One in a collection by Allen Bachoroski,
Local Historical Writer,
Tales Along the
Highway of Legends
Note: This
is one in a series of historical stories about local families
in the Trinidad region.
Click here to find out more
about how these stories were collected.
David
met Clara Mae McInturff at a high school dance in Branson
while she was living in town and attending school. She
and her parents, J.L. and May McIntruff had come to the
area about 40 miles north of Branson from Oklahoma with
hope of homesteading a farm on the rim of the Chaquaqua
Canyon. The young couple dated off and on for about two
years, and during this time Clara Mae moved back to her
parent's ranch. On each date Dave drove all of the thirty
miles to her home, and then if they went anywhere they
had to drive another thirty or forty miles and then return.
So, they did a lot of travelling in both good and bad
weather. The main diversion was the dances held in the
school houses in Branson and Trinchera.
When Dave was almost twenty years old he and Clara Mae
was sixteen, the two young people decided they wanted
to be married. Dave's father was so tired of Dave being
on the road all the time during the courting process and
also of all the gas he was using, he finally decided to
give his consent to the marriage. The wedding was held
in the First Baptist Church in Trinidad on May 7, 1929
with his sister Laura Ellen and her husband, Jimmy Fox,
serving as Matron of Honor and Best Man. They spent a
glorious week honeymoon in Denver and vicinity and then
returned to the ranch. Dave moved his new bride into three
rooms of a little house that was in the yard of the Butcher
Block Ranch property. During the summer, Dave's younger
sister, Clara, shared the second room with her classmates,
which didn't make for much privacy. Cooking was done over
at the main house, and it was a very poor arrangement
in the cold winter months.
Near the end of the first year of married life, a bouncing
baby boy named Kenneth Ray arrived. After the baby's birth
they fixed and extra bedroom into a kitchen and solved
the problem of having to go to the main house to cook.
Three years later a baby girl named Betty Gail came along.
By this time the drought had set in and the $25 per month
wages didn't go very far. Dave had to cash in his insurance
policy to pay for the expenses of the new baby.
In the same year, 1933, Dave's dad decided that Dave's
herd of cattle was too much for the drought-stricken ranchland
to handle. The pastures were drying up and water became
scarce, so Dave applied for a government loan, and Lee
Rose, a good friend and neighbor, loaned him gas, groceries,
and expense money while he looked for a few acres of land
to which he could move his cattle. He leased pastureland
from the CF&I near Aguilar and trail-herded his cattle
and a few head of horses to the new location. He decided
if he had more cattle he could lease a ranch and move
to it and surely things would be better. He leased the
Beirne Ranch, owned by Frank Zele, located above Delagua,
near Gulnare. Dave Karsh helped him buy fifty more head
of mixed heifers at a sale in Denver which were shipped
by rail to Aguilar and the driven to the ranch in the
mountains. Clara Mae, Dave, and two small children lived
on the Bierne Ranch for almost two years, with prices
and the drought becoming worse all the time. This was
during the now famous dust bowl days and many time the
dust clouds rolled so bad, kerosene lamps had to be lit
in the middle of the day. These were very depressing times,
and it became worse when the government took over and
got rid of portions of everyone's herds, as they were
considered surplus in the drought-stricken land and not
enough food was being raised to feed them. It was heartbreaking
thing to see something a man worked for all his life counted
out, driven a few miles to a huge pit, and slaughtered
and then be handed a check for anywhere from 80 cents
to $4.00 per head.
With difficulties he went through in the mountains, David
seemed to feel those were two of the outstanding years
he ever had. He was his own boss, able to make his own
decisions, and allowed to think for himself for the first
time in his life. Living in the beautiful mountain country,
surrounded by tall pines and things too beautiful to describe,
does something to a man's heart and soul.
Postscript: David father, C.P. Newcomb, died in 1961,
eight months after Dave's death; Veva Hawkins Newcomb,
his mother, died in 1976; Clara Mae Newcomb Johnson, Dave's
wife, who wrote this memorial of his life, married Ben
E. Johnson six years after Dave's death and died in 1968;
Ray is retired and resides in Warwick, Rhode Island; Betty
resides in the mountain area near Monument Lake and teaches
music part-time at Trinidad State Junior College;Martha,
who was 14 years old when her father died, lives in Xenia,
Ohio; and David, who was twelve when his father died,
is an engineer with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. The main event when the family gets together
at Betty and Dick's home is to climb Fisher's Peak which
they, like all Trinidad natives, consider their very own
mountain.
(Note:
if you have Photos of this family or know of anyone that
does, please have them get in touch with us so that we
might share some photos of the family here)