunset?
PS: Well, not actually. Because my dad later homesteaded down at Border Hill, and that's where we lived, but during the school year we had a house in Roswell, because there were no school buses, and we didn't have a car that could take us to school everyday, so we lived in Roswell. and in Border Hill. But my dad, in 1951, purchased a little farm called Rio Frio.
PS: We had a fruit orchard and raised pigs, ducks, geese, chickens, fruit and vegetables. We also had a fruit stand, which I have a picture of somewhere, and I'll give it to you, of Rio Frio as well, which was just west of there. In fact, there's this house and then an old, old, old adobe following it. Rio Frio was west of there, and then there was that house and the fruit stand about a half mile down the road. All of us used to work there during the summer.
Making a Living (Sanchez 3)
PS: Anyway, when my dad was in that area. On Picacho Hill, there’s an old road. There’s rock, all done by hand. He worked on that when he was a teenager. Picacho Hill was like a roller coaster. We lived, and he worked until he died five years ago, down at Border Hill. He raised sheep and angora goats. In the later years he raised cattle. The angora goats were good money. They used to bring three times more for the mohair than the sheep did for their wool, but then that price went down and, toward the end, when Australia started raising all these sheep, the sheep industry around here just kind of died. In fact, I remember before we sold our herd, right after he died, we had our wool in the warehouse for several years. Couldn’t sell it
SRB: About what year was that?
PS: Probably 1985 or something like that.
School and Social Events (Sanchez 4)
SRB: Did you go to school in the valley?
PS: Yes. I did. As I said, when we were growing up, before we bought the Rio Frio farm, we went to school in Roswell. We lived down there and [went] to school. In the fifties we moved up there. I was in the 4th grade. And I went on the school bus to Picacho, to a two-room school that is still there. It is now used as storage. But that was quite an experience. We had two rooms, the big room and the little room. The big room was 4th, 5th and 6th, and the little room was 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Elsie Kimbrell was the teacher in 1st, 2nd all the time I was there. I had different teachers in 4th, 5th and 6th. I remember Mrs. Ticer and Mrs. Gustafson. It was the WPA building, built in 1940. That school had a basement below the kitchen. It had an auditorium with a stage, and we used to put on plays. Elsie Kimbrell was a pianist, so she played for all events. We put on school plays for Christmas and for Easter. This is what I really liked. We learned to play the tonette. We learned a little music. We learned to punch tin. We learned how to make belts and leather tooling and how to square dance. I’m just amazed at all the things we learned to do there. All kinds of crafts. There were only three of us in my class at 4th, 5th and 6th. There was Martha Romero, Shirley Cole, and me. When the teacher was teaching the other class, she would send us out to her car to do our homework. In this auditorium we also had community dances. Everybody loved to dance back then. All you had to do was go to the post office, which is right next door, and say, “Dance Saturday night!” and everybody would show up. Everybody would bring something to snack on. The band was J.B. Morris, the fiddler. He lived across the highway from us at Border Hill. His daughter, Francis Olene, played the guitar. My sister Annie and I played the guitar and mandolin.
When we went to high school, which was 7th grade (4th, 5th and 6th was grade school), we went to Hondo, also on the bus. That was also a fun place to go to school. We used to do school plays there all the time. We had a terrific band teacher. His name was Mr. Lara. I can’t remember his first name. His farther-in-law was Mr. Pavey, who is also a band instructor. Mr. Lara was such a dynamic and energetic person. One year, for Homecoming, he got the bands from Capitan, Carrizozo, Hondo, and Ruidoso all together. We went to everybody’s homecoming and did a half-time show with probably 200 in the band. It was fantastic. We had a marching band, a brass band, and a choir. We had the Hondo Fiesta Dances. It was a neat place to go to school.
Social Events (Sanchez 5)
SRB: Were there any other types of school activities associated with the school or the church?
PS: Besides dances? Well, we always had potlucks. Like I say we always had plays and that sort of thing, both in elementary school and in high school.
SRB: Were these events that the people from other communities attended, or were they limited to Picacho?
PS: No, sometimes people would come from Tinnie, San Patricio, or Hondo. And a lot of people down there participated, as well, in the Billy the Kid pageant. I know my mom and dad used to dance quadrillas, which is Spanish for square dance. They danced quadrillas at Lincoln Pageant Days, and a lot of us used to take part in a lot of the street scenes and that type of thing. And of course, everybody was in rodeo back then, so we went to rodeos. They used to have rodeos at Hondo on 380 at the Hernandez house. We would even go to rodeos up here in White Oaks and Mescalero. We always went to the rodeo in Mescalero for the Fourth of July. Rodeos were a big thing back then for all of us.
Making a Living (Sanchez 6)
PS: But anyway, when we were growing up, there at Rio Frio and at the ranch, we always grew corn, and we always canned forever. It seemed like weeks at a time. You know all our fruit, and we would make our jerky, and we just lived like everyone else. We would kill our chickens and turkey, slaughter the hogs and the calves and anything else.
SRB: Where was the market for the produce and the animal products?
PS: On the farm we didn’t really sell chickens. They were just for our own consumption. But our sheep and wool were in Roswell, and our fruit we sold at the fruit stand. At that time the racetrack had started, and there were lots of Texans that used to come through there, and that was who we would sell our fruit to. There were a few people that would come. I guess they were storeowners somewhere else. They would come and buy a pickup-load full of apples. But mainly it was just the tourists passing through. I remember sitting there for days on end. Sometimes no body would come through. But mainly it was weekends. But anyway.
Transportation (Sanchez 7)
PS: I think back then everybody used to just ride horses. My dad used to work for the Diamond A when he was a young man, and they used to work all day. The Diamond A is still where it is, down by Roswell. He said they would get off of work and get on their horse and would ride all the way to San Patricio to go to a dance, and be back for work the next morning. That was just normal. Of course, there weren’t fences, you know, like there are now. Probably on this road is how they did it. So, I guess it was easy, and as the crow flies it’s not quite like going on highway 70.
Making a Living (Sanchez 8)
PS: And my brothers used to work. I had seven brothers and there were four girls. And they used to get jobs and they worked at all these places. You know they’d hire out to all the neighboring ranches. And my sisters and I, when we lived up here, the short time we lived at Rio Frio and then while we lived at the ranch we worked at Riverside as waitresses. You couldn’t work before you were 16 and had to have a Social Security number. I started working at Riverside, and I worked there every summer for seven years, and it was a big place. It was half way between Ruidoso and Roswell, and there were like eight cabins and the restaurant and the service station. Shorty Hill owned it all the time I was there. There must have been fifteen employees. And those that couldn’t commute, like us, lived in those little cabins. It was a fun place to work. I remember that’s when Johnny Cash first came out, and we played him on the jukebox. Johnny Cash he’s brand new! That was pretty neat. But that was our employment place, mine and my three sisters, all four of the girls worked there.
Everyday Life (Sanchez 9)
PS: When we were growing up we had 4-H, and they had make-it-yourself with wool contests. My mom sewed all our clothes, so we all learned to sew, and we learned to crochet, and we learned to embroider. My mom had eleven children, they got electricity at the ranch when I was a freshman in college. We had lamps, kerosene lamps. She never had a pillowcase that didn’t have a pretty little girl embroidered on it with crocheted lace all the way around. And we starched them. In the evenings that is what she would do, crochet . . . with that many kids. I don’t do that now. Iron a pillowcase? Forget it! So all these contests we just kind of fell into. To make clothes for the fair or whatever.
If you can imagine being raised on a ranch where everyone didn’t have a car. You know there was one truck. You made your own entertainment. And ours was playing the guitar or sewing or doing all this other stuff. Although, at the time I thought it was nonsense that they’d make us crochet and all this stuff. But you know you just make your own entertainment. I was real good at mumbley peg. I was real good at that. You use to get a pocketknife and hit a target on the ground. What else is there to do? Well, let’s throw knives. You just make your own kick-the-can type games and hide-and-go-seek.
Making a Living (Sanchez 10)
PS: You could make a living where there was water. You could raise food. They had plenty of goat meat. Kid goats are delicious. You know, they were able to sustain themselves there. Of course, back then, nobody ever made a living they just lived. They lived to eat and keep warm, I guess. You made your own clothes. They had to have income somewhere, but maybe it was just bartering. I don’t know if I would call my great grandpa a farmer. He probably just had his own garden.
