Arrival in the Hondo Valley (Torrez 1)
SRB: Mr. and Mrs. Torrez, when did your families first come to the area and what brought them here?
AT: Well, they homesteaded and that’s what brought us to the area. And then they, we left the ranches to relocate close to a school so the children could attend school.
SRB: What year did they first come?
JT: When did your folks first come to the valley? When did your ancestors first come into the valley?
AT: Probably in the 20’s, I would say.
SRB: The 1920’s?
JT: But his grandfathers and everybody was here since the 1860’s.
SRB: So the late 1800’s was when they first started to come to the area?
IT: Entonces, 1700’s. No, 1800’s
JT: Damian Gutierrez was his grandfather. And they came into the valley in the mid 1800’s. They moved over from the Isleta and Lemitar area. My grandmother used to tell me they came over here under Calvary escort to protect themselves from the Native Americans. And that was in like the 1800’s. And some of them settled here and some of them moved down into the Tularosa Valley, the La Luz area. So, they had several families of Gutierrez’s that did that. And that was on his mother’s side.
IT: La Junta, Hondo
JT: Yes. They used to call it La Junta. Go ahead, do you know anything else about what my grandmother used to tell us about first settling here? Can you hear me? <Spanish>
IT: <Spanish> I mean grandpa, Damian, came here about, probably about 1880’s somewhere around there. And he had five brothers besides him and they all landed here in this area here from San Patricio down to Hondo. And two of the brothers homesteaded here, San Patricio two homesteads. Francisco Gutierrez and what was the other name, Francisco Gutierrez and Damian himself, they homestead two sections here, farm sections, in Hondo from San Patricio on down to about two miles from here.
Making a Living (Torrez 2)
IT: My grandfather he stayed here and he was a carpenter. He used to make coffins for the dead people. At that time, they didn’t have any factories around here to make them so he made a lot of them. And I used to help him sometimes. I was a kid you know about [probably about] 12 or 14 years old, somewhere around there. He used to fix the graves, you know, fix the monuments, you know. And he used to help us in the garden. My mother, my daddy used to go out all the time, he was out peddling something, that’s how he made his living. He had a little farm you know. A little truck farm and mother and my three sisters, two sisters and one of my brothers used to work with my mother and she used to be our boss. We used to plant a pretty good size garden. Daddy used to peddle out the vegetables or whatever he could get out of it. When things got tight he used to [to make part of his living] he had a nice team of horse and good wagon and he used to go out to these ranches where they have a lot of sheep when they were shearing and he used to haul some wool from two big brothers that had a big sheep ranch you know [Clements]. He used to haul wool for them. He spent about a month, probably about a month, around there helping them. And then after that he used to take care of some of his flock, you know sheep flock. They were big places like a, I think both of them owned about 20 or 30 sections of land.
Making a Living (Torrez 3)
JT: He kind of alluded to what his father did, you know when he wasn’t trucking wool he said he had…
IT: So on the way back he always filled up his wagon with groceries and used to deliver them here in the valley, you know. Maybe to the, our own place and maybe some neighbor would order something from him, you know. That’s the way he did all the time. He used to peddle out all the time. Both ways.
JT: Tell them about, you started talking about when he took care of the flocks for the Clements and all those sheep. When he took care of the sheep, he was an el Caporal.
IT: Oh, after he finished hauling wool they used to keep him and gave him a big flock of sheep, maybe about 200 or 300 you know. And he used to take care [of them]. I used to be with him and then I was about [I must have been about] 13 or 14 years old. He would fix me a little camp and left about maybe 100 to 200 head of sheep. I used to take care of them, you know. That really, just sleep with them at night. And he would check on me every 2 to 3 hours to see how I was doing. I slept mostly all the time.
JT: They used to have several guys around as sheepherders. He was called El Caporal. He would go from place to place.
IT: He used to be Caporal, the boss. He used to take care of some of the guys that were taking care of the sheep, you know during the night. And during the day he went around. That went on about from April til about the last of May. We took care of the little ones the little lambs you know. Whenever a lamb got down or something like that we used to board it. He would pick it up and take care of it.
Making a Living (Torrez 4)
IT: Oh, how they lived? Well, everybody had their garden you know. The garden and they used to probably, they had a bunch of chickens and get us some eggs and take them to stores and sell them, you know. They used to make a living out of everything they raised from the place, like corn. I used to go to, my dad used to raise a lot of corn you know and we gather it up and shell it. Shell it, ¿Como se dice?
JT: Shuck it.
IT: So we used to full up a bunch of sacks and carry it to a man. He had a big store in Capitan. And we used to haul it out there and trade it for groceries, <unclear>, money and clothing and things like that.
JT: How about the apple trees?
IT: Oh yeah. He had a little orchard, probably about 10 trees and he used to sell all that fruit. At that time we used to raise a lot of fruit here, you know and peddle it out. But later on he saw that he was making good with the fruit so he set out about, oh I’d say about, pretty close to 800 trees in his farm. He had a 14-acre farm and he planted all his trees, all his trees were [red] delicious. [Red] delicious apples and he had some prunes and peaches, everything. And he used to peddle them out. When he had the big crop, when those tress started bearing he’d probably raise about 2000 bushels of apples. And he used to ship them out, not ship them out but some guys used to come from San Antonio, Texas and Jal, all through there. They used to come and haul it out and everyone of them had some vans they weren’t as big as they have them now but they haul out about 400 or 500 bushels at a time, you know and that’s the way he made it. He made money then. And we used to pick apples. He didn’t hire anybody. We used to pick the apples for him you know. Three boys. I have two brothers, three brothers and we used to help out. We used to pick apples. He probably hired about 3 or 4 different guys. It kept us busy for about four months, two months.
JT: And you would prune the trees and everything?
IT: No.
JT: That’s a whole life. And you did the same thing too. You planted trees too.
IT: Yeah, I’d say to myself when I grow up and have to make a living I am going to do the same thing. So I bought this place and set out about 800 trees and I used to sell all my fruit to San Antonio Texas. The guys used to come from over there and haul it out. That’s the way I paid my, I was paying for the little farm you know, a 14 acre farm and I paid for it just selling apples from the same place. I used to borrow the money from grandpa and paid it out.
SRB: How long did you sell the apples? How many years did you have that business?
IT: How many years?
SRB: Yes.
IT: Oh, I had it from 19, I’d say about, what time?
AT: 1940 to 1980, 81.
IT: The boys used to pick for me. They were about in high school. See I had it about from 1940 to 1960.
JT: 1960 is when I started to picking apples.
AT: 1981 you had a good crop in 1981.
JT: The trees started getting old about that time.
IT: From 1940 and then from there on
AT: That’s when the fruit stand was started.
SRB: From 1940?
AT: Hum.
IT: The business you know come down to where the people from Texas were getting their apples <unclear> Mexico. So then we had to, I had set up out at the fruit stand on the highway, the building is still standing there. Show them that picture up on the…
JT: Its right there. That’s the fruit stand right here.
SRB: The wooden one right there.
JT: Yeah.
IT: So I had to run the stand and I did pretty good with the stand. I sold nearly half of the fruit and then I had some small loans from people, from near, well from Roswell down the valley. And they used to take the rest of it. And then now the last 10 years, the last 20 years, I had to get rid of the orchard because it just quit.
JT: The crops would keep freezing. And then when we did have a crop there was just no market because we couldn’t even give them away. People wouldn’t even take them. And a lot of people that actually sell in the fruit stands, you know, they had to hand polish them and set them out there for the people and just about hand it to them. But we had apples for a few years that we couldn’t even give away
Making a Living (Torrez 5)
IT: Well, I went to different places. Just before I got married.
IT: Well I work at Fort Stanton twenty years. At that time when I got out I ran for commissioner and I won. Well, I had it for two years, 60 and 61. County Commissioner.
AT: Did you ever go to dances and weddings?
JT: The good times.
IT: Oh yeah, we used to make every wedding. Parties and whatnot. And I worked, did I say that I working at Fort Stanton for twenty years? And then I thought they weren’t paying me enough, you know. At that time they didn’t pay too much so I got out to the race track here, Ruidoso Downs Racetrack, and I worked there twenty years. And I was getting twice as much money as I did at Fort Stanton, as a security guard. I patrolled. So I worked until I couldn’t hear. I lost my hearing.
Social Events (Torrez 6)
SRB: Did you ever go to the dance hall in San Patricio?
JT: White Cat! White Cat Bar!
JT: Did you ever go to the White Cat?
IT: Oh! Oooh! We used to go to the dance and the bar was just across the road, you know.
Social Events (Torrez 7)
SRB: What kinds of activities were associated with either the churches or the schools? Social activities or community activities?
JT: Well the biggest one was the Hondo Fiesta, I think. And her cousin Fermine Montes and her went to college together, and after he came down here as superintendent of schools he decided that he’d kind of reawaken the valley to the whole culture, our Mexican and New Mexican cultures together. So him and his wife and one of the English teachers here in town got a group together and they started the Fiestas back in 1947, 1948, something like that. They started that dance group, and they were going to try to bring the community in with the dances and skits and music to see if they could just keep the culture alive in the valley, and to date that is the longest lasting fiesta in the country. It is still going on. And the community has supported it through the years. My dad’s mother and all of her group were the original seamstresses. You know, they used to put the costumes together.
Social Events (Torrez 8)
JT: Back in their days they had the Fiesta de San Juan. Remember, Las Fiestas de San Juan?
IT: Oh, yes. San Juan.
JT: Tell them about it.
IT: Well they used to – Daddy and mother used to, mother had a mare and she used to ride it. She was quite a rider, and my Daddy they went down to the fiesta. They had races and they had rodeos and probably a dance going on at the same time. And that’s about as much as I know about it. But they used to go out . . .
JT: In San Patricio, right? They used to have the fiestas in San Patricio?
IT: San Patricio, yeah.
JT: That was like a little community...
IT: They had, nearly all the valley used to go there and they used to have a…
JT: Did they used to try to get the rooster with the horse? Did they used to try to get the rooster out of the ground, El Gallo?
IT: Oh, oh yeah. They used to have a ¿Como se dice?
JT: Rooster.
IT: A rooster. They buried the rooster just sticking the head out you know, and the guys used to get on horseback and they used to give them a prize whoever took the rooster out of the hole. And they started fighting, hitting each other riding the horse. They thought it was a real, real thing, you know. Just like they do roping now.
JT: They used to have it in San Patricio <unclear> they would lean over and try to grab that roosters head while the horse was running.
SRB: How often would they do that?
JT: For the Fiesta de San Juan it was an annual thing. When is the Fiesta de San Juan mom?
AT: June 24th.
IT: June the 24th. They still celebrate it in Roswell.
JT: Yeah, but they don’t do the rooster. <laughing>
SRB: How long did that go on in San Patricio?
IT: Oh, in the 30’s. During the war, the first war, second I mean.
