El Rancho Grande

In August of 1942, when I was in the second grade at Oakhurst School and little brother Dave was going to Mrs. Reagan's nursery school on Springdale Road. Dad came home from work one day and told us that he was being sent to Columbus, New Mexico for three or four days to repair a diesel engine generator that powered an emergency landing field and weather station for the Civil Aeronautics Authority (now the FAA).

He and mom decided we should all go with him. It would be an exciting chance for the family to see the real "Out West," and there was still time before school started back for the fall semester.

When we got there, there was absolutely no place to stay. It was about to be 'tent city' for us, when the local customs agent said he knew a rancher that had a two room adobe bungalow that a family had just moved out of. He introduced us to the rancher and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Matthews. Mr. Matthews and Dad loaded up furniture and hauled it to the bungalow so we could set up housekeeping that evening - coal oil stoves and lights! We were really roughing it! The family would eventually refer to the little bungalow as "El Rancho Grande", the name of a song that was popular at the time.

The next day, Dad found out the diesel engine needed a new crankshaft. It was right at the beginning of the war - before gas rationing - but parts and material were scarce. The crankshaft had to be ordered from the factory in Springfield, Massachusetts. What was to have been a 3 or 4 day trip turned out to be nearly two months that the family would never forget.

Every day, twice a day, the folks went to the railroad depot hoping the new crankshaft had arrived. Brother Dave and I hoped it would never get there, as we had fallen in love with Columbus and the old west. I don't know about Dave, but I dreamed of going back there to live until I was an young adult and realized there was no way for me to make a living there.

Our nearest neighbor was a railroad section foreman and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts who lived about a quarter of a mile away. The place where we lived was seven miles west of Columbus and about 300 yards from the Mexican border - a five-strand barbed fence. It had a name - The sign on the railroad siding said "Hermanas." I suppose the railroad surveyors had named it after the nearby mountain range called "Tres Hermanas" - Spanish for "Three Sisters."

On our first night there we were awakened by the "coyoties" howl - real scary to a couple of city bred kids. We went back to sleep to the "singing" of the telegraph wires over by the railroad. We imagined the singing was the voices of people talking on them.

We were invited up to the rancher's home for supper one evening. It was the night that our country had its first nationwide "blackout practice" after the beginning of World War II. Everyone in the nation was supposed to turn out their lights or drap their windows during the practice - so that enemy planes wouldn't be guided by the house lights in case of a real bombing raid.

We were in the middle of nowhere, but without question the grown-ups turned out the coal oil lamps and we all sat glued to a battery powered radio listening to a national station reporting the success of the blackout practice.

During the blackout, Dad and Mr. Matthews talked about how the airway beacon over on Hopi Hill about three miles away never shut down and wondered if the enemy could it use it as a landmark to find us.

When the blackout was nearly over, Dad told a story that was going around at the time:

"It seems that one of our bombers was on a training mission and one of its 100-pound practice bombs got stuck in the bomb bay. The crew worked and worked trying to get rid of it so it wouldn't go off when they landed.

"When they finally got it loose, they were passing over a barn where there was a farmer milking a cow. The bomb hit the barn 'dead center' and the explosion blew it all to smithereens."

-- Pause ---

Mr. Matthews: "Oh my land! What on earth happened to the farmer?"

Dad: "I'm afraid he was left holding the bag."