I Love New Mexico Stories: Betty and Kenneth Terry (Part 2)

Episode Transcript

Bunny : (00:00)
Hi there. I’m Bunny Terry and you’re listening to the I Love New Mexico podcast. Whether you’re a native new Mexican who’s lived here for your entire life, or you’re just considering a visit, this episode is for you. Join us as we share a lot of New Mexico’s stories. Talk about all things New Mexico, and include topics like what’s magical here, where you ought to visit, what’s happening, and the things you absolutely cannot miss in the land of Enchantment. We’re excited that you’re here and we can’t wait to show you what an amazing place New Mexico is because let’s face it, I love New Mexico. This episode is part two of my interview with my parents, Kenneth and Betty. Terry, if you miss part one last week, please go check it out. They have amazing stories and, and I just couldn’t fit our entire conversation into one episode. I hope you enjoy part two and I hope you’ll stay tuned for more great stories about New Mexico. If this is the first episode that you’re listening to that has my parents, please be aware that my dad is 90 years old. He has a lot of great stories to tell. He is a rather slow conversationalist. So if you feel like you need to increase the speed on your podcast to um, sit through his stories, feel welcome to. But I gotta tell you, he has great stories. Thanks for being here.

Bunny : (01:37)
I remember you talking about how you got the milk money. That’s always kind of fascinated me.

Ken: (01:44)
Well, all the time, all of this time Pop always kept milk cows because he had a lot of people that could milk, was able to, and finally was able to, rather than just let the cream rise on the milk, we ended up with a cream separator international brand that he bought for half of it down, rest of it, he finally got paid off and our job each morning and night, winter, summer, whatever, we was milking anywhere from six to 14 cows and separating the milk. You didn’t get to drink too much the milk until it was separated and got the cream out of it. Done a lot of that outside. And he finally got a government alone, put little building up and we could carry the milk from the barn by hand up to this little separator room. Got a few cans and ship the cream after that into Kansas by the railroad. It used to be in San home. We had to take it down there. I kept, I never did know and nobody ever asked

Bunny : (03:12)
Because it wasn’t a refrigerated car, was it? You just put it on the car and it went to

Ken: (03:18)
No, we just put it on the depot and the train picked it up

Bunny : (03:24)
How did they know which can, how did they know which was your cream?

Ken: (03:29)
Oh, they had, you could had had tags

Bunny : (03:32)
On the cans.

Ken: (03:34)
On the cans. Okay. And um, then

Bunny : (03:38)
They mail you a check for

Ken: (03:40)
The cream. The check would come back to the mail. It was on a postcard and it was a check. And that’s how people said, well you mean I said, no, all the WPA money and stuff was strictly for food, garden seeds and stuff like that. The meal, check it. And if he put mom in charge of that, literally, and about once every year, each one of us boys would get a new pair of shoes whenever we got big enough for

Bunny : (04:21)
The milk money.

Ken: (04:22)
Milk money.

Bunny : (04:23)
Oh. And we raised, you raised hogs that you could, that they drank the milk.

Ken: (04:30)
All the time it was milk and pop. Found some old lumber milks from chicken houses. And we were getting probably 30 eggs a day. And when they were babies, we had a little baby room with the, and we’d ordered 200 at a time, had a brooder stove and they’d come in day old chickens

Bunny : (04:55)
In the mail.

Ken: (04:56)
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. They’d come in the mail, the mail man coming and he said, , I remember him saying the pop one time pop said This mail want a jobs pretty good. And he said, yeah, this time of year it smelled a whole lot like chicken. When they were , it’d come a little square box that had four compartments and each compartment would have up to 50 chickens in dayo. So, and you got them out and you had to be real careful cause they were just a ball of fur. If they came too, too cold or too wet, they would pile up and die. We’ve had ’em smother each other

Bunny : (05:49)
In the box or when you got ’em in the freezer,

Ken: (05:52)
Absolutely to the little brooder room somehow, or rather, he had managed to get a brutal stove. It was a hood about the size of a big dining table that set up about eight inches off the floor. And he run off a chair scene and you lit it very, and you’d usually get, if you spend all nights laying out there with them. But they came as straight runs. They were not sexed, so you had to wait till they got bigger to see which is the roosters. And which was the ends.

Bunny : (06:34)
Did you end up with a lot of roosters?

Betty : (06:36)
No, because that’s what we kill to eat.

Bunny : (06:39)
Oh, okay.

Ken: (06:40)
For roosters. We and the pullets,

Bunny : (06:45)
What is a pullet?

Betty : (06:46)
A young hen.

Ken: (06:47)
It in the

Bunny : (06:47)
Hens that’s not laying yet.

Ken: (06:49)
We never did eat no pullets. You gotta save up and lay eggs and then of course you finally get to the point where they’re big enough, you gotta get rid of them. So we had a family kill today a week. Mom, you can tell ’em about the,

Bunny : (07:08)
Oh yeah, I wanted to hear about the chicken.

Betty : (07:11)
Well, we all had chickens. This was after we were remarried, uh, that I’m gonna talk about. They did some of that earlier before we married. But we all had chickens. And one day would be at our house over at Granny and Pop’s, Terry’s and Pop usually killed the chickens, rung their neck, killed them and skinned them. And then there was us, there was Marvin and Chris, LE and Rena, Milton and Ferrell and Thema, five different houses. And we would one day at each house and we were set up kind of an assembly line and we killed them. We cut ’em up. There was a lot, at least a hundred a day. And we put ’em in bags and we took ’em to Sanho. And that was before we had deep freezes at home. And we all had rented a locker space at the grocery store in Sanho. And we filled those chickens into the locker space. And when we went to the grocery store, we took our key to our locker and we went in and took ever how many home with us that we could keep. By that time we usually had ice boxes with some ice that we could keep ’em and maybe refrigerators most of the time by then and keep ’em frozen for a few days.

Ken: (08:41)
The first refrigerator that pop had our neighbor boy, her warmest was always in at the house, would take care of other times his name. Yeah. And he would work all time he could. But when they first come out with cer refrigerators

Bunny : (09:02)
He bought. Okay, let’s… You went to see papa, that was his gifts because you wanted to ask him to marry my mama.

Ken: (09:11)
That’s the first, yeah. Before that about refrigerators off north side of the house. Mm-hmm. in the shade, made with wood and had a and a metal the bottom and had screen on the outside door. That’s where he kept butter. A buttermilk mill. Hey brother, to living in the same house quite a long time. And when I’d go to pick her up, neither one of ’em been talk to me. They just sit there in their chairs.

Bunny : (09:47)
Yeah. But dad, they didn’t talk to anybody, did they?

Ken: (09:50)
No, it wasn’t, cause they didn’t act, but I think he thought they gang smart kid again. And little to would sit there in his chair and while I was trying to make conversation, he’d say, oh, um,

Bunny : (10:07)
He did .

Ken: (10:08)
Oh. Um,

Ken: (10:12)
And I’d look at Betty. So I told her, well I was, court her, you better be ready to go out that door pretty dang quick when I drive out. Sure enough, she got to where she nearly come out before I got to the door. So I wasn’t necessarily scared of them, but I didn’t know how to talk to ’em cuz they wouldn’t talk to me. They were not what you call real talk to. So when I finally said to him, need to talk to you, they all say, let’s go to the barn and talk. And we kinda amd off out there like, you know. And I said, they told me that I got a ash cube if I can marry Betty

Bunny : (11:02)
Now, hang on. How old were you?

Ken: (11:04)
17?

Bunny : (11:06)
17, 16, 17.

Ken: (11:09)
I still 17. This was after men Papa become partners on the apartment.

Bunny : (11:17)
You and your dad.

Ken: (11:18)
Yeah. And I was already knowing I had to go get back on the tractor the day after the wedding. And he said, you guys are pretty young. And there was a thing or two, I don’t really remember about pretty good job. But all of my kids have graduated from high school and Betty’s just a junior promised to keep her in school. I said, well I’ll see to that. Sure. Enough’s what she done. She, uh, finished school

Bunny : (11:52)
And she, she was the valedictorian wouldn’t she?

Ken: (11:55)
Yeah. And she was the battle Victorian. So he knew how to pick her mate . And he said, I’ll give my, okay,

Bunny : (12:06)
Well now hang on. I wanna, I wanna hear from mom about that. Did you, how long after that did you get married?

Betty : (12:13)
Probably six months after he asked because he was, maybe it was longer but uh, or maybe it wasn’t that long. I don’t remember exactly, but he liked two weeks being 18. When we got married, I liked two months being 16 when we got married. And we went to Sanho to the Baptist preacher who we were going to church there pretty well then, uh, Gwen and Tubby JL Smith and Ken and I, he brother Arnold married us and he said, I’ve affirmed a lot of marriages. First time I’ve ever married four kids, . And we were out in the yard, actually a sandy pastor like place and probably 10 people there, a few Christelle, Marvin and a few of the Terry’s granny Terry was there. But my mother mama didn’t go to anybody’s wedding. And so we got married, we went into the drugstore.

Bunny : (13:27)
What was the date?

Betty : (13:29)
May the 12th, 1950. We went down to the drugstore where Ellie and Re Faye owned and they, we all had milkshakes laughed and cut up for a little while and left.

Bunny : (13:46)
Okay. Dad. So I heard this story all my life about how you had to borrow money to pay the preacher. Is that right? Well,

Ken: (13:55)
The times were pretty rough and I didn’t have much money and when they get went to get the license that they had to sign for Betty and me both. So more hours paid for the marriage license? $3. $3.

Bunny : (14:13)
Wow. Did you have to go to Tuum Carey to get that license? Oh yeah. Courthouse. Yeah.

Ken: (14:18)
And then the day of the wedding, brother Arnold the preacher, was just the sweetest old man in the world.

Bunny : (14:26)
I remember him.

Ken: (14:27)
He was a god straight gift to the ministry. He wouldn’t have hurt anybody unless it’d been bothering his wife. So mom stuck out $5 and said you need to pay the preacher

Bunny : (14:46)
.

Ken: (14:48)
So that’s the way we got that done. We had high plans really there.

Betty : (14:54)
And we stopped back by the grocery store and bought groceries for the first time.

Bunny : (15:00)
Did you know what to buy?

Betty : (15:02)
Absolutely not. , little bit of sugar and milk and eggs and that was about it. And the guy who owned the little grocery store out there in the country said, I’ll give you the spill of grocery for a wedding present. Oh, that’s nice. . But we really didn’t have anything to eat. Some bread, butter, I guess nothing much. But we were next door to mom and pop and all up the family was always there. So we all ate together and I have to cook very

Bunny : (15:34)
Much. So I suspect one of my favorite stories is about people in your family moving to the weening house, which is what you call that house out behind Granny and Puppet Terra.

Ken: (15:45)
Well, we didn’t have no plan to screw the wedding night. Because

Bunny : (15:49)
You had to go to work the next morning.

Ken: (15:50)
No, I had to go to work the next morning. So Marvin and Christelle had a house then. So they said what they’re gonna do, it’s gonna go over and spend the night with Paul Harriss us. How about house?

Bunny : (16:04)
Well that was fancy, wasn’t

Betty : (16:06)
It? It was fancy .

Ken: (16:09)
So sure enough that was her wedding man. Early as I could the next morning. Did I go straight to the field? I think you too took her by.

Bunny : (16:20)
Well was that when grandma and Cro lived on the highway? Yeah. Okay.

Ken: (16:25)
Yeah. That’s, that’s the only place they ever lived except that other place.

Bunny : (16:30)
Okay. Okay.

Ken: (16:31)
I went back to the field. I think it was noon before God see her again.

Bunny : (16:38)
And when did you move into the weening house? Mom?

Betty : (16:41)
I think we went and spent one night with mom and papa and then we moved into the weening house because I cooked breakfast for him the next morning. And that was quite a memorable,

Bunny : (16:54)
Oh, let’s, let’s let dad tell that story. That’s, tell us about that first breakfast she cooked for you.

Ken: (17:01)
Well, she got up and fell around and she said breakfast ready. I went in there and I never saw o like that in my life. . I kept trying to eat him with a spoon and tried to do a little everything.

Bunny : (17:20)
Were they

Ken: (17:21)
Stiff? Then? I made the classic mistake ly. Well I said I sure wish you could cook oat like your mother does. And she hit me right between the eyes with a glass salt shake.

Betty : (17:42)
.

Ken: (17:43)
Now, I mean square between the eyes. Now look, she gave me and I ate them most and I cut ’em with the mouth and I done it. . Oh, that did good. After that she got better. She sure did. She did.

Bunny : (18:06)
Okay, now you, you gotta tell, tell a little bit about the weening house cuz it’s a little house, a little one bedroom house behind Granny and grandpa. Terry’s. So

Betty : (18:19)
Several years earlier when Ellie and Rena Fay got married, they built this little house back behind Mom and pop, Terry’s house, three little rooms, kitchen, living room, bedroom, no electricity. A path, not a bath.

Speaker 6: (18:39)
Well what, what does that mean,

Betty : (18:41)
Mom? No, bathroom. You went out to a toilet.

Ken: (18:45)
To an

Betty : (18:45)
Outhouse. Outhouse.

Ken: (18:46)
Sure. Room and a path.

Betty : (18:48)
Path, yeah. And uh, then did

Ken: (18:52)
You have running water?

Betty : (18:53)
Uh, we did have once faucet and a little sink in the kitchen. But when, uh, no water. When Ellie and Rena moved out a few years later, two years probably Marvin and Chris got married and they lived in the weening house for maybe two years, year and a half. And they had the same facilities and then they moved into a house and Kenneth and I got married and we lived there for two and a half years.

Speaker 6: (19:27)
Well now what about who ca didn’t it end up with

Betty : (19:31)
Electricity? It did. When Edward came home from the war. Yeah. My older brother, he had done some electrical work in the service and he said, as a gift to y’all, I’ll put electricity in your little house. And he gave us one plug in each room and a light bulb hanging from the ceiling from each in each room. And uh, that’s the way we lived until CLE was about a year old and we moved to another farm. But we, we had no problem with living that close with two little babies. One of ’em was 15 months older than the other one. And we had no idea that we were, had a lot to do. We lots of sandstorms. We covered the windows and doors with quilts. Lots of nights to be able to breathe. So we just, but you lived, we we were happy. We shoveled sand before we went to bed nearly every night outta that house. But we didn’t know that.

Ken: (20:40)
A scoop

Betty : (20:41)
In with a sand scoop. Yeah. Well

Bunny : (20:44)
Now dad, you were talking about farming with your dad. Um, I mean, did you always, you wanted to be a farmer all your life?

Ken: (20:52)
I never had done nothing else. except five Wes and drive a tractor.

Bunny : (21:00)
Well, hang on. I want, I’ve always heard this story from Christelle. Who’s your older sister Mom. What’d she, what’d you tell her when you got married? When she got married to Marvin, who is dad’s brother.

Betty : (21:13)
Chris was three years older than me and Marvin, a little older than her. I went to their wedding and it was kind of the same way, although it was in a church but with only 10 or 12 people there. Nothing big. We didn’t believe in lavish weddings. And uh, I said to her before we, when she was getting ready to go to the wedding, you just go ahead and marry this old dirt farmer. And I loved Marvin. He was my, one of my idols. But I, you just get married to him and, and I’m not gonna do that. I’m going to one these days. She’ll be able to say I’ve got a sister in high society, . And a year and a half later I was married to that brother. Brother and happy with it.

Bunny : (22:06)
Okay. So now let’s talk about the farming part cuz that’s some work. What’d you raise?

Ken: (22:11)
Was I already,

Bunny : (22:13)
Well no, what did you raise as a crop?

Ken: (22:17)
Boom. Corn and green. So Malo and the pop, I was partners all the home place. Mm-hmm. , it was broke out and Alice was about 400 and some odd acres.

Bunny : (22:33)
Wow. Did you have a tractor?

Ken: (22:35)
Yeah, we had a tractor. Yeah. Told the story the other day about Pop’s first tractor.

Bunny : (22:41)
That’s a good story. I’d like to hear it again.

Ken: (22:44)
Well he had had that first tractor, the old Alice Cmer that he run over the well with. Cause it wouldn’t go. Whoa.

Bunny : (22:54)
Because he was used to having a horse, having a horse pull his plow.

Ken: (22:58)
Well Papa always plowed till he got the tractor with his two team. Nick and John. Mm-hmm. . But in 46 right after the war they were trying to, to have a help to the farmers. Mm-hmm . And until that time, the war effort took all of a manufacturing. But they started making tractor actors and because of age and years farming pop put in for and got a two row H farm tractor. We had that. But in 47 some of the boys got tractors. They were veterans and Milton and Wink Gotti and all of them guys got the ems, which was four row tractors.

Bunny : (24:01)
Wow. So you did 400 acres with four row tractor.

Ken: (24:05)
Most of it was the two row tractor. Oh, but, but

Speaker 6: (24:10)
Your dad didn’t know how to stop that tractor,

Ken: (24:12)
Did he? No, not the old tractor. He knew how, but he got excited. He never had had one. And he was going to go get water that first morning. We had an old sled that he usually hooked the two horses to and I rode on it and it had two barrels. Pitch five gallon barrel steel barrels that pulled it down a quarter mile to the well and had a windows with a bucket. And we drawed up three gallons at a time. And

Bunny : (24:53)
Is that’s your household water?

Ken: (24:55)
Yeah, we took it, took it up, parked it right out east of the house. Mm-hmm and put two number two tubs over the top of it. You didn’t have, you went out there and dipped water out and needed for the house.

Bunny : (25:11)
Wow. Okay.

Ken: (25:13)
And uh, you didn’t waste any

Bunny : (25:17)
I bet.

Ken: (25:18)
No. You didn’t have water fights ? No. Whenever you got caught card. But he had gotten where he could kinda run that h pretty good. But I run that tractor and somewhere, I actually cannot remember how he got one of them tractors that he bought from the boys. They uh, so we had a H and an M, but he was still awful busy cause we had to prepare the ground then go to the house and put the plant or something. Plant him. Then we had to cultivate the baby crops

Bunny : (26:12)
And pray for rain.

Ken: (26:14)
Pray for rain

Bunny : (26:16)
Because there wasn’t irrigation.

Ken: (26:18)
No irrigation. And the wind that sandy land, we prayed the wind wouldn’t blow too hard. Cause if it blowed straight down the road, that baby crop it, the heat would burn it and you’d have to replant. Then you’ve got it up so high and then you cultivated and let it grow to maturity. Right. Until the broom corn was ready to pull. It was pretty busy. Most time after Betty and I got moved into the little house, she’s always bringing me iced tea and stuff to the field. Pinky. I

Speaker 7: (27:14)
Just, I was told you were supposed to do that

Ken: (27:16)
.

Speaker 7: (27:17)
Huh? I was told you were supposed to. I was supposed to do that. . You

Ken: (27:23)
Was told.

Speaker 7: (27:24)
I was told.

Ken: (27:25)
Told

Speaker 7: (27:26)
Your mom probably.

Ken: (27:27)
Well, I was a baby of the family. My mama still looked out for me

Speaker 7: (27:32)
Too. . That’s

Ken: (27:33)
True. And she never drove. She lived a full life. I guess she ever drove a vehicle.

Speaker 7: (27:41)
Oh, she didn’t? Oh she never drove. No,

Ken: (27:44)
Not that I don’t know. Uh, she put up with the lot of different things.

Speaker 7: (27:51)
She always had people around to drive for her, but I didn’t drive either till after we got married.

Ken: (27:57)
Yeah. There’s a lot of stories that go along.

Speaker 7: (28:00)
, let’s, let’s skip that part.

Ken: (28:04)
Oh, way back there before we got, well most kids and grandkids might be interested in was whenever I went into the trucking business, when I was still cording Betty and I went into the trucking business because when I was 14 I got my driver’s license.

Speaker 7: (28:29)
Oh yeah.

Ken: (28:30)
And we didn’t have nothing with him. He couldn’t buy no vehicle cause of the war after and trying to reconstruct after World War ii. And I kept on trying to find the rigs so I could cord Betty. This was back in courting days. And finally we had a pretty good crop and a lot of the grain had to go on the ground because the wind was blowing the stalks over and we had to combine it green and pilot on the road. Pop found a to and a half Ford, 47 Ford truck that used to be a semi that’ll make ’em think. And the old boy traded it off and he said he’s got a bed on him and I’ll sign your note at the bank and you can use it to court Betty . But we gotta haul up all of that grain off Burrow wants a lot of it in Los Lu said his dairy.

Bunny : (29:43)
Oh, your brother-in-law?

Ken: (29:45)
Yeah. Rodey.

Bunny : (29:46)
No. Yeah, yeah. Your brother-in-law. Yeah.

Ken: (29:49)
Rho his husband. Mm-hmm. . Anthony’s dad.

Bunny : (29:52)
Right.

Ken: (29:54)
And I said, I can do that.

Bunny : (29:56)
You were 14?

Ken: (29:57)
Well I had the driver’s license. 14, 15. Yeah. So we had all that grain on the ground, hard ground, hard road. And he said, burrow wants to load the grain. And I’d gotten go pick her up two or three times

Bunny : (30:16)
In the grain truck.

Ken: (30:17)
Yeah. That’s all I had. man. I was a Richard And you have to remember that this was during the time of oh, 66.

Bunny : (30:30)
Right. Tulane Route 66 2

Ken: (30:34)
Lane 66 across the United States.

Bunny : (30:38)
Yeah.

Ken: (30:39)
And this and here with the load would run 35 to 40 something. Never much on 40 except downhill praying somebody didn’t stop in front of you.

Bunny : (30:53)
.

Ken: (30:54)
My dad didn’t get to drive until he was 42. He never had to drive in a car until, and he wouldn’t drive that truck. Here I was 14 with mama sitting in the middle. Pop sat over by the door for nearly eight hours to get to Los Luna. We didn’t get into Los Lunas, we went to I 66. She went straight in Albuquerque. Right. Then you went over tole and went through Isle Uhhuh and headed towards Los Luna. Right. And you went to the Bosque Farms. Mm-hmm. . And that’s where Bur roadie had there dairy and then milking probably 20, 25 cows. And they’d see us coming down the road and the minute burl scenes coming down the road, he went out there and hooked his old tractor up to a hammer mill to beat that milo into Marsh mush to feed to his dairy cows. And I didn’t get to get out of that truck until I, I backed up to this hammer mill and scooped every bit of it over into this hammer mill that bloated into a grainery. And we got through rodeo, always had a good meal and some kind of pie and sometimes rolls boys, Wilber Henry would help a little bit, but not much. We probably made that time. Five or six of them loads.

Speaker 7: (32:41)
Oh, you did it more than once? Oh yeah. Oh, .

Ken: (32:45)
I mean, I was trucking

Speaker 7: (32:48)

Ken: (32:49)
And old six.

Speaker 7: (32:50)
You came for that truck

Ken: (32:53)
And it just a pop set over there and dozed a little bit. And mom read me every sign on the highway and sometimes it’d get nearly dark and they have poor lights. We nearly hit horses on the road a number of times and stuff. And old 66, regardless of people, it was the greatest road that ever happened to the United States, but it was a very narrow two-lane road.

Speaker 7: (33:27)
Was there a lot of traffic?

Ken: (33:29)
You better believe it.

Speaker 7: (33:30)
Oh, they pilot behind

Ken: (33:33)
Him and most of them was running 40, 45 and the fifties. And they were pretty thoughtful when they made it. They put turnouts.

Speaker 7: (33:42)
Oh yeah.

Ken: (33:44)
And I looked behind me and there’d be eight or 10 cars. They couldn’t pass. There’s too many coming the other direct mm-hmm. . I had to pull off.

Speaker 7: (33:53)
Did you ever have a flat tire? Huh? No.

Ken: (33:56)
And he got back home and soon as he got back home, I went to Harlem at the Tookum Carry and I’d go down there early in the morning and load love. And even the tookum carry that 10,000 pounds would take an hour and a hour and a half. But the thing about it, when I got it to the elevator where I was selling it, they had a lift. I didn’t have to scoop at all. And I’d get up there, get one off, get another one. Loaded. Gas was cheap. I’d buying my own gas. How

Speaker 7: (34:37)
Much was gas?

Ken: (34:39)
Oh it, that time like carried 17 cents and the truck done pretty good on gas. A lot better than I do now. And then about that time we was getting up, up pretty close to where we, same about getting married and pop found. I know one ton Ford pickup. We could trade his truck in. Um, man, I proud of that is no big one. One ton F three

Speaker 7: (35:11)
What year?

Ken: (35:12)
47 I think. Oh, okay. No, that truck was 49, I guess Ford Green

Speaker 7: (35:21)
The year before we got married.

Ken: (35:23)
Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 7: (35:25)
Was it new dad? Did you get a new truck? No, it wasn’t new.

Ken: (35:29)
Oh. And this is one we had when we married. And of course all farmers, it had worth the salt had a big pickup and they fixed sideboards on that to where they could haul the grain in the pickup.

Bunny : (35:45)
Yeah. Well, so mom te tell us a little bit about what it was like living in Porter and San Hu with all that family around. I mean, did you, I mean, what’d you do for fun?

Betty : (35:57)
We had a, a constant family. Either the cherries or the heirs is the cherries were actually a, a much more fun party family.

Bunny : (36:07)
Were they different from

Betty : (36:09)
Your family? Uh, yeah. , the cherries were more boisterous. They might get into a, a big political fight. Anything that they could find to argue about, they liked that. But before we all left to go home, everybody was loving each other’s neck and we just, uh, had a lot of fun. The heirs is, were more quiet, kind of like papa. Well,

Ken: (36:35)
Some of the in-laws drink

Betty : (36:37)
A little. Oh yeah. Some of those. Terry’s had fun with some drinking. They got over that after the years. But, uh, Sunday Sundays were either at Grandma Myers’s or Grandma Terry’s every Sunday. We all gathered the had all, we seldom had a Saturday at home a Sunday. And everybody had three or four kids and the kids had fun and the grandma’s had lots of food. And I don’t know if we even took food. I can’t remember if we took food. We just went and ate their food and,

Bunny : (37:26)
And there was a,

Betty : (37:27)
A lot of food and we, they, both of these families were close knit and, uh, very loving families. And our kids grew up knowing all their cousins were close. We might have a lot of ups and downs and not a lot of sickness in either family. It was just, we were just a fun-loving American family and loved it that way.

Bunny : (37:58)
I wanted to pop back in right here because we really never came to an end in this conversation. As you can imagine, my parents love to tell stories, but it’s also a little taxing for them to talk for an hour or more. Thank you all for listening to these episodes with Ken and Betty. I’m so glad that they agreed to be on the podcast and I hope you enjoyed hearing their stories as much as I enjoyed talking to them. Thanks for listening to the I Love New Mexico podcast. And find more episodes wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. And at the links in the show description. If you’re liking what you’re hearing, please feel free to review and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcast. Thanks so much.