The message forum is an ongoing dialogue between classmates. These are random subjects, topics, and trivia.

Forums work "when" people "participate" - so "don't be bashful"!  Click the "Post Message" button to add "your" comments to the forum! You'll be glad you did!

John Doyal

Yes my mom would wring chickens necks, one time she was trying to wring a young large roosters neck and couldn't so she had me hold him while she cut his head off with an axe.  I chased him around trying to catch the headless rooster for quite awhile. We kept having problems with skunks getting  in the coop because they woulddig under the sides, my dad finaly put a wood floor in with the chicken wire stapled to it to stop them.  My dog and geese kept the coyotes and foxes away.

Joe Treat

When my dad returned from WW2 we moved from El Paso, where I was born to his ranch about 50 miles south of Roswell on the Rio Felix.  Our home there was weatherbeaten old building with an outhouse.  I was so young I barely remember about it.  We had no electricity and used coal oil lanterns. I d not know how they raised a baby in the circumstances.  My parents then built our new home across the creek. It included an indoor bathroom.  He invested in a "Windjammer" electric wind turbine.  However it only provided direct current, not alternating.  We had electric lights, but most appliances could not be used.  Later,  Dad did buy a diesel generator so we so we had normal electricity.  We had a gas refrigerator where we could keep milk from our cow "Buttons" and meat and eggs from our chickens and meat from livestock on occasion.  REA did not provide electricity there until after we had moved on.  However, I reached an age when I had to go to school.  The nearest one was at Hope, NM.  This was hours away.  This was the impetus to move to the city of Artesia for the next 3 years.  Then drought made that economically difficult.  They had to sell the house in town to feed the sheep.  My mom said "the sheep ate my house".  I was shipped off the El Paso grandparents to continue school.  After  semester there, I rejoined the family at our grandfather's farm in Dexter for a year and a half. Then to Roswell to begin 6th grade.  My dad continued commuting to the ranch and we would basically move there in the summer. The rest is history.  
The family did have great chunks of lye soap made by a great, great grandmother.  By then of course modern soap was more convenient

.  

John Doyal

Joe you made me remember that my dad had a propane tank put in so we had a refrigerator and gas stoves for cooking and heating.  We had a Servel refrigerator that my brother inherited.  That refrigerator was at the ranch in 1948 and still working until about 5 years ago about 60 years old, no wonder Servel went out of business.  No products like that today.  My dad also  tired of kerosene lamps for lights so he piped the propane in and hooked up propane lanterns, definitely against all codes today.  There was a cellar under the house that had originally been the house as it was a soddy when it was homesteaded by my grandparents.  The fresh peaches, pears, and apples were kept there until  they were canned as fruit or jams and jellies.

Paula Carl (Cowee Miller)

These discussions about our early lives is fascinating and I'm enjoying it tremendously!  Thanks y'all. 

Charline Lake

I second Paula's emotion.  Fascinating sagas!

Diane Bartimus (Hynes) (Stearley)

I still have the wash tub and scrub board my Grandmother used in her basement in Chicago. a few  years later my Grandfather bought her a had crank wringer washtub - for her Birthday. Again, several years later, on her birthday her bought her an electric wringer washer. Sometime I would help her wring the cloths and almost lost a few finger in the process. She would hang them on a line in the basement in the winter and on the cloths line in the back yard in the summer. But, she would never wash on the days coal was delivered down the chute since it created coal dust. They have since discovered that radon forund in coal causes cancer. However, my Grandparents both lived into their mid nineties and died from natural causes, as did most of their friends and neighbors. My Grandfather was a regional manager for Underwood typewritter and entertained his customers with dinners and gifts of cigars, which he smoked after dinner every night on the back deck. My Grandmother was French and had beautiful French and Irish linens that she prided herself in keeping white. Hence, no smoking in the house!  I lived with my Grandparents off and on during my childhood and was their " little Princess", which made it hard on my parents when I would return home where I was no longer "spoiled". Fond memories!

Sherry Hester (Trasp)

AWH!! 
Charline, Paula and Diane, 
I so agree with ya'll!! 
Fun and fond memories!
Thanks to you all for sharing!
It wonderful to hear the stories!
Many people would not believe
or understand!!   
I think we all forget what we all
really have in commom! 
 

Charline Lake

My mom, who always worked fulltime as a secretary, washed clothes in our apartment in Saint Louis with a wringer washer (and she had a pole to poke at the clothes in the agitator) and then carried them down 3 flights of stairs to hang them in the basement to dry, too, Diane.  And yes, coal was delivered into that basement.  We have it so easy, my friends.  Indoor plumbing, electricity, heat, dryers, the whole nine yards.  Bless their tough old hearts.  How did they do it?  

Rex Booth

My grand parents kept a chicken coop in their backyard on South Montana. One day I was standing out back, my Grandfather grabbed a chicken by its head and flung it around in the air! But when I saw blood spurting out of the chicken where the head should be… being age four, I screamed at top of my lungs! I can still picture that chicken running and flopping around with blood shooting all over the yard! I wasn't too happy with my Granddad for some time after doing that...

My grandmother used to ‘worsh’ clothes using a scrub board in a steel tub. The first paid laundry in 1947 was a couple blocks away, so Mom and I carried the clothes basket to and fro. The laundry was a old tiny building with wet concrete floors. This was the first time I ever saw 'electric' rollers that squeezed water from clothes. So fascinated, I stuck a piece of clothing in too close (you guessed it) and wound up with the rollers crushing my arm up to the arm pit! That hurt like the dickens!

How bout this contraption…

Southern Ohio family with new washing machine - 1911  Note the power generator, conveyor type belt, and pulley driving the new-fangled washing machine.

Saundra Bennett (Whiteside)

We moved to Roswell from Carlsbad when I was in the 6th grade.  We stayed with my grandparents while we looked for a house.  I remember seeing my grandmother ring chickens necks, and saw them flopping around headless.  It was a frightening sight!  My grandmother also had a scrub board and made lye soap!  She eventually got a wringer washer.  I got my arm caught in it up to my arm pit!  Pretty scarey!

Rex Booth

Quote of the Day

George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill:

Winston Churchill response:
"Cannot possibly attend first night, I will attend the second, If there is one..."
 

Dewey Johnson

Rex Booth

Dewey,

"One Last Double Header". Sounds both interesting as well as informatiive!

Be sure to let us baseball players and fans know when & where to obtain your book.

Joe Bauman's "72nd" Home Run - New Record!!

Dewey Johnson

Thanks for asking, Rex. If you live in Roswell, you can get a copy at the Historical Society. If you live elsewhere, you can find it on Amazon.  Dewey

Fred Miller

Dewey,

Do you know if your book will be available on Kindle at some point?

The little I read brought back memories of the many times my Dad would take me to the games with him.  My Dad was a walking encyclopedia of baseball stats.

For several years now, I have had a Roswell Rockets ball cap hanging by my desk, just like this one I just borrowed from the interweb...

Dewey Johnson

Nice hat, Fred. There will be an ebook eventually. Not yet. 

Sherry Hester (Trasp)

In the baseball Pictuers:

It's hard to tell but the 2nd man with the darker shirt 
looks alot like my Dad! The backstop is in the way! 
I even thought the 1st child in the lower part of the picture
could be me?? We use to go to games and Dad was always 
putting money through the fence for Home Runs!!
 

Patrick Riley

I saw Joe Bauman hit a number of home runs while watching Roswell Rocket games as part of the old Class C Longhorn League. Once I got to press a dollar bill (provided by my Dad as I certainly didn't have a dollar of my own) through the protective chicken wire for Joe to collect after a home run. That was a thrill when you were just 8 or 9 years old!

Here are a couple of Joe Bauman facts of interest you may or may not know:

Joe Bauman and his wife, Dorothy, owned a Texaco station while he played baseball in Roswell. They continued to run it for many years after his baseball days were over. If memory serves, it was on West Second Street. Like many of you, I was an occasional patron. Side note ... do you remember buying just 50¢ or a $1 worth of gas because that was all you could afford?

The Roswell Texaco was not the first gas station Joe owned. He and a teammate owned a prior Texaco station on Route 66 when he played semi-pro ball in Oklahoma.

Joe set his 72 home run record in a league that played just 138 games. The current Major League baseball season is 162 games in length. He did this while running his gas station during the day (most Roswell Rocket games were at night).

He hit home runs 70, 71 and 72 (yes, three home runs in one game) on the last day of the season to set his record.

Joe finished the 1954 season with not only 72 home runs but also with a .400 batting average, 224 RBIs and 456 total bases ... no, I didn't remember this ... looked it up.

Joe's steroid-free record lasted 47 years until 2001, when Barry Bonds hit 73 non-steroid-free home runs, playing in 24 more games than Bauman did in 1954.

Baseball still presents the annual Joe Bauman Home Run Award to the Minor League baseball player with the most four-baggers. Last year's winner, M.J. Melendez hit just 41 homers.

Joe Willis Bauman died in 2005 due to complications from a fall he suffered climbing onto a stage during a ceremony honoring him by renaming the old Roswell Fair Park Stadium to Joe Bauman Stadium. He broke his pelvis in the fall and never left the hospital until succumbing to pneumonia ~ six weeks later.

Joe Bauman, gone but not forgotten.

John Doyal

Pat, I remember paying 9 cents a gallon for gas when the gas companies were having gas wars so a dollar was 11 gallons.  When going to and from NMSU a full tank of gas was only 5 dollars at full price.   Plus a stop at Apatche summit for a coke and a piece of pie(cut into only 4 pieces) was cheaper than staying at college on the weekends.  This was in addition that you had an attendant that filled your car, washed the windows, checked tire pressures, and your oil level and added washer fluid.

Rex Booth

As Pat mentioned...

Summer of 1962... 50 cents bought you 2 gallons of Ethyl gas at the FINA station on SE Main & McGaffey. One could cruise up and down Main from Greers to Wylies to Pop's for a total of three round-trips!  Then pull up to the drive-in package window at Papa Bear's Den (former Gay 90's).... another 50 cents bought you a quart bottle of Jax beer! Mmm-mm... good... better than Mountain Dew!

Sherry Hester (Trasp)

I remember Linda Dumas and I stopping to get gas
at a station on 2nd and Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Lea
or one of those streets in that general area on our way
to school, we pooled our change together and came up
with a quarter and thought we struck gold!
HAHAHAHA  Love those day's!!
 

Bill Leggett

OK WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THE PIZZA PLACE  NORTH MAIN 

Patrick Riley

Bill ... Carmello's Pizza (if I spelled it right).

To much information here but it's easy for me to remember the restaurant name as (the bad news) I was arrested in their parking lot one night for "relieving" myself in public. In my defense, it was a heavy beer night.

The good news, though, was that the arresting officer was Demo Metarelis'  older brother, George (a Chavez County Sherrif Officer at the time). He was kind enough to cut me a break (ie: turned me loose with no charges).

Demo, if you're reading this, thank George for me!

Another Carmello's memory that ties in with scrimping together coins for gas ... most nights a whole pizza was above our collective means. But, Ann Topley worked at Carmello's and if a customer would leave a couple of untouched pizza slices on their table, she would take them to the back and warm them up for us.

Ann, if you're reading this, thanks!

Rex Booth

Yep, Carmello's. It was good place as Pat mentioned to have cup(s) of coffee so as to sober up before going home. It was also a place where some guys would go after their dates and compare notes for the evening...

Here's  another George and Demos Metarelis story.  When George was a Senior at RHS, Demos and I were sophomores.  George owned a 1953 Ford. On serveral occasions he'd take Demos and I down to  the American Cafe which his parents owned on the 100 block of  West 2nd. A cheeseburger with all the fries you could eat for 25 cents a coke 10 cents. One day a couple of older girls who put a quarter in the juke box were arguing over some flyboy.  The girls walked out and a fight ensued next to the restaurant. They were slapping, yanking... and pulling each other's hair out! It was rather entertaining to hear the the jukebox blariing "Tequila" while the gals duked it out in the alley!! Those were them-thar days!

John Doyal

Rex, Demos name brought back memory of when He and I were drafted.  We rode the bus to Ft. Bliss where we were given our enlistment physical and sworn in to the army.  We had been told not to bring anything and to wear old clothes that would be thrown away when we got our uniforms.  We were to fly out the following morning to Ft. Leonardwood in Mo.  He had someone to spend the night with and I stayed at the Y.  Since I was staying at the Y I was given the Chit money for food for both of us.  The next morning he got to the plane fine, but I was still waiting on my ride from Bliss.  After several calls the driver arrived and I had to keep waking him up through 2 red lights.  He got me to the airport just as the plane was flying off, so I had to make more calls to get the next flight.  I don't know if Demos got anything to eat,  but no one would take the Chits(might have been that I looked like I was homeless with a patched shirt and patched blue jeans)  so I didn't either.  I did not see him again until years later.