Episode 55 – You can also listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts, and Amazon Music
About the Episode:
This may be one of the most important episodes I’ve ever recorded. It is certainly my favorite. Interviewing my parents, Kenneth and Betty Terry, lifelong New Mexicans was such a pleasure. I hope you enjoy hearing from them as much as I loved hearing their stories.
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Featuring:
Ken & Betty Terry
Ken and Betty are Bunny’s parents and native New Mexicans. They live less and 30 miles away from where they were born in Quay County. Ken and Betty are pillars of their community in Logan, NM and both have unique and interesting “New Mexico stories.” They love this state and the experiences they have shared here. They are also the number one reason Bunny loves New Mexico and gets to call this beautiful state home.
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. One of our goals here is to share stories that you might not hear elsewhere and to introduce you to people that are unique in the state of New Mexico. And today’s podcast is no exception. Before we begin, I’m going to ask your patients because, um, we have a guest today that’s 90 years old and the other guest is 88. And so, um, as one would hope, when one is 90 years old, um, I’m asking for your patience because this podcast guest tends to talk slowly. He’s very thoughtful, he has great stories to tell, and he just happens to be my dad, Kenneth Terry. And the other guest is my mom, Betty Terry. They were both born in Quay County in Eastern New Mexico. Uh, my dad in 1932, my mom in 1934, and they’ve seen and experienced parts of New Mexico and events in New Mexico that most of us would only read about in history books. And I sat down with them over a period of several days and just asked them to tell stories about what they remembered best. My dad has some funny stories about traveling to Albuquerque on Highway 66. They like talking about, um, the Depression and the WPA projects. But most of all, they are the reason that I love New Mexico so much. They are full of life and full of interest in where they are and they’re so, so, you know, my favorite thing about, um, the people that, that I find the most fascinating is they’re not only interesting, they’re interest dead. So I’d ask you to, um, take a listen, enjoy and devote yourself to being interesting and interested in what’s happening around you, especially in the land of Enchantment. So here we go. I hope you enjoy it.
Bunny: (03:12)
Okay, dad, so I’m gonna hand the mic to you and you just tell the first thing you wanna talk about that you remember about your New Mexico story.
Ken: (03:23)
Well, when I think about New Mexico and living in New Mexico these 90 years, and I go thinking back, there’s lots of things I forgot and there’s lots of things I remember. I guess probably the first thing I think about family, first thing I remember is don’t chase the chickens.
Bunny: (04:05)
Don’t chase the chickens.
Ken: (04:09)
Yeah, don’t kick the dog. Don’t walk out in front of them. Neighbors seen me like was always don’t do this and do that. But I guess the thing I remember is because I was with, uh, everybody treated me as I remember kinda like a China dial or something, except the older brothers. And I was certainly a pain to them. I guess the story I remember is when you come from a long line of kids and all of ’em were born in the house with the midwife, what do you do with the other ones? I remember the story. Your I first came, you gotta go down to that far corner. This corner mile and we want will come get you. Just stay down there.
Bunny: (05:48)
Was that, was that when Granny was in labor? Yes. Oh yeah. She’d send the kids down to the corner of the, yeah. Oh,
Ken: (05:57)
And why that stuck with me. I don’t know. And then there always a remarks idea from the older brothers, especially maybe the cows who get him before he gets out.
Bunny: (06:16)
,
Ken: (06:20)
We don’t need no more kids then
Bunny: (06:23)
.
Ken: (06:25)
That’s one of the first things I remember the rest of it. Until I was walking age and doing age, I don’t remember much except there was always somebody watching over me.
Bunny: (06:43)
Well, didn’t your brothers try to scare you all the time?
Ken: (06:47)
Oh Lord, yes. From the time we was born, Marvin and I was close enough that especially the older sisters was around, we spent the half of time trying to figure out how to have Halloween every weekend, every night, waiting for bedtime and stuff with carbs and pluses. Mash. Yeah.
Bunny: (07:19)
So who, who’s, how does it go? Who was the oldest? How does it go? All the kids in your family? Who’s Henry and then Thelma? No, Henry then Rodie
Ken: (07:31)
Then. Then Rodie,
Bunny: (07:33)
And then Janie.
Ken: (07:35)
Janie and then Florence
Bunny: (07:38)
And then Milton. Oh, and then Thelma.
Ken: (07:41)
Well, mostly the ones that signed Secur was Thelma. Laverne and Verne Florence when she was there cause was having a family of her own because, and her family, I had three or four nieces who was older than me since she was the older sister.
Bunny: (08:08)
And the one that’s left is Nell, right?
Ken: (08:12)
Nell’s the older one
Bunny: (08:13)
Left. And how old is she? 91.
Ken: (08:17)
She’s 90.
Bunny: (08:19)
She 91
Ken: (08:20)
91. And, uh, Oliver and Lene and was older than me. Cause there quite a few with five older sisters. Well, lot of nieces.
Bunny: (08:39)
Well, and Henry had kids that were older than you
Ken: (08:42)
Too, right? Yeah, Henry had two kids when he passed away and she was carrying another one.
Bunny: (08:50)
Oh, which one was that? Linda, you gotta speak up Mom. You can jump right in. ,
Ken: (08:58)
Merle was six or seven. Malva was
Bunny: (09:02)
When their daddy, when, when Henry died. Yeah.
Ken: (09:05)
And then Linda come all about a long afterwards.
Bunny: (09:10)
Well, okay, so now let’s ask Mom. Mom, you tell what’s the cause I, I do wanna say here that um, you’re, you both live in the same county where you were born, right? Right. Yeah,
Betty: (09:23)
Just a few miles from each other. Farming community, big families. And it’s between Logan and Sanho and Quake County, county, little community called Porter. Very good school. We all went to school together and, uh, friendly. I think that’s the thing I like about New Mexico now, is that to me a little community like we have had then and got lots of advice. But I always knew that I was loved. We all worked hard. Our, our dad’s farmed and my dad and, and Ken’s dad both raised broom corn and broom Corn is a hard crop that takes a lot of hand labor. Saw all the neighbors.
Bunny: (10:17)
So what was it for?
Betty: (10:18)
To make brooms? Yeah, .
Bunny: (10:21)
Before you made brooms out of synthetic,
Betty: (10:24)
You had to pull that straw out of the sheet. The stalk and, uh, neighbors all went from one house to another, exchanging work and working for each other. Uh, back when we were young, Chris and I had to work one row of broom corn together to keep up with everybody else. And we didn’t keep up, but our dad paid us a little bit and we, we spent lots of hours sitting and looking at the Sears Roebuck catalog to see how much money we could spend on a little bit of school clothes, probably shoes and coats and, and, uh, my mother sew all of our dresses.
Bunny: (11:09)
What year were you born?
Betty: (11:11)
I was born in 1934, uh, just almost at the end of the depression. And so there’s lots of sad stories about along about that time. But I was too young to be involved in any of that. And I think that I liked New Mexico because I liked the four Seasons, four definite seasons. My favorite is the au and our climate is not what anybody would desire, but it’s just what I like. And, uh, I think that we’re very blessed.
Bunny: (11:54)
Well, let me, okay, so I wanna ask another question. Um, what do you, do either of you have a memory of the Dust Bowl? Were you too little to remember the Dust bowl?
Ken: (12:08)
I don’t remember how the Dust Bowl to be be about. And one of the things that would make you think of it, the wind was the violent. Then when we’d come in from school, mom always had something cornbread or something, but you didn’t dare touch it. Whole home comfort stove, it had the pipe going out because of the electricity generator power would jump your finger into that stove.
Bunny: (12:47)
Oh. Because of the wind, because the wind was creating that
Ken: (12:51)
An electricity in the Uhhuh spark would jumped three to four inches.
Betty: (12:55)
Wow.
Ken: (12:58)
And I remember how she tried to keep the dust down when last times she needed a new room and didn’t have enough money to buy a new room. Never once in a while we’d have enough milk money for her to get another piece of oven, but never complete cover more wood floors. But the, at least it make it a lot easier to clean and as far as the dust boat. But a lot of people would having trouble breathing and stuff like that cause of the dirt and the dust.
Betty: (13:51)
I can vaguely remember standing out in our yard and we were all would all be out there looking to the north usually is where it would become black.
Betty: (14:06)
It was a black sandstorm. And I, I had to be very, very young. It didn’t mean anything to me. When the, the sandstorms began to mean something to me was after we were married and lived in the weening house over there, three little rooms and, and uh, that was before they deep plowed the fields. And so the sand was horrible and we put quilts over the doors and the windows. But every night before we would go to bed, we, I didn’t think we could go to bed until it was all cleaned out. And many times we used shovels
Bunny: (14:47)
Wow.
Betty: (14:48)
To sweep the dirt up in shovels to carry out of our little house. And then I’d mop and then we’d go to bed and the next day might, might be the same thing over again. But, uh, we lived through
Ken: (15:00)
It. I remember the, this part of New Mexico was sandy land country. Anyway, as a matter of fact, my folks left Oklahoma to come to this country. Cause it was Sandy and sandy land country with grew better watermelons in the old tight land in Oklahoma. That’s the main reason they moved. And so that left the, when you didn’t have enough rain to get the ground covered with grass and stuff, it would’ve blow it out and the tumbleweeds would come up. And before you could get my poor dad part of his life during that, throwing the tumbleweeds over praying, they’d go to the neighbors and get away from. And, but that always be some stick. And I remember it a little bitty feller. Me and Marvin Nel had have to get that old wagon and Old Egg and John pulling that wagon. And they
Betty: (16:30)
Were the horses, right?
Ken: (16:32)
Yeah. That’s his name. Mm-hmm. , John Ngg and John or Ngg was kinda like part of the family and papa and all the old posts and stages as they call it, part of posts and stuff. Because that sand started growing in two days time, it would cover a fence completely. Wow. Cows could just walk over it. So we’d have to take the horses and wire it to the old pole and then take it either new water war, pulling up that war out, put it up higher on the, a lot of them old fences in bad spots would be as high as seven feet tall. Cows could still walk over or sand pile up. Wow. When the tbo waves were down and John and Nick lived and done pretty well and we was always tired and give up. Cause you gotta run the cows back in before you fixed the fence cuz they’d already been out. So during the Dust Bowl days, you didn’t get to stay home. We fixed a lot of ’em. When the wind was blowing, you’d think Sure. Your eyes was going out. And then when mom got a hold of you trying to get the sand outta your ears, .
Ken: (18:16)
We didn’t have showers. We didn’t have running water. We had running get the water sand off of you. But you said during the Dust Bowl, you literally had to sleep in sand. Cause it was a matter of fact. It was matter of life, but you couldn’t keep it out.
Bunny: (18:51)
So you were little really little. Both of you were really little during the Dust Bowl, but so did both of your dads during the depression work, they had WPA jobs, didn’t they? Mom? You tell first?
Betty: (19:06)
Uh, yeah, very much. W p a dad worked on, uh, roads, some bridges. He was not at home all the time, but, uh, were
Bunny: (19:21)
They close by?
Betty: (19:22)
Most of them, the jobs were pretty close by. I I don’t remember a whole lot of details about it, but I can remember listening to them talk about didn’t mean anything to me. I I know we were poor, but, uh, you know, it didn’t, didn’t hit me that it hurt me very much. We always had food on the table, biscuits and gravy, and sometimes mush for supper. Uh, we killed our own animals, made lard or used lard and made soap and rendered lard and put the sausage into socks of like big socks and hung in the top of the barn and hung the hams and the bacons and, and, uh, canned everything. Had big gardens canned at all. We, we didn’t suffer. I didn’t suffer a bit. I I, I’m sure my parents did, but I didn’t. It was just, we had fun. We laid out in the yard at night on quilts, no air conditioning.
Betty: (20:39)
So the houses were hot. But we all laid out in the yard on quilts and told stories and looked up in the sang songs. My dad loved to sing and, and encouraged all of us to try to sing. My older sisters all sang, me and Christelle were too little and too stubborn. I guess we didn’t do much of that, but our, my older sisters did. But later in life, we always, Ken and I always said, we looked, looked up in the sky and saw those lights up in the sky and wondered what on earth they were. But they were stars that were moving around. Actually, they were airplanes, but we didn’t know it. And would have never dreamed that one of those days was gonna be flying around on those airplanes all over the world. Your life is a mystery.