Document text
AUG 1 1.J36
Janet Smith Field
Worker
About 1500 words
Page 1
INTERVIEW WITH MRS. PAULINE MYER.
Soon after she was married in 1875, Pauline Myer travelled
from her home in San Francisco to join her husband in New Mexico.
He had gone on ahead so that he might investigate the country.
He wrot, her that it was a rough place, and so, she says, she found
it. But her husband had good prospects in the wool business there,
and she was eager to see a new country. She took the train from
San Francisco to Ogden, Utah. After assail* wait she took another
train for Cheyenne, Wyoming. There she had to stay over a day
before she could make connections south to Denver. In Denver she
changed again for Pueblo which was as far south as the train swat.
Her husband, Bernard Moyer met her in Pueblo with an
'ambulance', as covered wagons were called in New Mexico. It was
a fine ambulance, Mrs. Myer skid, with a leather covering. He
had a fine pair of hormis too. Bat the journey to Rio Memo,
New Mexico, she hardly likes to talk about. It was so full of
hardships and discomforts. It rained and the adobe roads were
inches deep in mud. They changed horses frequently. Usually the
change was from bad to worse. The country seemed like a foreign
land td her. In the houses *here they stopped for the night, the
women could not understand her, and they had strange ways of
cooking. They patted lumps of dough into z round thin cake -like
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Pioneer Stories
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objects called *tortillas** When her husband asked for direetions,
the men seemed to lent even to point. They pursed their lips,
and lifted their chins in the general direction they wished to
indicate and said *alle*(ahaes). It was only occasionally that she saw
an Amerioan tam,, and then she says she wal: *tickled*.
After a journey of shout two weeks, show reached her new home
in Rio Pueroo, a little Mexican settlement about twenty-five miles sok
west of Albuquerque in Bernalillo County. Mr. Meyer had a generil
merchandise store there. He sold the natives sugar and coffee and
yards of calico for shirts and dresses, shoes and nails add kerosene
oil, When Mr* Meyer was away buying sheep. Mrs. Meyer had to t, ad the
store. At first she couldn't understand a thing the people said to
her but she very soon learned the names of most of the articles in
the store and how to at use simple greetings busnas dies* and
WOOMA es vas, Even after she was able to speak their language
fairly easily, their brown faces seemed strange to her. *I suppose
it would be right in style now*, she said. *but in those days I
thought /1d never seen anything like those women sitting around the
store with cigarettes in thilir mouths, always laughing and happy*"
Mrs. Meyer and her husband lived in a big adobe house, the best
in town, she aid. It was built aweand a oplaolta*--a kind of court-
yard, she explained, with the building all around it. She rather
liked her house for it was always cool in summer, and though it was not
always warm in winter the fireplaces in one corner of almost every room
were nice* It was hard for her to get used to the idea of having
mud floors. but Nativadad, who came to work for her knew bow to
Janet Smith, Field
Worker
Pioneer Stories
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sprinkle them and map sweep them with little straw brooms so that
they were hard and almost smooth.
In about a year her first baby was born and there was no 2mmx
time to get a doctor from Albuquerque which was 25 miles away.
Whenever the baby was sick they had to writs to the doctor describing
his symptoms and the doctor would send back instrictions and medecine.
That took a long time and the mail servioe was unreliable. It the
people at the post office felt like it they gave you your letters
and if they didn't they said there weren't any. The safest way was
to send somebod: on horseback he twenty five miles to Albuquerque
with a note. One or twice there was an epidemic..-amallpes and
whooping {sough. The time of the smallpox epidemic igra. Myer said that
she worried for fear the baby would get it and her husband worried
about her and the baby too. "Butlit stopped at the house on one
side of us, passed over our house, and stopped again at the one on
the other side." Ofi.course there was no such thing as quarantine.
Mr. Meyer ordered the people to stay out of the store, but they
would oome in laughing at him for being !UM afraid of them, "The,
just visited around from one to another and spread the disease. They
never seemed to be at all afraid of it, but some of them died just the
same. Than there would be a eirsiorle, and we could hear them sing-
ing all night long. They would come to the store and buy up lots
of food and spend the night praying and eating and singing around
the dead one."
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Pioneer Stor tea
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Where were no amusements and Mrs. Myer was far from her family
and friends, but she never had time to be lonely. Later when she
and her husband moved to Old Town in Albuquerque s there were oocasionm
al "bellies" given by the Mexicans. At first her husband used to
take her if he thought the dance would be any way respeckble, but
it almost always ended in a fight. Usually somebody would shoot
the lights out and the women would screams and her husband would
hustle he out the back door as fast as he could, what they fought
about she didn't knows some little things or maybe nothing. But it
was a rare "bailie" that ended without a fights and after awhile her
husband decided not to take her. She guessed she wasn't missing
much. While she was in Rio Puereo there weren't even "bail/es" to
go to, but sometimes there was excitement of a little different kind.
Mrs. Myer remembers one bitter cold night when she was
awakened Infit loud knocking at the gate.
"/t was all hours of the night", she said. "It must have been
midnight at the least, and I heard a great commotiOn outside.'
knocking
She awakened her husband. "Dens get ups there's someone at
74t
the dear."
Ben rolled over. "Let 'em knock."
In a minute she shook him again. 'Bens they're still knocking.
Who could it be at this time of night,"
"whoever it is, I'm not moving on a bitter cold night like this.
They can go on."
But they heard people scrambling over the high walls and in a
minute the knocks began again at the door of the house,
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"who's there?" Mr. Myer called out.
"Open the door", was the answer.
"Not until know *hots there." her hatband called back.
"You open that door, if you know what's good for you." was the
reply.
Mr. Myer got out of his warm bed then, and opened the door. Three
tough looking men came in with the blast of cold air. Mrs. Myer s id
they were as frightful a looking set of miras you could want to see,
armed to the teeth eith guns and knives...."airegular artillery".
One of them spoke very good English. He demanded food and hot
cafe* and a warm bed to sleep in.
There was nothing or Mrs. Mer to do but get up too and fix them
a meal. There was only one bed in the house besides the baby's
cradle, so she and her husband were forced to go to the store for aitnew
mattress and some blankets which they put on the dining room floor, and
the three meriwent to sleep in their warm bed. They demanded to be
called early in the morning and ordered a warm breakfast.
Mrs. Meyer said her husband woke her before Baybreak and she
hurried to prepare breakfast as they were both anxious to get the men
out of the house. The three man ate in a hurry.
Before riding away, they stopped at the store. Mr. Meyer had
a new( saddle. He had paid sixty dollars for it and was very proud of
it. One of the men wanted it.
"Not that saddle,'" Mr. Myer said. "You can have anything else,
but not that saddle."
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However, as Mrs. Myer said, there was no use arguing with
that kind of people, They rode away with the saddle.
Both Mrs, Myer and her husbend were glad to see them go. An
hour o* two later Mrs. Meyer looked out the window and saw a cloud
of dust coming down the road. She knew that meant more men on
horseback. She ran to the store to warn he husbands but he was
already standing in the doorway watching it.
As the cloud came nearer they could distinguish one man riding
in the lead and ten or so behind 41 In another minute they saw that
it was he sherriff with a posse. They were heavily armed and
pulled up their horses to ask Mr. Myer if be had seen three men on
horsebaak. He told them al the story of the previous night and
pointed to the northwest which was the direction the men had taken.
Sevdral days later Mrs. Meyer and her husband heard that the
sheriff and his men had overtaken the three men an had taken them
hunk to Bernalillo by another route. There they hanged all three
at once from the same twig huge cottonwood tree, Their names she
couldn't remember but she knew they had robbed and killed before
comin6 to her house
Mrs. Meyer lives with her son at 1511 East Ramat Albuquerque.
She is a pretty little old lady with high pink cheeks and blue 070111,
ghe is friendly and willing to talk about the ild days though she
says it has been so long and things are so different now that it is
hard for her to remember much. At that though she says her memory
is better than any of her children's.