Joy and Marian - The Moms

 


Oh, the Moms....Joy and Marian....

 Without the Moms, our lives on the Currier Ranch would have been much less colorful, much less secure, much less joyful.  Without the Moms, the nine children born to life on the Ranch would have had very different childhoods and ultimately, adulthoods.  So....an introduction and tribute to each of the two Moms who gave us life!

                                                    Joy Fitzgerald

Since Joy (Ritchie Joy Fitzgerald) was the first to marry into our Ranch family, Carol and I will first share our remembrances of this special Mom followed by some of our memories of Marian.

Joy was born in Farmington, New Mexico, the first child of Maurice B. and Inez Crandall Fitzgerald.  The little family moved to Durango when Joy was very small.  Her father was a teacher and her mother a nurse.  Following several years in Durango, they moved to Grand Junction, Colorado when her dad continued his business school teaching profession.  Joy was a town girl who fell in love with a cowboy.

 Little did this twenty-year old town girl REALLY know that when she married R. Carleton Currier her life would change dramatically.  Life on the Ranch in the mid-1940s was anything but easy, particularly when Joy's mother-in-law was a very dominant matriarch who had tried to foist another girl onto Carleton and was not happy when he made his own choice and married Joy. 

 Life without running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing was TOUGH for gentle town girl.  Joy didn't know how to cook or, or much less, how to start a fire in the wood cook stove.  These were things that had to be learned on the "job" all the while dodging the silent ridicule of her mother-in-law.  Lighting the kerosene lanterns at dusk was also a task to be learned.  The loneliness and isolation in the early years was almost unbearable.  Had it not been for some absolutely lovely relatives, including George and Lydia Currier (Carleton’s uncle and aunt), she might not have survived.

Carleton’s and Joy’s first house was a log cabin with one big room on the ground floor that served as the kitchen and living room.  A ladder led up to an attic bedroom on the second floor.  Joy often remarked that getting up and down that ladder when she was pregnant with her first child was a perilous endeavor in the latter months when trips to the outhouse became more frequent!  Three of Joy and Carleton's children were born while the family lived in the cabin.  An addition was built before the third baby was born that added much more space as well as a stairway to the second floor and an additional bedroom.  This house still stands and brings back many memories. 

Electricity came to the Ranch in about 1949 thanks to the expansion of service by the Grand Valley Rural Electric Association.  Joy said that it took her a week or so to remember that all she had to do was flip a switch to have light rather than lighting the lanterns.

In approximately 1950, the couple built a new house...a big one with running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, a furnace, and a modern stove!  It still stands today and is a favorite vacation spot for Joy and Carleton's children and their families and friends.

 In 1945, Joy welcomed a friend!  Carleton's brother Franklin married Marian Augusta Quist and moved to another log cabin on the Ranch.  What a wonderful gift it was to have another young woman with which to share fun and trials of the Ranch life. 

Marian’s and Franklin’s log house was really two cabins joined together by a covered breezeway in the middle.  One side was the kitchen/living room and the other the bedroom.  There was also an attic above which later served as bedroom space.  This cabin also was without running water, plumbing or electricity.  They, too, built a new big house around 1950 that still stands and is used today.  The old cabins still exist, one converted to a “store” and the other to a hired help cabin.

Marian also grew up in Grand Junction and came from a big family having three sisters and three brothers.  A very happy person, Marian was a boon to Joy's solitary journey as a new and very lonely young wife.  They became close and enjoyed many laughs and also many tears. 

The two Moms shared much in those early years each with little ones to care for...there was a new baby every year for the first five or six years in one house or the other!!  Over the years from 1945 to 1958, Joy and Carleton welcomed five babies into their lives- Marcia, Tom, Dan, Merial and George.  Marian and Franklin brought four children into the world, Carol, Donna, Beth and Allen.  Both Moms were Moms to all nine kids and were always there to console, cheer on, guide, and/or dole out some discipline when needed.  

Carol and I remember a particular discipline incident in which she, Marcia and Tom pulled a very naughty prank on one of the younger kids.  Joy told them all to “STOP where you are!” and that if we ran, whoever ran the farthest would get the hardest spanking.  Marcia stopped and received a smart smack on the bottom.  Tom ran halfway up a hill and got a fairly firm smack on his rear.  Carol ran to the top of the hill and Joy was so winded by the time she got to the top that Carol got the easiest spanking ever!  Oh, the injustice!

Once each family had a car, the Moms had to get used to driving 60 miles to Grand Junction to buy groceries every week or ten days.  That meant loading up all kids who couldn't be left at the Ranch, with reasonable expectation that they would behave, into the car, driving the 60 miles, doing the shopping, and driving the 60 miles back.  Driving that far with four or more kids in the car could be very trying!  Joy was great at making up stories to entertain the restless passengers and Marian could be counted on to sing songs in her beautiful voice.

Both Marian and Joy had a passionate love for music.  Marian was a gifted vocalist who loved opera and Joy, a talented cellist.  Music carried the two of them through many rough times.

Marian was the kind of person who was always willing to lovingly take in "stray" family members...every summer (and sometimes beyond summer) she mothered several nieces and nephews who, for whatever reason, needed a place to be.  Joy, too, was host Mom to several nephews and nieces who needed a new perspective or whose parents couldn't care for them for a bit.  I remember Marian telling me that if a baby or a child is crying, they most likely need a big hug or something to eat.  She was always ready with both!   Both Joy and Marian welcomed, with open arms, a long parade of their children's friends who came to visit the Ranch in the summer.  There was always "room for one more" in either house. 

Marian coped for most of her life with the fact that Franklin, who served in the Marine Corps in the South Pacific in WWII, suffered from PTSD, a condition that was not recognized until more recently.  In retrospect, I think it was, at times, very difficult on Marian and their children.

Joy had her own struggles, suffering from bi-polar syndrome for a good share of her life, yet another unrecognized condition that wasn't diagnosed until she was in her late forties.

Both Marian and Joy were women of faith.  Both this faith and their music were great help in adjusting and surviving the primitive Ranch life.

Joy was a skilled seamstress and created many pretty things on her treadle sewing machine.  Once, when first married, she remarked to her very terse and economical father-in-law, Tom, that she really wished she could have a new dress.  When Tom responded that she should "sew up some of those nice flour sacks", she did and was somewhat disappointed to find that the dress was actually quite pretty!  She was also the go-to Mom for 4-H sewing and cooking clubs.  She was also a voracious reader and took us to the library in Grand Junction where the librarian let us check out a big box of books every couple of weeks.  She instilled in all of us a love for reading.

Marian was a wonderful cook who could make almost anything delicious.  Creating new ways and tasteful ways to cook beef was always a challenge since beef was the main course for breakfast, dinner and supper.  Joy did learn to cook but never really took great pleasure in it.  She was delighted when I, at around nine years of age, began to take over the kitchen.

They had the task of preparing three big meals a day for their husbands and any hired men who were working on the Ranch.  These meals included preparing and hauling a hot mid-day dinner to the men, if they were in the middle of a cattle roundup.  Since GrandadTom, the patriarch, did not like to eat from paper plates, this meant taking china and flatware, a full meal with dessert, AND all the kids to wherever the cattle work was.  Dinner was placed on the tailgate of the pickup truck.  After everyone had eaten, leftovers, dishes, and kids were packed up to drive back home. 

 Joy told me once that she and Marian even shared a slip!  Times were lean, and, if one or the other had to dress up to go to town, the shared slip made a dress look so much nicer!!  They were tasked by their mother-in-law with keeping the outhouse clean, and since it was a two-holer, they realized that the little structure was a great private place to escape Chastine's critical eye and sharp ears.  Many conversations took place in the privy. 

Laundry was also a joint effort in the early years.  Mother-in-law Chastine had a gasoline powered wringer washer which had to be operated outside.  Joy and Marian often did all the wash together under the watchful eye of the mother-in-law.  Unfortunately, in the late fall and early winter, the machine could not be used due to weather and all laundry had to done by hand with a wash board and then hung on the clothesline to freeze dry!  What a thrill it must have been when the Moms actually got to have a more modern washer and later, a dryer.

 Initially, each year in December when the hay for the cattle was exhausted, all household goods, kids, cats, chickens, dogs and everything else had to be packed up for the move to the Grand Junction area to the winter Ranch. The cattle and horses were moved, walking on foot herded by the Currier men, hired help and boys.  Some were left at Molina, the mid-way farm/Ranch for the winter.  The rest were driven, on foot, to the Red Ranch northwest of Grand Junction.  These cattle drives took two to four days.  In the early 1050s, trucking took over the livestock moves. Eventually, both families accumulated two of everything so that the only things that had to be moved were the kids, cats, chickens and dogs. 

Neither learned to be accomplished horse women, though both rode occasionally.  There was too much other work to do.  I know that they both would have enjoyed going out with the men on a cattle drive, but Ranch work in those days was "men's work" and women stayed home and tended the kids and house.

I cannot imagine how hard this early life was, but both Joy and Marian stuck it out. I don't think many twenty year olds of today would or could.  Life became easier as modernizations were afforded.  

 

(top    Joy

bottom    Marian)

 

Joy and Marian were both community minded.  Joy tutored and taught and later became a lay minister for the United Church of Christ.  She also played cello in the Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra.  Marian sang frequently for various events and was very active for years in what was known then as the Retarded Children's Association which supported the Downs Syndrome cause.

 Both are no longer with us and we so wish they were!




 

 

 

 

Ranch Kids Learning to Drive....at age SIX!

The free range kids on the Currier Ranch had to learn to drive vehicles at a very early age in order to help with the work on the Ranch.  We loved this!  Our driving experiences started very early....

I remember that, at approximately six years of age, I went with my dad to feed hay to a large field full of cattle wintering at the Red Ranch north of Grand Junction.  The hay was loaded onto the bed of one of the smaller trucks, and I was put in the driver's seat, kneeling on the seat with my little hands firmly clasping the big round steering wheel.  My dad put the truck into the lowest gear and released the clutch so that the truck began to move forward.  I was instructed to steer the truck straight down the field to the end and then turn the key to off when I was almost at the fence posts at the end.  My dad then climbed onto the truck bed and began forking hay off to the hungry cows that swarmed after the truck.  When the truck reached the end, I dutifully turned the key to off thus stopping the slowly moving truck.  My dad climbed back into the cab beside me, restarted the engine, turned the truck around to go the other direction, and we repeated the drive down to the other end, and so on until all the hay was distributed to the cattle.

Later, when our little legs were long enough to reach the clutch and brake pedals, we were taught how to release both pedals ourselves so that the truck would go forward.  We learned how to step on the brake and clutch at the end of the field to stop the truck, but not shut it down.  The next progression in driving on the Ranch was to be trusted to make the turn at the end and continue to drive the other direction.  All of we older kids learned these lessons and became quite adept at driving at a young age.

The biggest issue the dads had with our learning the brake and clutch synchronizations was that for a few trips down the field, the lurching upon release of the clutch and the sudden stops while learning the brake often resulted in the dad or dads being unceremoniously tossed off the back of the truck generally hollering "Great Scott, Marcia (or Carol or Tom or....)!  Take it easy!"

We learned shifting gears on manual transmission vehicles by the time we were 10 or 12 years old.  We also learned to drive the variety of tractors used on the Ranch.  These were more complicated machines with dual brakes and strange clutches with speed determined by a hand lever on some of the tractors.  I remember that one of us occasionally didn't turn in time and got the tractor stuck in a bog or didn't stop in time and mowed down a gate post, but for the most part, our help was appreciated and necessary, and our mistakes were quickly forgiven, but laughed about over the next family meal.  I think the girls got off easier than the boys when a driving incident caused a time consuming work stoppage.

Later, the older three of us learned to drive the small truck (a 1950's one-ton truck) and the two bigger ones (one circa 1937 to haul cattle and one circa 1955, also to haul cattle and sometimes a large water tank).  Those had their own peculiarities, because they had some kind of split gear system that allowed the truck to have twice as many gear ratios and involved some fancy footwork on the gas peddle and clutch to shift up or down.  My brothers eventually learned to also drive a semi-truck that was used to haul larger numbers of cattle. 

There was generally an older car around the Ranch in which the budding drivers, who were getting close to the age for a real driver's license, could practice driving on the Ranch property.  we learned to parallel park between hay bales and were all skilled with manual shifting.  We loved careening around the mown hay fields and the private Ranch roads.  Gas was very inexpensive then!!

I recall one driving job that I found so embarrassing that I wished for a disguise so no one that I knew might recognize me.  In the early winter, as previously described, the cattle, horses, cats, dogs, chickens et al were moved to the lower ranches until spring.  I was tasked with driving a pickup truck, loaded with crates of chickens and burlap bags of farm cats, from the high Ranch to the Red Ranch north of Grand Junction.  All was well until I reached Grand Junction town proper, where at every stop light the chickens would all squawk at top volume and the cats would howl in indignant disgust at their situation!  I begged never to have that task again!!  Now I see it from the distance of time as hilariously funny and rather inconsequential in the scheme of my life!

One of my brothers had a horrifying experience while driving a truck load of big bulls from one ranch to another.  He was driving down the peninsula road to Collbran from the Ranch and was headed down the steep grade into the town of Collbran when his brakes went out.  The sharp turn at the bottom of the grade made it impossible to do anything but go straight.  Straight, though, meant careening over an embankment and trying to avoid the general store at the other side of a parking lot.  The truck rolled, the bulls flew out, the store was missed, and the brother was mostly unscathed.  All of the bulls lived, however, one was never quite right in the head after that and was eventually sold for meat.  Quite a scare for everyone!

Our ability to drive probably saved the Ranch from having to hire an additional man and certainly gave us confidence and skill far in advance of our town friends.