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ALBERT and JOHANNA MICEK
Contributed by Karen Mitchell Interviewed by Sandra Cason Albert Joe Micek, born 3-10-1913 Parents - Valentine Micek and Josephine Mencik Micek Ethnic group - Slavinian Family origin - Bohemia, Czechoslovakia Date of family arrival in County - 1906 Location of first family settlement - Walsen Camp Kinship ties - sisters Bessie Eccher, Agnes Zubar, Mary Marchiori
Johanna Fink Micek, born 3-29-1916 Parents - Frank Fink and Johanna Pobh Paternal grandparents - John Fink and Agnes Zur Ethnic group - Slavinian Family origin - Lubjana, Yugoslavia Date of family arrival in County - 1904 Location of first family settlement - Round Oak via Missouri Kinship ties - Frank Fink Sr, John Fink, Jack Fink, brothers; Ann Ludvik sister
1/17/1980
SC: What is your full name?
AM: Albert Joe Micek.
SC: Where and when were you born?
AM: I was born in Ideal, Colorado, a coal mining camp, March 10, 1913. When
I was about 6 weeks old, well, in the month of May of '13 my dad moved our
family to a homestead near the east Spanish Peak and then I.. the first seven
years of my life was spent on this homestead. During the time... my dad was
originally a coal miner, but he was a great gardener, also, and he loved farm-
ing and he kept bees and, not me, but the older members of the family milked
cows and kept... raised hogs. My mother raised a lot of chickens. My dad
kept about 20 or 30 stands of bees and so with the gardening and the farming
and the animals and all that we raised, why we never missed a meal. Money
was hard to come by, but we never did go hungry. My mother was a wonderful
cook and she could make a meal out of just about anything and ordinarily she
had quite a variety to pick from to make a meal out of, whether it was pork
or poultry or... Well, about the only beef, we didn't eat much beef at that
time because we didn't have refrigeration. The fresh beef that we would get ~c-~
would come from the butcher shops. While the pork my dad would process the
pork from one end to the other and smoke the meat and made sausage and smoked
the hams and the bacon. Render the lard. So we had it, would keep year
round when it was processed. So we always had a pretty good supply of pork.
With the poultry we would have chicken any way you wanted it, whether it was
fried chicken or stewed or whatever. Then in the winter time my brothers would
go out and bring a few cottontail rabbits and my mother would either fry or
stew them. As far as the meals was concerned, we never ran short. My mother
was a good hand at baking bread and like I said before she was really a good
cook. And my dad with his gardening, we had vegetables. Then we raised
potatoes and we always had a lot of potatoes in the cellar which went along
with the other meals.
Sometimes I think back and it really was... we lived up there seven years
on this homestead and I always look back and feel that it was the best seven
years of my life because I was just getting old enough to have a big appetite
but not big enough to work hard, (laughter) so I kind of got along all right.
But we did work hard. We worked from the time we were big enough to get out
and do anything. Each one had a chore picked out that he had to take care of
or else my dad would teach us a little discipline and we were glad to take
care of it then. Farming for my dad was a rough game at that time because he
came from a country where they had a lot of rainfall and moving on this home-
stead was getting into a semi-arid country where about the time the crops
start growing real good it would turn off dry and you would see them just
whither away, just dry up and it would kind of tear you apart to see all your
effort go to waste that way. But even at that we did... my dad and mother
did manage all right and raise this brood of children. There were eight of
us. So especially coming from a foreign country and not knowing the English
language, I can't help but admire them for doing as well as they did, you
know, not knowing the English language and having to learn it, plus all the
other hardships that went with it.
Then I started school when I was 7 years old. Called it the Sunrise
Valley School. It was about 3 miles from home and the winters were servere
in that area that we didn't have winter school. We'd have summer school and
we'd start school about the first of April, which was still part of the winter,
and our school term would be ended the last of September. So we did have
about 3 miles to go to the school and our transportation was a couple of little
donkeys. That was the world's slowest transportation but somehow or other we
always got there sometime during the day and attended classes. So it is some-
thing to look back at you know and compare it with what we have today, the
type of transportation and facilities and all the modern facilities. It is
really amazing how people got along but we didn't know any better so we enjoyed
it.
My first year in school, I was a big cry baby. I was scared of the
professor so I behaved real well. He was a wonderful teacher. He was one of
the best teachers I ever had, thinking back. His name was Baker. I never
did know what his first name was, but he just went by the initials of A.J.
Baker. And he was a wonderful organ player. We had one of those old time
organs that you pump with your feet, you know, and after lunch hour or after
recesses he would ring the bell and then go to the organ and all the girls
would line up in one row and the boys in another row and he'd play the march
and we'd march right into the school house and take our places. Discipline
was really something. There were some that didn't believe he was a disciplin-
arian but they found out right quick that he was and after that the classes
behaved pretty well. I don't know what else you'd like to comment on...
Well, it was the eighth day of July, 1920, and school let out and
there was a storm brewing. Over to the south, south side of the East Peak.
So a bunch of us kids all went one direction to our home and when we got about
a quarter mile from the schoolhouse this storm started coming round the mountain
and my older brother, which he was my idol at that time, "Why, he said, "Let's
get back in the schoolhouse, there's a hail stom coming in." I was too young
to realize what was happening, but we headed back to the schoolhouse and this
wind came up and it was a hailstorm. The wind was, I don't know how fast the
wind was moving, but I imagine about 60 miles an hour with this hail, 'cause I
know it hit this schoolhouse broadside and the hailstones were big and they'd
come through one window and hit the floor at the school and go out the other
window. They just went right on through just like bullets. And the school
started quivering and quaking and someone said, "Let's get out of here. It's
going to dump the schoolhouse over." So we all took off out the door and as
we went out the wind was blowing right crosswise... they had porch out in
front of the door and the wind was blowing right crosswise of this porch...
and the wind just took us and I don't know why it didn't beat us to death,
but we ended up down the draw there aways. There was a pole fence down there
and as I remember we all ended up down at that pole fence. Lucky thing, the
Zankinos lived just a few hundred yards from the schoolhouse so we all headed
for their house to get out of this storm. So in the meantime the wind just
slid the schoolhouse almost off the foundation, about half way off the foun-
dation, that's where it left it set. It was according to some of the old
timers... Well, one of our old friends, Sam Hurley, he just passed away yester-
day, I think, this morning and he remembers that storm real well and he says
it was a hail storm and a tornado. Stripped the limbs right off one pine tree
and the one right next to it it never touched it, you know. So it was really
a freak storm, but it was one of the worst storms I've ever been it. It just
took in a big area there. My folks had bought another place that is called
the Home Place now, and they had it all in with wheat. The wheat was up getting
ready to be harvested and the hail just wiped it all out completely. It was
a loss. And something that you just remember all your life, I guess.
SC: That was when you were on the homestead?
AM: Yes, my mother really didn't like it there. The house was sitting in
kind of a cove against a hill there and these strong west winds that we get
in this area, they didn't affect us there. It was a real kind of a homey
place, but my mother didn't like it, because she said, "You can't see anything
but two hills." And she wanted to get out into some more open country. Then
my dad bought about 160 acres of land about 4 miles east of there. That's
where they set up what we call the Old Home Place. Not the homestead, but
the Old Home Place. I lived there off and on till I was about 25 years old,
When I finally decided to get married and have someone else do my cooking for
me. (laughter)
JM: Tell about the tents.
AM: Well, I hate to mention those hardships because...
SC: It is part of the story. I spoke to Mrs. Eccher. She told us some of
that about when you first moved there. I guess it was pretty hard then.
AM: Well, like I say, we didn't know any different, so we just went along
with it and did the best we could.
I don't know whether I should mention anything about the prohibition
days, but...
SC: Sure. We're collecting on that.
AM: Well, after prohibition came in and seemed like most everybody that could
would make their own whisky. And the big ranches and the more uppity-up
people, they really frowned on the little guys doing that because it interfered
with their business. They were so straight-laced but at that time, I found
out later, they had big whiskey operations allover the country. But noone
was supposed to know about that because they weren't supposed to be that kind
of people. But my dad, he went ahead and moonshined for awhile. The nice
thing I liked about it was he made fruit brandy. And he'd bring in a wagon
load of raisins, and figs and currents and all the different dried fruits and
he'd go ahead and make them up into liquor. We had our share of dried fruits
even though we didn't have as much fresh fruit.
So that's about the way it went.
SC: Where did you move when you were married?
AM: We moved to Alamosa and lived there a couple of years. They were building
a refinery in Alamosa at that time and so I got a job at this refinery with
a construction crew and worked there. And then when that played out I worked
for a tire shop for awhile and then we came back to the ranch and we stayed
at the ranch for a few years. Then we went back to Alamosa in the fall of '45.
My brother-in-law and his brother had a big shop in Alamosa and they were
repairing automobiles and tractors and whatever came in and they gave me a
job mechanicing in that shop. After the... Come the first part of '46 the
place where we are living now came up for sale and we bid on it and we bought
the place and long about the first of March... Well, we bought the place about
the first of March... and I left that job in Alamosa and went back to farming
and ranching and I've been there since.
SC: Where is your ranch now?
AM: It's about 12 miles due South of Walsenburg.
JM: Want to tell about raising the turkeys?
AM: Well, we bought this farm, 480 acres in it, so the lady that we bought
it from, she had raised turkeys there for several years. About 15 years.
So after she sold us the farm she said she would finance a turkey deal if we
wanted to go ahead raise turkeys one more year with her. Well, it was really
the wrong move. The turkeys did real well. We had, I think, 4300 turkeys and..
SC: Lot of turkeys...
AM: Oh, yeah. A lot of gobblin! The turkeys did real well but when they
went on the market the price dropped and that just about bankrupted us. We
had some cattle from the other farming and ranching operations and the turkey
prices dropped till we had to sell most of our cattle to pay operating expenses.
And then we just had to start from scratch. And we've been scratching ever
since. (laughs)
SC: What year was that?
AM: That was '46. The summer of '46.
JM: We had two children then.
AM: We had two children then. Had two more after that.
JM: Tell about the goat business?
AM: Well, after we left the turkey business we thought we'd try something real
exciting, and the price of goat milk had went up way above the price of cow
milk, and so everybody was excited about it and they were building a cheese
factory in La Veta at that time so we decided we could have a goat business
because we did have a lot of hilly country out there, where I mean brush and
browse and all of that that goats could do good on, even better than cows .
So I thought well, we'll just get us a bunch of milk goats and convert a lot
of that browse and brush into cash. Well, just about time we bought the goats,
wasn't a couple months later, the bottom dropped out from under milk prices
so there we were stuck with a bunch of goats. And what a mess. You just
can't believe it, you know. I had to go ahead and build corrals and stanchions
and what not to milk these goats and a place to feed them and all of that.
So we did stay with them for a couple of years and Johanna instead of selling
milk, she just made cheese, and we cleaned out the cellar and got it lined
up to age this cheese and then we sold cheese, in the fall, we'd go ahead and
sell all this cheese. We really didn't lose money on them but I guess we
just about broke even, if you don't figure on how much chasing around the hills
you did to try to keep us with them. (laughter) So that was another sad
experience, but things like that is what made me appreciate the cow business
more than I ever did.
JM: When we sold the goats, that's when our son Leonard was born. We sold
goats and bought Leonard.
SC: How many children do you have?
AM: Four. Two girls and two boys.
SC: Do they live here?
AM: No, the youngest is still going to school in Boulder, University. The
oldest girls live in Nebraska. They have... she's married and they have a
ranch out there in Nebraska plus a place of business in Hainsworth, near the
town there. They sell farm supplies. Then our boy, he is down in San Antonio;
Texas. He is going back to school again, studying solar energy, on that program.
And our other girl, the next to the oldest, she is living in Pittsfield, Mass.,
No Utica, New York, she did live in Pittsfield, and she works for General
Electric.
SC: Grandchildren?
AM: Yes, seven grandchildren.
SC: That's good for a start.
Mrs. Micek, where did your folks first settle to the county?
JM: Well, when they came here I guess they'd been allover Las Animas County,
Huerfano County. My brothers and sisters were born in different places and
they talk about Wild Oak and Ravenwood and Segundo and Primero and different
areas like that. But when I think I was about a year old my folks homesteaded
up by Silver Mountain. And my dad, he was a coalminer, you know, had been a
coal miner till we moved to the ranch. But my mother never did like the idea
of living in a town. She said the kids didn't have anything to do in the
camp. So she was always looking forward to being on a farm where she could
keep the kids busy and also she figured with the children {there was a brood
of us, too) it would keep the children busy and we could help in the garden,
milk cows and take care of a little farm, too. The first year that we had
lived there we planted... I think my dad bought 25 pounds of potatoes and put
them in the ground. He had a real good crop of potatoes that year. So my
mom said, "Boy, we are going plant potatoes. We can at least live on potatoes
and saurkraut and things like that': And we also raised pigs. So the next
year we took a hundred pounds of potatoes and the potatoes got smaller, about
2 inches in diameter and so I guess it must have been a dry year. The next
year we put some more potatoes in the ground and they came out like marbles.
I remember my brother saying, "Mom, I think we better eat the potatoes, better
than put them in the ground': So that was the last of our farming venture
there. It was an awful dry area. I guess all the good places were already
taken. But my father homesteaded up there... In the summer months we'd live
on the farm and in the winter months my dad would work in the coal mines .
The nearest coal mine was Alamo and so my dad would go down there and batch
for the winter because it was too much back and forth, even though it was
just about 6 or 8 miles down there. It seemed like an awful long ways at
that time and when you're working in the mine you need to rest so he'd go
batch there. My mother used to go stay with him. My mom said we had two
families. I was the baby of the first family. There was a couple of children
that died in between there and then she had another family. So I have four
brothers and four sisters. But there was some that died in between. The
older family stayed at the ranch. My sister was the oldest of the first
family. She'd cook and keep house for us. She was exactly 10 years older
than I am. She used to keep house for us when my mother was keeping house
for my dad. She had some more children and after awhile my dad says, "There's
no use of us staying on that farm and me making money in the camp and
taking it back to the ranch': He says, "Whoever can stay at the ranch can go
ahead and take care of what they can and if they can't you'd might as well
all move back to town or where we're at': So after several years we let the
ranch go, because it wasn't a paying proposition, I guess. It was just the
idea of us living there, but my dad had to make all the expenses and buy
groceries for us and everything like that. So my dad moved to the next
mining camp, Sunnyside, I believe. And my older sister got married about
that time. So I can remember my brothers went to school for a little while
and my oldest brother, he was only about 14 years old. He wasn't very tall.
He just dragged his coal mine bucket, his lunch bucket, into the mine because
he wasn't tall enough to hold it... he'd have to hold it up in order...
AM: He went to work in the mine a lot...
JM: Yes, he went to work in the mine when he was 14 years old with my dad.
And my brothers as they all got old enough they all became coal miners with
him. After Sunnyside why then my dad moved into Walsenburg and we lived
down on Main Street. We had the house that two families lived in the same
house. My first year at school... I had started on the ranch but I was in
third grade, I believe when I started here in Walsenburg and we lived here
since then.
SC: Was he mining then, your father?
JM: Yes. When he came back to Walsenburg he worked in several of the mines
around Walsenburg. Black Hawk mine and several of the mines right in and
around here. Until he retired.
Of all the family, I was the first one that had graduated from high
school. And I remember my dad saying, "A girl doesn't have to go to school.”
He wanted me to quit school after I finished eighth grade because he said that
girls didn't have to go to school. As long as she knows how to cook she
doesn't need to know anything else. But... I had a real good friend, Mrs.
Dissler. We were going to the Parochial school, St. Mary's, and she said,
"Well, I'll pay your tuition for you if you will just go on to school and you
can come and baby-sit my children whenever I need you. I will pay your tuition.”
Tuition at that time was just $1 a month, but $1 a month was quite expensive.
I remember when we were going to school we would have these penny pencils
with little erasers on them and we'd have one of those, buy one of those and
a four our tablet and it seemed like that tablet had to last us a whole month.
And as soon as the pencil was gone my dad would say, "What did you do with
your pencil? I bet you just put it in the sharpener and just sharpened it
away.” And when we'd bring in our tablet he'd say, "Look at it, you've got a
little more space here on the back of this page.” And we had till the tablets
on both sides. There was no waste of space. And when I was in the 6th grade
we used to have bazaars and we used to sell chances for a fountain pen. I
was in the 6th grade when I got my first fountain pen. I don't know how I
ever got the dime for a chance on a fountain pen, but I happened to win that
fountain pen. And I was so tickled to think that I owned a fountain pen.
Hardly anyone had a fountain pen. That was a great prize. For four cents
you used to get these little packages of loose leaf paper. And oh, it just
felt so smooth to be writing with that ink. And anyone that could afford to
have that was really somebody.
SC: So you lived on 9th Street? Was there an area along the river, like a
park?
JM: No, not that I remember. I know my brothers used to go down below and
go swimming in the creek down below there in the summertime. Oh, the pavillion
was there. That's where they used to have the good times. It was mostly
a dance hall. They held Polish dances and any form of recreation. It was
almost like a community center. Anything that went on they used that pavillion
for.
AM: Lodge dances, also, they used it for.
SC: Was your father in a lodge?
JM: Yes, he belonged to a Slavinian lodge called the ZMP's. And the Croation
Fraternal Union. Slavinian Narodska Protura was the name of the lodge. And
he used to get a Slavinian paper and read that. I used to enjoy watching my
mother and dad, listening to them read their paper and I would ask them dif-
ferent words, what they were, and they'd tell me and then I'd try to say them
and them my dad would make fun of me because I wasn't saying them right. And
now I see how foolish I was because at that time they were learning the English
language and he would say it and then I would try to say it and I'd say it
wrong and he'd laugh at me and I said, "Well, if you're going to laugh at me
I won't even try to say it.” He said, "You don't have to. You are living in
America and you won't ever have to use those words anyway. We are making our
living in the United States and this is the language we speak.” He said, "I
have to learn to speak the English Language, you don't have to learn to
speak my language.” So their idea was they came to the United States to make a
living and they had to learn the language that was spoken here and that's it.
That was all that was important. And I think that is the greatest achievement
my parents ever did was come here, not knowing the language and learn to speak,
making a living here and raising a big family and we're all doing real well...
AM: Now, tell us about your life, Sandy.
SC: No, afraid not. Maybe after this tape is over.
Well, that was great.
Do you remember any stories about the trip over or what it was like when
they first got here?
AM: Seemed like the menfolks would come over first and kind of establish a
location for the rest of the family, you know. With my dad, he disembarked
in Baltimore. And then came on West. Evidently he had some connection, some
friends, some that had been here before. I don't remember who. I guess he
came out to Walsenburg and started to settle down here. Don't know how much
later, but it must have been 6 months or a year later that my mother came to
this country to join up with my dad and she got off in Galveston, Texas, and
she brought 2 boys and my sister Bessie with her. Bessie was just 6 months
old, a little tyke, and the boys were older, so I guess she had her hands full
from the time she left out there till she got to Walsenburg. Without knowing
the English language I don't know how she ever managed. I know one thing, they
were a lot braver than I am. It would scare me to death.
JM: I can't imagine. Them just leaving a country like that and going into
an area where they don't know anyone or the language, don't know what the
conditions are. That is... it really takes a lot of guts to do something like
that.
AM: I think most of them, when they said goodbye to their people back there,
why they never had any idea whether they'd ever see them again. Like my
parents, they never had a chance to make a trip back to Europe to visit with
any of their people back there. So really, kind of sad, disheartening to
part with your people in one area and go thousands of miles away to another
area and not ever know if you'll ever get back to see them again. And of
course then transportation was far different from what it is now, cause I
remember it would take about 25 or 30 days for a ship to cross the Atlantic
and then in Galveston evidently they got on a train and went North and West
to Colorado by train.
JM: I don't remember where my mother got off the boat but she said it took
30 days to come across and she remembered how sick she was. Finally she got
to Walsenburg here on the train and she tells that my dad was supposed to
meet here. He was her old sweetheart who had sent here the money to come
across and he was supposed to meet her here in Walsenburg, but I don't know
what had happened. The fellow that told my dad when she would get here must
have told him the wrong day. Anyway, it was a day later. My mother came a
day earlier than what she was supposed to be here. When she gets to Walsen-
burg she gets off the train and nobody knows her language and she doesn't
know anyone else so she sits there. She had her trunk and she said she sat
there at the depot for a couple of hours and there was a little, she said a
little Mexican boy was walking up and down. He'd look at here and she'd look
at him. Up and down again. He'd look at here and she'd look at him. He
said something to her and she just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Huh.
What is this little kid talking to me for?" So somehow they communicated and
he went to get a fellow that knew her language that lived up on 7th Street
here, Mr. Capucci. He brings this fellow down and he talks to my mother and
my mother says, "Yeah, I am looking for Frank Fink. Where is Frank?" He
says, "He's working and he didn't expect you. He's going to be here tomorrow.”
This fellow says, "Why don't you coma and stay at my house until Frank comes
to pick you up?" She says, "Oh, no. I'm not going to live at your house. I'm
going to wait here for my husband-to-be and I'm not going to live in any other
house with noone else." So he said, "I have a wife and you can come and stay
with us.” So she did. The next day my dad hadn't showed up yet and so the
same little feller, I guess from the livery stable, the one she had seen at
first, had a buggy and a horse and they loaded her trunk up on the buggy and
she sat on the trunk and they headed out for Ravenwood or Rouse..
AM: Hezron.
JM: Hezron? So she was going along and when my dad seen here he says, "What
are you doing here?" And she said, "Well, you didn't come get me, so I had
to come find you.”
AM: I think the way your mother told it, this boy took her out to Hezron,
out to where your dad was living. I don't know whether he was at a boarding
house or whether he had a separate house.
JM: He had gotten it all ready.
AM: Well, anyway, he took your mother on out and your dad come into town
looking for her. So she was out there and he was in Walsenburg. They finally
got together. I guess Mr. Capucci told him she'd gone to Hezron and I guess
they met again.
JM: They came back into town and got married right here in Walsenburg. And
that was the beginning of it.
AM: Now after all these sad stories would you like to hear some..
SC: Happy stories? (laughter)
AM: I think it was about the same all the way through..
SC: What did people do for entertainment? j
AM: I remember the first day I went to school there at Sunrise, why after
school... course the days were long, it was summer school. The boys would
get together and play ball, have some ball games, you know. And we were
supposed to be home at a certain time to take care of our chores. We got
home and dad asked us how come we were late and we said the teacher made us
stay in after school. And he said, "He did?" And we said, "Yeah.” "How come?"
"Oh, I don't know, just did something wrong and he made us stay in and catch
up on some studying.” About the time we got some all our fancy excuses across
to my dad why here this teacher, professor, he walks out of the other room.
So that was an embarressing moment. But other than... play baseball and
pitch horseshoes and then later-years, why most kids had their own horse rigs,
go out horseback riding and swimming, in the summertime. And then in the winter-
time, why... when we moved to the Homeplace, right west of the house was a
big lake and usually it had water in the winter and it would freeze up and
we'd ice skate and in the evening all the neighbor kids would come in and
build a bonfire and roast wienies and marshmallows and skate on the ice. So
we just kind of had to make our own recreation cause at that time we, well,
up to about that time we didn't even have a radio. Most families had a phono-
graph." Some of the boys would have musical instruments and if they were
talented at all they would play different instruments, accordians and all.
Then when we got old usually Saturday night was dance night and all the neigh-
bors would get together at a certain school house and we'd have dances and
midnight lunch and have a great time.
JM: The girls would fix the lunch and the fellows would furnish the enter-
tainment?
AM: Well, the girls would bring the lunch. Oh, I don't know. I don't
remember too much about it. I know we would always cook coffee and then the
boys would, well, the boys would take care of the music and the girls would
ordinarily bring lunch and sometimes they would have, what do you call it, box
social. Girls would bring their lunch, in kind of a gift wrapped box and the
boys would bet on the boxes and whoever won, whoever got the box would have
to, have a chance to set and eat lunch with the girl that had made up this lunch.
JM: You never know who you were going to eat lunch with.
AM: No, you didn't.
JM: Sometimes it was a real fancy box...
AM: Sometimes a real fancy girl and sometimes it wasn't.
SC: What about in Walsenburg? Was it different here?
JM: I don't remember when I was a girl. Seems like... I don't remember going
out anywhere to dances or anything until I was about 18 and I was out of
hight school at that time.
SC: What did you play when you were a kid here?
Games...
JM: Well, the girls played jacks a lot when they were small and then we used
to play pump, pump, pullaway and tag and there was... the boys used to play
kick the can. Girls, too. Hide and seek. And we played softball in the
summertime. I think that was our greatest fun and entertainment. Not very
much like it is now. Then there were ...a game we used to call run sheep
run. I bet not very many people know about that game. It was very interest-
ing. I remember playing when we were at the farm, because ever family had 8
or 10 children, and if there was less than that there was something wrong
with that family.
AM: There were a lot of sheep, though.
JM: There were a lot of sheep and I remember when our neighbors used to come
and visit us, why there were about 6 or 8 of us kids that could run, play
games, the youngest was about 4 years old and the oldest about 14, 15 years
old and the oldest of the family usually got to choose sides. And you'd pick
out, well, they'd kind of divide the families up so half of them was on one
side and half on the other, and kind of mix the families up and then after
the families... after the sheep were divided the shepherd would kind of talk
to his sheep and it was a game, like hide and seek in a way. Because the
shepherd would tell his sheep, take them and hide them and give them directions
by color or name of fruit or whatever he would say would be a signal for them
to change their position or that the group that was looking for them was
either close to them or far away. And they had a home base so the shepherd
would take the flock out and he'd say, "OK, when I say 'orange', that means go
to this tree over there and hide. And when I say purple that means lay real
low, they are real close and don't you dare make a sound because if they catch
you they will have to run to home base and you know they are closer than we
are. So you'd better be real quiet.” And he says, "Now if I say the word 'sky
pinks', that means all is clear, get ready to run to home base because the other
group is looking for you.” So what he does, he hides his flock and then when
he comes back he comes all by himself and he makes a drawing on the ground to
show where he has his flock hid. Well, he may have hid them there but in the
course of the hunting process, by him giving all different directions, why they
won't be there at all. They'll be in a different position, so it's just a
game of hide and seek.
SC: I never knew what that game was.
JM: Uh-huh. So when he tells the leader of this other group, they all set
out to look and they are all listening and they are real quiet and then he'll
holler a different signal, as you would say, then they are all listening to see
if they can hear something. That's a game that takes a lot of area. It is
really a game for out in the country because you can go for a whole mile around
to play the game and a game can last one afternoon. So they can really hide
that way. It used to be a lot of fun and I think the boys and girls enjoyed
that because they get together and they got to visit.
And then there is another game they used to call caddy. Did you ever
play caddy? It is a game where they take a stick about 6 or 8 inches long
and sharpen it on each end. Then you use another stick that is like a broom
stick only it is kind of flattened on one end and you'd hit the tip of this
pointed stick and if it bounced up in the air then you'd hit it and the idea
for the game is whoever could hit the caddy the farthest would be the winner.
And you had to guess, how many steps is it to where I got it. And if you
guess the right amount of steps, it's the same thing.
ALBERT and JOHANNA MICEK
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