MEEKER | This was standard fare out on the ranch or on the range, and usually included quite a few variations by using up whatever was handy in the larder. Facing our bare cupboards these days, many of us find enough fixins’ for an old Dutch oven dinner not simmered over the oven.
Some of my favorite conversations were held with some of with those hardy souls, as they often brought up trials of a different nature than we are experiencing today. While the song Home on the Range was said to have originated when the cowboys were ending their day by the campfire, it was later said to romanticize the Old West.
“Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word” didn’t always reflect the life experiences in the stories told by local oldtime cowhands like De Los Parr.
Although his family were “nesters,” as the bitter cattlemen referred to the homesteaders, De Los was at home on the range as well. To the cattlemen, and later the sheep ranchers, the homesteaders destroyed the open range as they settled the 160 acres allotted to them by the government. Oftentimes, they would expand their acreage to 360 acres and fence their land which would cut down the grazing lands available.
Those hostilities rendered life on the open range difficult and Parr remembered the sheep and cattle wars as a grim reality of those early years. However, he also recalled that his brother-in-law, who trailed a small herd of sheep, saved his sheep because of his good reputation as a round-up cook.
Many years ago, Parr graciously allowed me to interview him for both the Meeker Herald and The Meeker Cookbook. He told me many stories about his childhood that included some of the hardships faced by his family in the early 1900s. They arrived in Steamboat Springs in 1911 on The Great Divide Train, and one of his first memories were of a mortician who was a fellow passenger on the train. He remembered the gentleman deciding to turn right around and go back east because he said it was too healthy a country for him to get any business.
His father and brother had arrived the previous year. Parr recalled that after they got off the train, they faced a 10-mile a day walk to his father’s wagon pulled by a team to get to the family’s homestead 80 miles distant. Another of his childhood remembrances included what he said was his first job off the ranch. At 17, he took a job riding a 65 mile mail route from Maybelle to Ladore, six days a week through the old settlements of Juniper, Lay, Sunbeam and Graystone.
The country was sparsely populated and many of the residents had nefarious reputations; Brown’s Hole was known to be a haven for outlaws and cattle rustlers. The postmaster at Ladore was the elderly Mr. Bassett, father of Queen Anne and Josie, who live on in the legends of Brown’s Hole.
While he gave me an updated version of his bean recipe from all of those days, he didn’t say that he was sick of them. After all, he made do with anything he had on hand, and it just happened to be beans.
By Dolly Viscardi | Special to the Herald Times
