Youth -- Social life and customs
Showing
1 - 16
of 16
, query time: 0.04s
Format:
Voice Recording
Madge Davis talks about her early life in Clifton, Colorado, including childhood games she played, Fourth of July picnics in No Thoroughfare Canyon, and holiday celebrations. She also discusses other aspects of life living on a ranch, including home furnishings, homemade clothes, handcrafts, her father cutting ice from the Colorado River, and schooling. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County...
Format:
Compound
Glenn McFall talks about his various jobs around Mesa County and about witnessing the unveiling of Christo’s Valley Curtain installation in Rifle Gap. He also discusses fishing and battling snow storms on the Grand Mesa, the deer population around Mesa County, his experiences during childhood growing up in Clifton, the old Midland Trail automobile route, drinking and making bootleg whiskey, Italian-Americans making bootleg wine, the Book Cliff Railway,...
Format:
Compound
Thelma Moore talks about her youth on a fruit farm in Pear Park, life in early Grand Junction, her involvement in 4-H clubs, the Locust Ranch fruit growing operation in Clifton, and the other members of the Kettle family to settle in that area. She discusses her career as a seamstress and work making drapes, county extension work with quilters, craft competitions at the Mesa County Fair, and chautauquas and variety shows. She also goes into her life...
Format:
Voice Recording
Harold Zimmerman describes packing fruit during harvest time in the Clifton area, spraying for codling moths, the end of early apple farming in the valley, the train of wagons used to haul fruit on the Midland Trail at harvest time and about a flash flood that devastated Cross Orchards and destroyed 31 Road. He also talks about his career in bookkeeping for Mesa County Valley School District 51 and other organizations, the run on local banks during...
Format:
Compound
Oscar Jaynes discusses childhood memories of Clifton, Colorado, including life on his family’s homestead, a time he climbed inside a giant tire and rolled down a desert hill, and a boxing match at school with future Colorado Supreme Court justice Jim Groves. He then relates tales of traveling the country on freight cars trying to find work during the Great Depression. Oscar also talks a great deal about the fruit business, specifically the peach...
Format:
Voice Recording
Richard Williams talks about his family’s arrival in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1908. He speaks about his father’s purchase of the Independent Abstract Company and about his own involvement with several abstract and title companies in town. He discusses the formation of the Grand Junction Lions Club, the Grand Junction Lions Club Carnival, and the club’s fundraising for Grand Junction Junior College and other local causes. He speaks about his...
Format:
Voice Recording
Al Look talks about singing in a quartet, publishing books on Mesa County history, and fishing. He also discusses various people and places of the Western Slope. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, A collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Format:
Voice Recording
Kate Elizabeth (Phillips) Wills talks about her childhood living in What Cheer, Iowa, and her family’s move to Colorado in 1909. She talks about her family’s orchard, her education, the activities she took part in as a young person, and how she met her husband. She describes her career as a farm wife and homemaker working on peach orchards and cleaning homes in the Grand Valley, the history of churches in Palisade, and migrant workers that worked...
Format:
Voice Recording
Josephine “Jo” Ferguson describes her life as a teacher in Rifle, Colorado, Las Vegas, Nevada, and at Central High School in Mesa County. She talks about running a dairy and cattle ranches with her husband in Garfield County in the 1920’s and 30’s. She speaks about the boarding school in Louisiana that she attended as a child, and about experiencing the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic in Louisiana. Josephine describes social activities she enjoyed,...
Format:
Voice Recording
Shannon Robinson talks about attending grade school in Gunnison, Colorado, where she was largely shunned or bullied by white students as the first African-American student to attend her elementary school. She speaks about living in Aurora, Colorado, where she made friends with other Black children, but also experienced bullying from children of all ethnic backgrounds because of her mixed race. She discusses getting to know other members of her African...
Format:
Voice Recording
In an interview from May 14, 1981 (audio only, no transcript), Basil T. Knight talks about his youth in Michigan, meeting his wife’s family in Palisade, Colorado and ultimately moving there, operating a fruit farm, and becoming a lifelong teacher and school administrator. He explains the mechanisms that originally funded the many smaller school districts on the Western Slope, including taxes on railroads, and the reasons for the consolidation that...
Format:
Voice Recording
Olive Jean (Mann) Gordon discusses the early buildings, businesses and people of Grand Junction, Colorado. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Format:
Compound
Ann Stokes talks about homesteading on East Orchard Mesa after her family moved to Mesa County, Colorado in 1904. She remembers her father working on the “fancy” masonry for the Grand Junction train station. She recalls living in a one-room log cabin and sharing that cabin with a horse for an evening. She speaks about the development of irrigation on East Orchard Mesa and her father’s peach orchard. She describes walking with her siblings four...
Format:
Compound
Dorothy Tindall talks about the early days of Whitewater, Colorado as a rail center for cattle and stock. She speaks about the administrative organization of schools prior to the consolidation of Mesa County School District 51, her development of Mesa County’s first school hot lunch program at the Star School, games kids played at recess, about her work educating the children of migrant laborers who lived in La Colonia, and her role in the development...
Format:
Compound
Ann Stokes talks about her father-in-law Walter Stokes and his involvement in Nineteenth century labor strife as a union coal miner in Colorado. She describes his establishment of the Stokes Mine after he moved to Mesa County and describes the mine’s operations. She speaks about early phone service in Palisade. She discusses her mom’s job as a nurse in rural areas, which included tasks like housecleaning, cooking, and sewing baby clothes for new...
Format:
Compound
Mary Cox talks about her education at the Bryant School and elsewhere in Grand Junction, about corsets and other aspects of school fashion, the history of the Riverside Neighborhood, attending community dances and Glenwood Springs’ Strawberry Days, and boys swimming in the Colorado River. She also discusses old downtown businesses, going to movies at the Majestic Theater, a brothel that advertised at the Mesa County Fairgrounds during a baseball...
