Pictures  Recalling  Memories
From
Our Life on The  Real Homestead  my Father
Homesteaded in  1926

These are just a few of the thousands of memories from the past life on the  place
in New Mexico.  The baby above is my sister, Jewel Katherine Easley and is
now living in Anchorage, Alaska, having retired from the  U.S. Customs
Service  and has grandchildren of her own. This picture was taken in 1939,
and the  bicycle is new from Montgomery ward mail order in Denver.  It was bought with money Don, my brother (now deceased) and I earned picking up pinto beans that leaked from the threshing machine.  It cost   $27.25.  As you see, we did everything ourselves including drilling the well, sawing wood on a buzz saw us boys made and even "turned the offset and threading by hand with a file while turning
the shaft by hand, and  we built our own truck from junk-pile parts.   The watch is the actual watch we used to tell the time all through the 1930s and I still possess it and it still runs, though it is minus an hour hand.
The two state road graders  built our  first  road.  Up to then we used "cow trails" for roads everywhere, even on the 45-mile trips to town  (Mountainair, New Mexico).
Also as you can see, Mom did her share of the work too. This picture of her running the well drilling machine is real.  She ran it as well as dad, and they took turns
to "spell" each other from the very hard work involved.  Us kids took our turns also, but with supervision, we be became quite adept.  By the way the well turned out to be 765 feet deep.   In the lower picture one can see the windmill atop the well after its
completion.  The windmill is a 12-foot Samson  mill on a 35-foot tower with a 12-foot footprint.
 

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