Oral history interview with Helen Maben (part 1) [with transcript], October 4, 2012.

              Helen Maben Part 1
Interviewed by Sean Evans
Camera by Susan McGlothlin
Also present:  George Maben and Dave Zimmerman
October 4, 2012

Evans:  Good afternoon.  My name is Sean Evans.  It is October 4, 2012, and we’re here at ADOT in Flagstaff, Arizona, and we’re talking to Helen and George Maben.  Good afternoon, Helen.
H. Maben:  Good afternoon.  I’m happy to be here.
Zimmerman:  We’re very happy you came.
Evans:  Yes, we are, indeed.  We’re hoping to fill a few historical gaps today.  I know we kind of talked about this in the last few minutes, but if you wouldn’t mind telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got to Flagstaff, or to this area.
H. Maben:  You want me to say what I just did?
Evans:  Sure.
H. Maben:  Alright.  As I said, my dad was working on a farm in New Mexico, for his uncle.  I was born there.  And later, he went back to Texas to help his folks move, because they had lost their ranch.  Some of the family had came to the Flagstaff area, and was working in sawmills.  There used to be a lot of little sawmills around here.  So my grandparents and my folks migrated this way.  My folks’ car broke down at Winona, and he needed a gasket for his oil pan, and he didn’t have enough money to buy it.  So he took my mother’s felt hat and cut it into a gasket.  Needless to say, my mother was not a happy camper over that, but....  Mr. Bill Adams liked the way my dad worked and thought, so he hired him, right there, to be his mechanic, which was probably a good thing.  I think my dad said they had 35¢ between 'em then.  They furnished us a little cabin that they had there for a while, and so we stayed there two years.  My dad saved enough money to lease Two Guns from Louise Hesch [formally Louise Cundiff], and we were there two years, when he managed to save enough money to lease ten acres of land in between Winona and Two Guns for Toonerville. 
Evans:  Let me ask you a quick question.  How old would you have been at Two Guns?
H. Maben:  Well, I was probably about two.
Evans:  So really, really young.
H. Maben:  I was very young, I was three months old when we got to Winona.  Like I say, we stayed there for about two years, and my dad decided he wanted to start building.  And of course there was nothing but bare land, so they went to Jerome and bought an army surplus mess tent.  That’s what we lived in while they were working on getting Toonerville built.  My mother would put us kid in a car with a four-wheel trailer behind it, and go down the road, pick up rocks, to make the walls of Toonerville with.  My dad, granddad, and one uncle laid the walls.  They used mud for the rocks.  In March of that year, we hadn’t been there too long, but the walls were up, and a roof on it, but that was it.  We had a very bad wind, it blew our tent away-I mean literally blew it away.  So they put boards down in the back of the building, and we moved in there.  We lived in the back of the store for a while.  They finished working-they’d work part of a building-and they got the windows in first so we could kind of be protected because I had a brother two years younger than me by then.  They worked on that and got it ready to live in and ready to open for business.  The first day we were open, we sold one box of penny matches.  My father was a little discouraged there.
Evans:  Now I’ve got to ask you, because we’ve got a couple of pictures here, none of them are very old.  So these are probably way late.  This is a Fronske Studios photo of Toonerville from about 1969.
H. Maben:  Probably.  That was before the canopy was put on there, and that was put on after the war.
Evans:  And I don’t know what the year of that one is.  It looks like it might be late World War II.
H. Maben:  Yes, this is a later picture here.
Zimmerman:  She brought this one too, and I don’t know who that is standing in front of Toonerville Trading Post.
Evans:  Oh wow, it looks very different.
H. Maben:  Uh-huh, it was, yeah.  This was the original building, and it was just, like I say, that wide.  This was added on just before World War II.
Evans:  And that would be kind of around the back on this side?
H. Maben:  On this side, yes.  See, you can see where it is.
Evans:  Yeah.  Okay.  And is this that building with a different roof?
H. Maben:  Yes, same building.
Zimmerman:  Who’s that in the picture?
H. Maben:  That’s me, sitting on the truck.
Zimmerman:  How about in front of the....  Wasn’t there somebody....  This man here?
H. Maben:  Oh, that was one of my cousins.  He had come to visit.  This, it says Richfield.  My dad was a devoted Texaco man (laughter) but he and Texaco had a little fallin’ out.  So Mr. Hedley [phonetic] was the agent for Richfield.  He’d been trying to get my dad to change.  When this happened, my dad changed to Richfield.  Then somehow Shell got in there, and I don’t remember how that happened.  But anyway, Dad didn’t stay with them very long.  He went back to Texaco.
Evans:  So you basically grew up right there.
H. Maben:  Oh I did, I grew up there.
Evans:  Now, going to school, did you come into Flagstaff, or to Winslow, or...?
H. Maben:  At first, when I was younger, they had a little school at Winona.  You know where that bridge is on the highway?
Zimmerman:  Uh-huh.
H. Maben:  The schoolhouse was just up that little hill.  It was a little one-room school, and this is Derwood McKinney, that was the teacher.  I went to school there, I think three years.  Then the war started and we moved to California.  They told my dad either get a defense job or be drafted.  So my dad came in, and Frank Gordon taught him to weld, and we went to California where my mother’s brother lived, and he got a job building ships, welding.
Zimmerman:  In San Francisco?
H. Maben:  Yes.
G. Maben:  Kaiser Shipbuilders, did he work for?  I believe.
H. Maben:  I don’t remember.
G. Maben:  I think Kaiser was the company that he worked for.
Evans:  Probably out Oakland way, [unclear] shipbuilding.  Yeah.  Wow.
H. Maben:  We stayed there until my mother got ill, and they suggested she leave the area.  So my dad had a brother in Ajo that worked on the water well maintenance there, so he got my dad a job there.  So we moved there until just before the war was over, and we went back to Toonerville and reopened.  We had had it closed, and a caretaker just living there.
Evans:  So how old were you when you came back to Toonerville?
H. Maben:  Well, I was probably....  When was the war over, ’45?
Evans:  Forty-five.  That would have been a rough childhood out there!
G. Maben:  Yeah.
H. Maben:  So I was about twelve or thirteen.  Like I say, we reopened the store.  I keep saying "we"-my folks reopened.  You know, that was just home.  Then I went to school in Winslow after we came back from the war.  Walter Drye, Irvin’s uncle, drove the school bus.  So I’d catch the bus and go to school in Winslow.  Then later there wasn’t enough kids....  At that time there was a lot of families working on the railroad, and they had section houses, and there was quite a few children then.  There was a few children at Mary Jim’s, and one just out of Winslow on a little business there.  It was kind of a bar and restaurant stop.  And there was one child there we picked up.  But when the section houses closed, there was not enough children to run a bus.  So Flagstaff ran a bus to Winona, so my mother took me to Winona every morning, and came and got me in the afternoon.  I went to school there in Flag until I was a senior.  In the meantime, I had met my future husband, and I quit school and got married.
G. Maben:  That was George.  He was working for Babbitt Ranches, right?
H. Maben:  Yes.
G. Maben:  As a ranch hand for the Babbitts.
H. Maben:  Yes.  His uncle was running the ranch for C.J. Babbitt.  This was C.J.’s personal ranch.  He was my husband’s favorite uncle, so my husband had just gotten out of the service, and he came out to visit, and he was just gonna be here for a week or two.  But I decided he was a keeper, so I just kept him!-for sixty-five years, almost.  We were married sixty-one years.
Evans:  Wow.  Now, before you were married, when you were living out at Toonerville, what was that area like at that time?
H. Maben:  Well, much like it is now, as far as habitation.  The Drye’s had a ranch over on Anderson Pass, when they had land down to where the casino is being built now.  Walter Drye owned that land.  They had homesteaded up on the pass, more or less, along with other people.  There was several homesteaders up on Anderson Pass.  So they were our nearest neighbors.  Like I say, C.J.’s ranch was behind us.  Jake was married, but his wife had a place in New Mexico, so she stayed over there and ran their little ranch while Jake worked for C.J.  When he quit and went home, another uncle took over management.  My husband decided he couldn’t work for that uncle, so he quit and we moved into town here.  That’s when George went to work for-well, it wasn’t Arizona Public Service then, it was Northern Arizona Light and Power, I believe, at that time.
Zimmerman:  Your father went into real estate, didn’t he, when he came to Flagstaff?
H. Maben:  After we sold Toonerville.  That was 1954, I believe.  And Slick and Pearl McAllister bought Toonerville.  They did well until there was a robbery, and the people killed Slick and injured Pearl very badly.  Dr. Poore can give you some history from there on Pearl, and really what happened, because he took care of her, and she lived with him for a while, while she was recuperating, before she moved to, I believe it was Montana, with her son.  But for a while, Dr. Poore owned Toonerville.
Evans:  Oh, I didn’t know that!
H. Maben:  Oh yes.
Evans:  Then let me ask another couple of questions.  In that period when you were there, the thirties or so through the fifties, was Twin Arrows or Padre Canyon Trading Post there?
H. Maben:  Wessons built Twin Arrows sometime after we came home from the war, but I don’t remember the year.
Evans:  It makes sense that that’s the case, from what I’m seeing.
Zimmerman:  This looks like when Helen was seven.  Does this say Padre Station?
H. Maben:  Yes.
Zimmerman:  So this is Padre Canyon Trading Post?
H. Maben:  Originally that’s what my dad called it, was Canyon Padre.  Like I say, the Wessons from Hopi House near Winslow built Twin Arrows for their son and his wife.
Evans:  Oh!  Okay.
McGlothlin:  How did the name Toonerville come about?
H. Maben:  It was from a comic strip.
G. Maben:  I knew it was!  I knew it was!
H. Maben:  A comic in the papers called "Toonerville Trolley."  My dad just kind of got a kick out of the name.  My mother loved the cartoon.  My dad wrote to the creator of the comic strip and got permission from him to name it Toonerville.  And for many years my folks had a letter from him, confirming they could use the name.  I have no idea what happened to the letter.  But anyway, it disappeared some way.  But that’s how it got its name.
Evans:  So really, once you left Flagstaff, if you were driving to Winslow, once you got beyond Winona, it was Toonerville....
H. Maben:  There was a couple of little stations along the way, out on Old 66 and Doney Park, where River de Flag comes under the road there.  There was a little service station there, and just a little further down there was another little station.  And then there wasn’t anything ’til you got to Winona.  And then Toonerville.  Of course later Twin Arrows.  They were, oh, a mile and a half, two miles west of us.  Then there was Two Guns and Rimmy Jim’s, Meteor City-which Jack Newsmum built and owned that-and somehow he managed to talk the highway department into putting up a road sign that said, "Meteor City, Population 2."  And he was a bachelor, and he had sent somewhere for a mail order bride, so there was population two there then.  Then later, further on toward Winslow, Hopi House and the Thunderbird, and a few places like that were built.
Evans:  Was there much interaction with the people who owned those places?  I mean, did you all kind of, because you all had a business on 66...?
H. Maben:  There was.  Most everybody would come visit and see what was goin’ in your part of the woods, you know.  It was all quite neighborly.  Your neighbors were very far apart, but like they say, there was a camaraderie there, to a certain extent.
Evans:  I’ve kind of wondered-I’ve driven past the property a few times, and I’ve never screwed up the courage to go and knock on the door and say, "Hey, I’m interested in this place."
H. Maben:  The lady that owns that now is a very nice lady.  I can’t think of her name right off, but she has remodeled and made a home out of it.  And I don’t know, she would probably welcome you, if you told her.  Or you could call her and ask her.  She has a phone.  And I think the phone is still listed under "Toonerville."
Evans:  Wow.
H. Maben:  I think at home I have her card with her name and phone number on it.
Evans:  I may contact you for that then one day.
Zimmerman:  Or look in the phone book for "Toonerville."
Evans:  Or look in the phone book!
H. Maben: I don’t think it’s in the phone book.
Evans:  But I’m just curious, when you were there, when you walked in off of Route 66, what was the inside of Toonerville like?  What did you see?
H. Maben:  Well, there was a lunch counter on this side.  My dad had a little lunch counter there.  We made hamburgers, and that was about the extent of it.  He had a beer license, and so there was beer.  We used to have a lot of people drive out on Sundays and have a hamburger and a beer or a soda pop or something.  On this side was more or less things for the service station, like oil and a few fan belts and things like that.  Back in the back was a little grocery store.  My folks traded with the Indians, and my mother spoke Navajo very well.  We bought Navajo rugs from them, and my dad would take pawn.  In fact, this is pawn (shows necklace).
Evans:  Wow.  So this really was a trading post in that kind of classic sense.
H. Maben:  Yes, uh-huh.
Evans:  It just wasn’t a roadside....
H. Maben:  No.  At one time, after I got married, my dad put in a little curio stand, and he sold little knickknacks with "Toonerville" on it and stuff.  When I was younger, there was a lot of horn toads around there, and I would catch horn toads and sell them to the tourists for a dime apiece.  I’d get in big trouble now, but then they were not protected, you know.  In fact, he brought me a little horn toad in this morning.  I just love horn toads, and he brought me in a little one this morning to pet and look at.  Yeah, I made a big mistake once, though.  Boy, I caught a big ol’ horn toad.  Gee, she was pretty, and really big.  A lady came in, and she offered me a quarter for her.  So being my dad’s daughter, I sold the horn toad.  Later, when she got home, she wrote this horn toad had had ten or twelve babies, so she made out for her garden.  She wanted to put the horn toad in her garden, so she made out like a bandit for her quarter.
Evans:  That’s wonderful!
H. Maben:  And I was not happy for a while.
Zimmerman:  So you got 2.5¢ per toad!  (laughter)
Evans:  Land rush business there!
H. Maben:  That’s what you get for being greedy.
Zimmerman:  Helen, when you got there in the thirties, I assume there was the local business, and then a lot of Navajo business-through the war at least.
H. Maben:  No, our place was the only place....  We were a quarter of a mile from the corner of the reservation there.  The land was either reservation or Babbitts or Dryes to the west, and Babbitts to the south, clear to Canyon Diablo-in fact, a little past Canyon Diablo.  That was Babbitt land.  The Indian people would usually go to Two Guns, or catch the bus into Winslow.  They didn’t seem to come to Flagstaff much.  But no, there was no place for them to trade anything except to go to town.
Zimmerman:  I was wondering, because you said that before you left, before your father sold Toonerville and moved to Flagstaff, and you were selling horned toads and curios, was that the new traffic after the war, like more, I guess, called tourists?
H. Maben:  Yeah.  Oh yeah.
Zimmerman:  That really changed the business after the war?
H. Maben:  Yes, it did.
Zimmerman:  How did that seem?
H. Maben:  After the rationing was lifted, there was more people traveling and coming west to sightsee.  Like I say, my dad traded with the Navajo people.  Some of them we got to be really good friends with.  We had just had the Fourth of July, and back then, they had a big powwow here in town.  I’m sure you know all about that.  The Indians really went for that.  You know, it was something social and a big get-together, and it was fun.  It was quite a thing  I was talking to a couple of Indian boys that had been in a rodeo.  When my to-be husband got off the bus to go over to visit his uncle, I was talking Navajo.  George couldn’t quite make up his mind whether I was white or Indian.  (laughter)
Evans:  That’s funny!  So have you held onto any of your Navajo, or is that all....
H. Maben:  No, it’s all gone.  You lose it if you don’t use it, and it’s a complicated language, it really is.
Evans:  We’ve known a few people who tried to learn it, and it is tough.
H. Maben:  It is.  Like I say, my mother spoke Navajo very well.  They would come to her for medical care.  I don’t know how many times my mother would put us kids in the car and go across the rez to get somebody who was sick, or take 'em medicine or something.  A few times we took people to the hospital in Winslow.  One man got thrown off his horse and broke his hip, and I think he laid there for two or three days before somebody found him.  My mother and us kids went and got him and put him in the car and took him to Winslow. Different people would get in a spat, and they’d come to my mother to kind of help straighten it out, you know.  She was kind of a, I guess, go-between there, in a lot of ways.  The Indian people respected her and liked her.  When the folks sold the place, they came over and had quite a little ceremony.  They gave my folks a chief’s rug, which they do that too often.  My mother promised that rug to one of my granddaughters, so she is the proud owner of that now.  I have several rugs that were in my mom’s house, that I still have.
Evans:  Did the native traffic going to the powwow go right past your place?
H. Maben:  Oh yeah!
Evans:  So you got to see all the....
H. Maben:  Oh yeah, they’d come over in their wagons.  It was funny, when I was younger, the wagons were wooden wheels.  Later, they would put tires on the wheels so they would pull easier.
G. Maben:  Some of the things they did out there with the Native Americans, in their own traditions and customs, they were deathly afraid of death-did not touch or go around or have anything to do with that.  So there was a little bit of buryin’, they’d come get my grandfather to go bury the dead.  (H. Maben:  Yes.)  Cave a hogan in on 'em or whatever-whatever was necessary to be done there.  So he earned their respect and gratitude in a lot of ways there, helpin’ 'em out.
Evans:  We think a lot about places like Flagstaff and Winslow and Holbrook, to some extent, as being border towns, but you really were right on the border of the reservation at that point (H. Maben:  Yes.) so you really got to experience that.
H. Maben:  Yes.
Evans:  What was the traffic like on 66 in those days?  Lots of cars and trucks?
H. Maben:  There was quite a few cars, and during the Dust Bowl era, the people from Oklahoma came through.  That was a sight to behold.  Have you ever seen the movie of it?
Zimmerman:  "Grapes of Wrath."
H. Maben:  Yes.  Well, that movie doesn’t show half of it.  It was really something.  It was something!  And then, later, the other side of the story, after the war started, and they evacuated the Japanese from the coast, they came through there escorting these people in caravans, back to Texas and New Mexico, and some further east.
Zimmerman:  There was a camp in Luke also.
H. Maben:  Yes.  And there, again, was really a sad situation, because those people hadn’t done anything.  They were just trying to make a living.  But we didn’t know that.  I guess, looking back on it, I can’t blame the government for moving them from that coastline.  But like I say, it was sad to see these people taken out of their homes and moved away.  There again, I guess that’s part of war.
Evans:  And interesting that in the middle of nowhere in Arizona, you were witness to these big events:  the Depression and World War II.  With all the other traffic going by the door, what was your normal kind of day like at Toonerville?  When did you open, when did you close?
H. Maben:  Just after sunup, my dad would open up.  And we’d close about dark.
Evans:  Did you have power at night?
H. Maben:  Not at first.  My dad later bought a 32-volt Kohler light plant, and that was what we had for electricity until Arizona Public Service-which was, like I say, not Arizona Public Service at that time-put power lines in.  I can’t remember how much it cost my dad to hook up to the power, but boy, we were just right uptown when we had power!  It was really nice.
Zimmerman:  What about telephone?
H. Maben:  Yes, it was about the same way.  The telephone was there before the power.  And we had a telephone that you rang the handle, that you called the operator.
G. Maben:  What was the phone number, the Canyon Padre number?
H. Maben:  Number 2.
G. Maben:  Number 2, yeah, Canyon Padre Number 2.
Evans:  Who was Number 1?  (laughter)
H. Maben:  Not me!
Zimmerman:  (laughs)  The operator!
H. Maben:  I guess.
Zimmerman:  Switchboard.
G. Maben:  Well, probably Twin Arrows, because they were closer to town.
Evans:  Yeah, could be.
H. Maben:  They weren’t there then!
G. Maben:  Yeah, I remember that, bein’ a kid.
McGlothlin:  And you would haul water?
H. Maben:  Oh yeah.
McGlothlin:  Where did you get your water?
H. Maben:  A long time we hauled water from Flagstaff.
Evans:  Ooo!
H. Maben:  And then there was our railroad station.  What were they called?  Angel’s!
Zimmerman:  That’s right, near Cosnino Road.  Is that Angel?
G. Maben:  No.  Angel was goin’ in to the Dryes’ place there more.
Zimmerman:  Oh!  That’s why, when I saw those pictures of the old Drye house with the railroad, the Pullman car’s next to it.
Evans:  Yeah.  You’re not too far from it there.  It’s on that old alignment of 66 that went out to the old Padre Canyon Bridge, the old concrete bridge.  About two miles, or a mile and a half or so west of there, there’s a turn that goes out to the tracks, and it’s about two miles out to Angel.
Zimmerman:  I’ve been there.
Evans:  Yeah, that’s Angel.
Zimmerman:  Oh, I guess I knew that.  There’s a sign there, huh?  Still there?
Evans:  I didn’t know that.  Okay.
H. Maben:  The man that they had there as caretaker, he and my dad got to be friends, and he talked the railroad into selling my dad water.  So instead of having to come to Flagstaff, we went to Angel to haul water.
Evans:  A lot closer.
H. Maben:  It made it a lot nicer because it was closer.
G. Maben:  Fifty-five-gallon drums in that old two-wheeled trailer.  We’ve still got two of those drums-old gasoline drums, the old gas type.  And then later, some of the more traditional barrel types with the steel rings on 'em that could be rolled and hauled around.
Evans:  Boy, that took several trips at fifty-five gallons.
G. Maben:  You conserved water very closely.  No standing in the shower very long.
H. Maben:  Yes.
Evans:  Very true, I bet.
H. Maben:  Water was a precious commodity, I’ll tell ya’.
G. Maben:  One of the things she hasn’t told you, you haven’t thought of either, was bathroom facilities.  I remember as a kid there was a bathroom in the living quarters at that time.  That had been modernized at that point, for my grandmother’s sake.  But tourists didn’t go there, they were pointed to the two-hole outhouse about fifty yards across the parking lot, downwind towards Winslow, to the outhouse.
H. Maben:  My folks didn’t put the bathroom in until after I was married.  So I never got to partake of the inside bathroom.
G. Maben:  Run to the outhouse.
Evans:  I’ve seen the outhouse out at Two Guns and kind of thought maybe it was a similar set-up.
H. Maben:  Yes.  Oh, you should have seen the tourists!  They would have a fit, "Ooo!," wouldn’t go in.  "Oh! We have to go in!"  Then they’d take pictures of each other comin’ out of the outhouse.  (laughter)
G. Maben:  You didn’t bring that picture, did you?  He has a picture of somebody-I think it’s Nana-comin’ out of the outhouse some way.  (laughter)
Zimmerman:  Yeah, she didn’t bring that one.
H. Maben:  My mother would come down from Heaven and swat me!  (laughter)
Evans:  Well, we don’t want that!
H. Maben:  Gene Autrey was traveling through one time on a bus-him and his troupe.  They had been over in New Mexico, makin’ a movie.
Zimmerman:  Who?
H. Maben:  Gene Autrey.  And their bus broke down, just down below Toonerville.  They managed to get it to Toonerville, and those people had the biggest time around that place, taking pictures and just havin’ a good time, havin’ a bottle of pop, a bottle of beer-all except Mr. Autrey.  He couldn’t be bothered, "Don’t mess with me.  I’ll stay on the bus."  So there happened to be a little snow on the ground.  Everybody decided to gather up what snow they could, and they snow balled him out of that bus!  That’s my Gene Autrey story.
Evans:  One of the fun things about the road is to find out, "Did you ever deal with anyone famous?"  Was that your only encounter on the road?
H. Maben:  Noah Beery and his son came in one time.  Jack Holt and his son were there-very nice, both of them, very nice.  They’re the ones that stick in my mind.  I can’t really say there was anybody else.  My dad might have remembered some.
Evans:  Well those are good ones right there.
H. Maben:  Yeah.
Evans:  You may not have had many, but you had good ones.
H. Maben:  Yes.
Evans:  Now being that far out of town, you didn’t have a whole lot of law enforcement out there.  Was there ever any trouble out there?
H. Maben:  My father was a deputy.
Evans:  Oh! you had law enforcement out there!
H. Maben:  I did!  We did.  Perry Francis was the sheriff here at that time, and he appointed my dad a deputy, and sort of a-what did they call him?  When they’d have wrecks and somebody would be hurt or killed, why, Dad would go down and....
G. Maben:  Well, he was on the coroner’s inquest board and [unclear] investigation, yeah-coroner’s inquest board, I know he was on that for several years.  You need to tell 'em about the Indians and the sing, tourists calling. (laughs)  That’s a good one.
H. Maben:  Once in a while we’d have a sing there, and one night we were havin’ a sing, and my dad-Sonoco Ice Cream ran a truck through this northern part of Arizona at the time-my dad made arrangements to buy ice cream and have the man just stay there for a while so he could give the Navajos some ice cream.  We were just havin’ a good time.  They had a big bonfire, and everybody was just havin’ a good time.  There was no drinking, just havin’ fun.
G. Maben:  Indians danced, and so there was a little of that, and a lot of ice cream lickin’.
H. Maben:  (laughs)  You should have seen 'em puttin’ ice cream in paper bags to take home!  Mother and Dad just laughed, "They won’t even get home with that!"  Because it was summer. But anyway, while the sing was goin’ on, tourists would go by, and several of them stopped in town and called the sheriff.  "There’s this place out there, and there’s Indians all around 'em!  They’re raidin’ it!"
G. Maben:  Burnin’ the place down!
H. Maben:  "They’ve got a big fire and the whole bit!"  Finally, Perry Francis called out there and my dad answers the phone, and he said, "Tennon [phonetic], what in the world are you doing out there?!  I keep getting people callin’ me sayin’ you’re bein’ raided, I need to send help, and there’s a big fire."  So when Dad told him what was goin’ on, that was a big fun.  He thought that was real funny.  "Well," he said, "I won’t come and raid you tonight.  I’ll let you have your fun."
G. Maben:  The other thing in response to that question is you ought to tell 'em about Tenny Rowe [phonetic], [unclear] that day.  (laughs)
H. Maben:  Okay.  At that time, Arizona was dry, and there was a lot of moonshiners up on Anderson Pass.  One of the most outgoing ones, colorful ones, was Tenny Rowe.  He’d make his hooch, and he’d go into Winslow with it and bootleg.  The revenuers decided they were gonna get him.  They couldn’t seem to catch him up on the mountain, but they knew he stopped there.  Tenny happened to wander in one day and got some gas, and the revenuers were there.  And boy, they were gonna take him, and my mom put a quick stop to that, because there would have been the biggest feud there with gunfire you ever saw!  And my mother told them and Tenny Rowe, "You get out of here, or I’ll be the one doin’ the shootin’, because my children are in there, and you are not gonna shoot this place up."  And they did leave, and they didn’t get Tenny.  I don’t know where he went, but they didn’t get him.
G. Maben:  A time when you didn’t need law enforcement quite so bad.
Evans:  Really!  You had a mother!
G. Maben:  My grandmother said Tenny had a .45 right there on the seat of that pickup while he was gassin’ that pickup up, and there was....
H. Maben:  He kept it on the seat, right beside him.  Oh yeah.  Folks wouldn’t let me wait on Tenny Rowe at all.  I usually pumped the gas while they were in the store, busy.  But if Tenny Rowe came, I did not go to the pumps.