Barrios Oral History Project

Narrator: FLOYD GOMEZ
Interviewer: SCOTT SOLLIDAY
Date of Interview: September 26, 1993
Interview Number: OH - 138

John Floyd Jones Gomez was born in Tempe on September 15, 1900, and died in Casa Grande on July 16, 1996. He was the son of Jesus E. and Kathryn Jones Gomez, and grew up on the family ranch west of Tempe. He married Victoria Soto in Tempe.

In this interview, Floyd Gomez talks primarily about the Jones and Gomez families in Tempe. This includes stories about his grandfather, Dr. W. W. Jones, who was a partner with the Goldwater brothers freighting business in the 1860s, and about his father, Jesus E. Gomez, who was captured by Apaches as a child and later escaped and returned to a family member in Tubac. He also discusses his career as a cowboy, as supervisor and truck driver for the Tovrea Meat Packing Company, and as an independent cattle rancher. Other topics include his memories of school experiences and parades in Tempe.

FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

Copyright © 1998 Tempe Historical Museum

BEGIN TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE

SOLLIDAY: This is Scott Solliday and I'm interviewing Floyd Gomez at the home of his daughter, Irene Hormell. How are you doing today, Mr. Gomez?

GOMEZ: Oh, good, fine. (chuckles)

SOLLIDAY: I've been looking forward to doing this for some time, after all that Irene's told me. There's so much, like I said, there's so much that was never written down when I tried to look through the newspapers. I understand that you grew up on the Jones Ranch out west of Tempe? Did you grow up on the Jones Ranch out west of Tempe?

GOMEZ: Yeah.

SOLLIDAY: And that was your family's ranch?

GOMEZ: Yeah, just a mile direct from the butte toward the [Double Butte] cemetery. Day before yesterday, brought me from Casa Grande, and they always take me to see the graves of the whole family there, and they took me right straight to the gate where we went into our place. But it's all big, high-rise buildings now. That was just a little farm there the folks had. We had milk cows and take the milk to the creamery, you know, in Tempe.

SOLLIDAY: What do you remember the ranch looking like? It was a pretty large ranch, wasn't it, right in that area?

GOMEZ: Where?

SOLLIDAY: The Jones Ranch, how big was that?

GOMEZ: The ranch? The farm that we had? (SOLLIDAY: Yes.) It was only 20 acres. Them places, they were just small farms, because them days they didn't have much water to irrigate with after they built those big dams, you know. They had to depend on the water that came when the floods came down the river, and then after that they wouldn't have any, unless later they started putting in wells and pump, you know, to pump water out -- which that wasn't pretty good because sometimes them wells wouldn't hold up.

SOLLIDAY: Which canal did you get your water from? Was that the San Francisco Canal?

GOMEZ: No . . . Arizona Canal, they called it up there.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, so the San Francisco Canal was a little bit to the south then, wasn't it?

GOMEZ: South? No, that's a big canal, ain't it? Goes by the Yaqui town [Guadalupe] down close to the mountain there, the GREAT big canal. That's after they built the dams, because when I was born, there was nothing. There was no dams up there at all. (SOLLIDAY: Just a small canal. . . .) My folks, my grandfather was from Virginia, Dr. W. W. Jones. And my grandmother was a young girl going to California where her folks were in the gold strike days up there. And she was going through to California where her folks were, and at Yuma there was the first regiment of soldiers parked there. They'd just started. And that was the only place, so she stopped there and one of the officers, two of the officers, each one had a child, you know, and that's the only children. So when she went by there, they saw her when she was gonna take the stage and go for California, and they hired her to stay and take care of those two kids, you know, for them. There was General ______________. And she stayed there for a long time. And then my grandfather, Dr. Jones, came from back East. And him and the Goldwaters, brothers from Phoenix, later they came to Phoenix, after. They got a contract to bring freight from California to Yuma, and two of the Goldwaters had that job, on the wagons. Of course there was no other transportation. And from there they put it on a boat and went to Ehrenberg, and then my grandfather picked it up and took it to Prescott. It'd take two days and two nights. No, at night they wouldn't go. Two days to go to Prescott, and two days to come back after another load. And they made two trips a week. In later years, from Prescott they used to take it on small trucks, and they had two small trucks that went clear up to the mountains towards Jerome, and they delivered up there. And they decided (chuckles) that he should go further and eliminate those two crooks, so he hauled it up there. And later they made some kind of Jerome, it belongs to Spaniards. Arizona made a deal to go partners with them, and they bought half interest on it. And then from there they took another load down to the river there in four different places where the United States had soldiers in all of these forts. And one of them was on our side up there in . . . in that mountain that's from Phoenix, way out there, that high mountain. And the others were along the Verde River.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, over by Fort McDowell (GOMEZ: Yeah.) and the forts along. . . .

GOMEZ: And the United States bought the Jerome half interest from the Spaniards, and then Arizona took over, and between the two of them, I don't know whatever would come of them, maybe the Spaniards bought, or got out or something. I never heard any more, but that's the way it started. They were the ones at first, and that was the only outsiders in the territory. There was all Indians, and boy, they'd go up and fight them guys from the outside. But (laughs) they couldn't do much because my grandfather had big rifles, you know, and they didn't have but about four soldiers with each wagon. They had two wagons, you know, loaded with stuff.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, so the soldiers went along with them?

GOMEZ: Them Indians would come and start shooting and with just a few shots, boy, they'd take off. They knew they couldn't go against them wagons that had them guns in 'em, because they only had the bow and arrow.

SOLLIDAY: How many people would go with them in the wagons? They had soldiers go along to help guard them?

GOMEZ: Well, those soldiers, they had horses -- they were on horseback. Each wagon had four of them -- four horses and four men. And that was enough to hold a whole darn bunch of Indians, you know, when they couldn't come very close because those guns would sure reach 'em.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, that's certainly a different world then for Arizona.

GOMEZ: Yeah.

SOLLIDAY: And then later Dr. Jones settled down and moved into the Tempe area?

GOMEZ: He never doctored -- only for free -- because the people didn't have no money. He moved to a place way outside of Tucson. (pause) And later come back to the mountains up there right across from Coolidge. You know, there's a range of mountains there, close to Sacaton. And he made a ranch about four and a half miles from the Gila River, this way along the side of the mountain that comes up towards Chandler. And it took two days on horses and wagon to get to Tempe. He lived there and raised a lot of horses for the United States Cavalry. One time my dad and an Uncle, Dan Frank, was a little Texas guy, and they were the cowboys, and they was raising horses for the United States Cavalry, way up towards Superior somewhere, you know, where they wanted to raised horses where they could live on the vegetation, and they only had three things that they could eat: that was sagebrush, and mesquite beans, and palo verde leaves. They had to know how to live on that, because there was no place where they could get hay like they do now, or grain or anything. They just had to depend on the kind of vegetation that there was, and there wasn't much but just those things. So that was the job of my father and those two uncles that married two of the girls. You know, my dad married a woman, and Uncle Dan married the other one. And there was five girls and one boy, and the boy was born the date that they took my grandfather, was bringing him to Tempe where he had a friend from back East. Just as they got him to that place, he died. And he's buried up here at the Tempe Buttes [Double Butte Cememtery].

SOLLIDAY: Oh. Could you tell me a little bit about your father, Jesus Gomez?

GOMEZ: My father, his folks were going to California, you know, in the early days when the people from Mexico -- he was from Sonora, Mexico. He was born on the Sonora River, somewhere southeast of Douglas in Mexico. And the Sonora River comes from the northeast, makes a turn, and goes north. And he was born inside of Mexico on this river, and this mountain between there and what was Arizona later. Old Geronimo, the famous Indian chief, he was right on the border and he'd go in there and steal their livestock and horses and guns -- mostly horses, you know, because they needed a lot for their soldiers. They went in there and my dad was just a year old, and they were on the bend of the Sonora River where it went west, and they were up here where the river turns. That was his mother there, and that's where he was born. A year later when she went to have a second child, she left a sister four miles and a half down the river to have my father, and he was just a year old. And then Geronimo was on the border, quite a few miles from where this river was. And he went up there and took -- my father was just a baby, you know, a year old -- and the lady was by herself because their husbands worked in a mine that belonged to Mexico. It was kind of that way from Douglas. And the women were up there by themselves, you know, all day. And they just came and picked this __________ and it was just a year old, and brought him to the border. That was Geronimo, that famous Indian. And that lady, his aunt, said it was her baby and begged him to not kill him, you know. So they took him and they were there until he was six years and a half old. And he learned to talk their language, and they used to let him go down about three miles and a half was the river, and there was a lot of big willow trees along the side of the river, great big, and some of the limbs were in the water there. The little Indian and him came about three miles, you know, to pick up their horses and take 'em back to the border. And he slipped out on 'em a half a mile from this river in these willow trees. And he came down there, and when the chiefs came back from a deal, they'd went into Mexico, they didn't find him there. And they came looking for him, and they came right up to the river there in those willow trees, the limbs were hanging in the water, and he didn't _____. And when they left, he started going west and he went three days to that Tubac, that's from Tucson way up toward Nogales. And he was only six-and-a-half years old, and he walked all that way without nothing to eat, only mesquite beans and some kind of little deal like an onion or one of those things -- I forget what they called 'em. And he'd pull them and eat them. They're like a little onion, you know.

SOLLIDAY: After living with the Apaches, he just learned all that.

GOMEZ: Three things that he could eat off, and he made it to Tubac where he had some uncle or something down there. That belonged to Mexico at that time, or that part of it. They raised him there, and later when Arizona took -- or the United States took that part for Arizona, his folks from there at Tubac moved to Tucson. He growed up and Dr. Jones was from back East, and he had a ranch just across the river from Coolidge on this side, you know. He had a big cattle ranch there. My mother was the oldest girl. And after her father, Dr. Jones, got sick and they brought him to Tempe on a buggy and horses, you know, a neighbor of theirs that lived about three miles and a half from where they lived, and it took 'em two days to come to the Miller's place that's just on the other side of the Tempe Butte like that. That belonged to a friend of his from back East. And he died just before he got there. Just as he got there, he died. So that left the family up there by -- the mother and everything, by themselves. And my father was a cowboy, and Uncle Dan Frank. So later they married two, my mother was the oldest, Kate, you know. My father married her. And Uncle Dan married Aunt Maggie. She was the second from the old[est]. And then they. . . . As soon as he died, father, they was able to sell it to -- I think the United States bought it. And they moved into town and settled in Tempe. And that's where my father and mother both died there. I have a sister of my mother, and I went to visit her yesterday. She's the only left of my mother's family.

SOLLIDAY: Which daughter is that?

GOMEZ: All the others are dead, you know, of that family, except they were the last ones.

SOLLIDAY: Which daughter is that, that's still living? What's her name?

IRENE HORMELL: Mary. Mary Gomez.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, Mary Gomez is the only one that's still living. (HORMELL: Uh-huh.) I also heard that your father, he did work with the Army during the Apache Wars. Did he end up fighting against Geronimo later?

GOMEZ: No, the Indian Geronimo, they brought him and raised him there 'til he was six-and-a-half years old. He used to talk to his aunt, you know, the one that he was staying with, and they decided that he could -- he walked three days, I think, to Tubac. You know, that's that way from Tucson. And he had an aunt or something over there, that that was part of Mexico, that strip there, Tubac. And there was a mission there, Tubac Mission. And then the other mission was San Miguel over at Tucson. So he had an uncle that lived in Tubac, and he stayed there until he got old enough, and then he came toward Tucson and then to Tempe.

SOLLIDAY: But years later when he was a man, did he work for the Army as a scout?

GOMEZ: As a scout? My father? No, that was a uncle of mine, when they was building that airport over from, up here in the Valley from. . . . You know, where the big airport.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, at Phoenix?

GOMEZ: Yeah. Uncle Dan Frank got old enough to marry one of those girls, and he had a farm over in Tempe. And he worked over at that airport for many years. And he just, not too long ago I went to his funeral. They buried him way up there on the other end of them mountains up there, Camelback Mountains, in that cemetery on the other. . . . I went to his funeral, they buried him over there.

SOLLIDAY: Over at the ranch, over west of Tempe, did you raise cattle there?

GOMEZ: No, just a farm. They raised wheat, grain, you know, just for horses. Them days they didn't have any baling machines to bale the hay -- they had to stack it up. And then there was the old Tempe Creamery, and we used to milk them cows, I was just a little guy and learned to milk them cows. And then we got old enough and my younger brother, ___________, he'd take the milk three miles and a half to the creamery on a wagon before we went to school. And I had to take them cows and pick 'em up a mile and a half from a place where we had 'em on different pastures, you know, where they had pasture. I'd go up there real early in the morning and bring 'em over here and milk 'em, and then I had to take 'em up there before I rode a horse to school. (laughter) I had to get up way in the night to do that.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, that's a lot of work to finish before going to school. (GOMEZ: Yeah.) Where did you go to school at?

GOMEZ: Tempe.

SOLLIDAY: Did you go to the little school by the butte? Was it Double Butte?

GOMEZ: Right there on Main Street.

HORMELL: On Eighth Street.

GOMEZ: We lived on Eighth Street a mile and a half towards the other butte, you know, where the graveyard is. I came down there yesterday, the day before yesterday, we went up there to see my sister. She lived a half a mile towards down from where we lived, but there's high-rise buildings all over that place where we lived. We went right to where the gate was, and then turned around a half a mile and she lives a mile exactly from the center of Tempe. In Tempe there's high-rise buildings all over, the mill -- the flour mill and everything. And where she lives, that little area, is just the same as it used to be. They haven't bought 'em out, you know, so they can build them high-priced buildings on it.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, it's changed quite a bit in downtown, I know.

GOMEZ: Oh, it's changed a lot. She's in that area where it looks normal. The other time I went up there, they took me through the middle of town, and this time, they want to take me, I says, "I don't want to go look at it, I want to think about it the way it used to be." (Hormell laughs) On the other side, all them country up there, them rolling hills, Hole in the Rock and all that [Papago Park], was just a desert, there was nothing there. And I worked nine and a half years for Tovrea packing company. I started at the bottom, and I kept going up from one department to the other, all through the plant, to see what an honest guy could do without cheating all the time, you know. And I worked all the way through, and they have two long-distance drivers. And one drove an old Case truck that they bought from where they had the first packing house up there by Douglas. And the other guy was a small one, and he was driving the only big International truck that they bought new, and he was driving it. When they started having to use that truck to take to the mining towns -- Ray and Miami and Globe and all them places -- and they started bringing the beefs in halfs to the outside and load one-half on the truck this way and one half the other, and then they'd put their boxes on the top and cover 'em up to take 'em to the mining town. And before that, they used to cut them beefs in quarters, you know, and take the front quarter in one place and the hinds in the front end of the truck. And then the boxes went in the other part. And they started bringing them out in halves, and loading 'em in halves. And when they done that, the first time they done it, that small guy, one of the old drivers, was driving that truck, and the big guy put the pole in the roller and he was supposed to -- the guy down here picked up the front end, that little guy, and they had to walk in there, and throw half this way and throw half the other way 'til they got it full. And the first time they done that, he sprained his back. It was too heavy for him because he wasn't big enough. And you know that he died right away? He died the next day. He hurt his back, he broke his back or something. Then they put me and I was pretty young, but I handled it. And then after a few years, they killed an animal that weighed 200 pounds more than the biggest animal they'd EVER killed. And my boss in the shipping room, he bet the other guys in there, he bet the guy that was handling the pole up here, he was a great big guy and he was husky, you know, and he handled that easy. When they brought this great big animal, they cut it in quarters, you know, the front quarter and the hind quarter, and Big Roy took the hind quarter in. It was my job to take the worst one in, was that front quarter, because it was way down here with the neck bent this way that far from where the other come that way from the floor this one was way out here. And darned if the boss in there in the shipping room bet this big guy that if he could get in it, I could, too. I went down there, and boy I had a heck of a time bringing it up real slow, and I walked up there stiff but I come and I hung it on the hook, because I couldn't hang it any higher than the hooks that they had in there that were that big. And when they hung a quarter, it was that far from the floor. But when I hung this quarter, it was that far this way, and I wind up there, one step at a time with that great big thing on 'em, and I stuck it on there, because they didn't have anything down here that they could have a shorter one, you know, so it wouldn't touch the floor. It had to touch the floor, and then the neck was that way, this way. And he won the ten dollars and gave it to me. (laughter) That was my boss. He had too much darned confidence. I didn't know if I could handle it or not. It was too darned heavy.

SOLLIDAY: When was that? Was that in the '20s that you were working there?

GOMEZ: Yeah.

SOLLIDAY: That must have been the only thing anywhere in that area then.

GOMEZ: I was working on the biggest cattle company in Arizona in 19. . . . The last part of '20, and. . . .

END TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO

GOMEZ: . . . give me vacation for a week, and I went down to home in Tempe, and I went to visit a friend that'd been working three years and a half at that Tovrea Packing Company. And he was a foreman of a Spanish wetback that was working extra work around there. They worked all over the plant. That work at the plant had been started three and a half years, and I went up there, found out where he was, and I knew him pretty well before that, because we used to have a partnership. We'd go buy cattle all over the Valley and sell 'em to those slaughterhouses. So I went up there to work in the corrals, shipping, and pretty soon they took -- the superintendent went up there to look. Because they had two guys with two horses, and they had one of those fresnos, you know, to clean the corrals twice every week, and everything. He took me up there to see that, and he put me to work, and I went up there, and I told him, "I don't need a helper." I couldn't do that. Hell, I was used to doing it at home, you know, leveling land when I was a kid. They took the two guys off. And the packing house had a partner that had a ________ at another packing house, and they decided for that packing house to go partners with 'em so they wouldn't bother each other's customers, so that way they could ________ customers. So they got to working that way, and the foreman that __________ these Spanish-speaking guys, because he could talk to 'em, he hadn't had a vacation for three years and a half, and he decided when I went up there to visit him, because I know him before that, and he left me in his place, bossing those six men. And I had to go through all the plant from one department, cleaning the floors and whatever they had to do. And I worked 'til he come back. When he came back, they started me in the horse department down in the basement, and they put me from every department from the bottom up, to the shipping room where they were shipping the stuff out, and just for a few weeks in each one, in each one, in each one, through all the departments to see what an honest guy would do. For the other ones, every hour they go to the toilet and, you know, and mess around for about a half an hour and kill time. So they found a good one, they decided that every six hours they'd take a half hour and say that that was for them to rest. But at the end of the trail in the evening, those half-hours, they took them off of their time that they used to close up at four o'clock, and they'd get off earlier by doing it that way. I worked there for nine and a half years. And I got a vacation and went to one of the biggest cattle outfits in Arizona and most of the United States. They had four ranches, and I worked at one of them as a cowboy.

SOLLIDAY: What was the name of that ranch?

GOMEZ: That was Sunflower. It was up toward the Tonto Basin up there. And that company, the Babbitt Brothers, had three other ranches, and this Babbitt, Old Man Babbitt, was the head boss of one of their outfits, so they put him on this ranch and let him run it himself. And he had one son and he was about my age -- I was about nineteen and a half. And I went to work for this outfit that had the best God darned cowboys in the world, and me and this boy teamed up and all winter long the cattle were very wild and the country was very rough, you know. There was part of that mountain that was so brushy we couldn't get the cattle out of it. They'd just go a few feet away from the bottom here, from the canyon, and we couldn't ride a horse there. There was a bush that they called manzanita, about that big, and it had a little apple about that big, like a marble. And you could bend it in a circle and it wouldn't break like other wood would. They call it manzanita and there was a whole side of the mountain where the sun shined on that. On the other side where the sun didn't shine, there was other kind of brush. But that was the only, in that country, that the sun shined on that, and then you couldn't ride in there, and the cattle would go just a few feet in there and they couldn't run any further, and they'd stand there, them real wild cattle, and we'd never catch 'em unless we caught them off of that darned hill. And they would stay up there too long before they couldn't graze, they couldn't walk in it. So the only time they'd go up a little ways was when we was trying to catch 'em down here. Them wild ones would go in there and we could just let 'em stay there and catch 'em outside sometime.

SOLLIDAY: It sounds like all the ranching was out in the desert then. Didn't they use the feed lots like they have now?

GOMEZ: The roughest mountain in Arizona, that was.

SOLLIDAY: Did they ever use feed lots like they have now, and keep all the cattle in one area?

GOMEZ: Then in the spring when we gathered the cattle in the springtime, we'd go to make to them slaughterhouses, you know, for them to kill 'em, and we'd have to drive 'em three days from where we were to get 'em to the God darned market.

SOLLIDAY: Was that coming down to Phoenix? Was that where you brought them down to Tovrea?

GOMEZ: Uh-huh, yeah. We brought 'em down to the Tovrea Packing Company, and I went to work for them after that, and worked for nine years and a half, and I started at the bottom and they worked me up all through the plant 'til I got the top job in the trucking business. I drove the only new truck they'd ever bought at that time. After I left, they bought a new truck, and the guy that would _________ was a guy that started with the company from Bisbee. They had a place up there in the early days, and they moved up here in the early days, and they moved up here and they put all. . . . But they had some old trucks, and didn't want a new one, he wanted that old truck, the old Case, that he had, Old Dutch. And he had a farm out southwest of town. They sent me with a load of stuff. I used to go to Miami, and they sent two trucks to take the stuff to Globe. And then they decided, because I'd get there at midnight, that I could unload there and then go to the other place and save two trucks from going up. So I done that for a while. Then they decided that they wanted to send me to the Coolidge Dam and go on the other side, and go way up on the east end, and there was a colony of Mormons up there, but they had to go over the mountain, this way, toward the road that goes to Tucson, toward Douglas, and that's the only way they could go around to go to Phoenix. So I was the only one that went. They sent me down there and I made it, and then I had to go to this colony of Mormons up, and then go around the other end. And there was a place on the mountain up there, and it's a real brushy, steep mountain. You can hardly walk in it. And they had a prison camp up there, and they made me go up to that darned prison camp. And about a quarter of a mile, when I go up along the side of the mountain, on just a one-way track, I'd go up there and unload, and I had to back up a quarter of a mile, and back up into a canyon up here to turn the truck to face the way I wanted to go. And I was the only one they ever sent up there. And after I left, they sent my old partner -- Old Dutch they called him -- and they sent him up there with a brand new truck. And when he went to go down from where I went down to the dam, where it was straight up, I think he left it in second, he didn't put it in low gear, and it got to goin' too fast, and when he got part-way into the dam, he tried to shift gears and put it in lower gear, and he couldn't get it in gear, and it got goin' too fast and he didn't ________ deal, and it caught fire and burned him up. I remember I think it burned him to death, because it burned him real bad before he could get out. And that brand new truck, like the one I used. And that was the only new truck he ever drove for that company. And the first time he used it on that deal. But nobody else, I don't think that I ever knew, that went with a big load like I did, but I was very, very cautious about everything. (SOLLIDAY: Yes.) And I went up to this colony, and then I went up to that prison camp. But them guys from that colony, they used to go over a mountain, but it was a good road up, and they had a road that goes from Tucson to New Mexico, and that's the way they went. And I don't think nobody ever drove across that damned deal with a big load like I did.

SOLLIDAY: I wanted to ask you about a few people that lived in Tempe, if you remember some of these people. You mentioned Winchester Miller.

GOMEZ: Oh yeah, I knew them. Theirs was the place where my grandfather came and he died just before he got there.

SOLLIDAY: So your grandfather and Winchester Miller were friends?

GOMEZ: My grandfather and them were from back East, from the same place.

HORMELL: They had the funeral at their house.

GOMEZ: Yeah. Didn't I mention that a while ago? The Millers?

SOLLIDAY: Yes. So you knew the rest of the family, the Miller family and the Sotelo family?

GOMEZ: The Millers lasted for a long time. I think there was three boys and two girls, or one girl, I forget. That wasn't a very big family, but I knew 'em, and that's where my grandfather had died. Just gettin' there, and he died. They were from the same place back East -- in Virginia, I think.

SOLLIDAY: Did you know. . . ?

GOMEZ: Millers lasted for a long time. Some of the boys stretched out and bought places next to where we used to live, west of Tempe.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, they moved over to that side. Did you know Carl Hayden?

GOMEZ: Yeah, I knew most of the oldtimers in Tempe. Yeah, I knew Carl Hayden. He was the first governor, wasn't he?

SOLLIDAY: He was the congressman.

GOMEZ: Congressman! Yeah, I remember. I was old enough to vote, and I voted.

SOLLIDAY: Did you see him much around Tempe? He was in Washington so much, did he come back to Tempe a lot?

GOMEZ: Oh yeah. When I was going to school we went to that depot up there. They stopped the train. He was going to Phoenix, you know, and that was the end of the railroad. We went from school and it was when I was in the fourth grade. I just started in the fifth grade when he came through there and we went to meet him. Four . . . seven. That four last grades we went up there to meet him, and it was two years later when he got elected.

SOLLIDAY: How about Antonio Celaya? Do you remember him?

GOMEZ: Antonio Celaya, sure I know the Celayas.

HORMELL: ______________.

GOMEZ: Celaya.

SOLLIDAY: He had a store.

GOMEZ: Oh yeah, he had a store, Celaya. They had the First National Bank there. Celaya and Joe Birchett had a store on the corner of the next street. And then there was a blacksmith's shop, and I forget what the guy's name was. Sometimes I remember all the names. That's why, you know, I start rememberin' about 'em. Next to Joe Birchett's store, on this side of the street, and he had a blacksmith shop there.

HORMELL: Spain? Was his name Spain?

GOMEZ: Spain? No, somebody else was Spain.

SOLLIDAY: Because I know he had a blacksmith shop there, right in that area. Carl Spain, I think.

GOMEZ: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Spain. Sometimes I lay down at night, thinkin' of them names. Other times I can't remember their names.

SOLLIDAY: Hm, how about some of the things that people did in Tempe? I understand there were baseball teams in Tempe?

GOMEZ: Oh, that wasn't until we started going to school.

SOLLIDAY: Did you play baseball with any of the teams there?

GOMEZ: I was in the fourth grade when it became a state. And there was a high school there, and then they got too many kids for the public school, so they built another school for us, about four blocks from the old one, back toward the south. The last four grades went over there, and I was in the first grade, and then there were three others ahead of me, that we moved up there. That was in the fourth grade when we moved up there.

HORMELL: Tempe Grammar School.

GOMEZ: And I was there three years. And me and a girl named Chloe Jackson were the models of the whole school. (HORMELL chuckles) The teachers used to -- on that last school, Mrs. Benson was a little teacher, and she'd go outside and shut the door on purpose, and then peek through the hole over there. And she went up there for a little while, and the God darned erasers and everything, books, everything was going up________ across the _________. She opened the door, sneaked in there, and she saw that me and Chloe Jackson, her father was a second foreman on the railroad up there where they fix the tracks, you know, and all the way through school we were the models. We never got in no trouble with a teacher, just her and I. Her father was a foreman of the railroad, fixing the railroad in Tempe for three miles and a half. Each guy had three miles and a half to take care of. Every day he'd inspect all that railroad for three miles and a half.

HORMELL: Dad, what was your teachers' names? Do you remember your teachers' names?

GOMEZ: Well, in the fourth grade was a second-grade teacher and then they put her in the fourth grade. I started in the fourth grade with her, and I kept going up when I moved to the other school. When it got to the fourth grade we moved to a new school they had west of town there, and there was four grades in that because there was too many pupils for this other school anymore, you know. And the high school was right across from the public school there. But they lasted a long time before they put another one. They had a place at Normal School, where they could send them higher grades up there, at the Normal School.

SOLLIDAY: So there were a lot of schools by that time? New schools started up?

GOMEZ: No, the first school is the one up there on the east side of town, the Normal School, but that was for higher grades. But they had a low grade school in one of the apartment and school where I went. They got too many kids, so they had to build this other school for fourth, fifth -- the last four grades, they put 'em up there, and I went to the first grade, and I had to go three years more to get out, before I graduated.

SOLLIDAY: I wanted to ask you, when you were young, when you were a boy growing up in Tempe, I think right after 1910, or after Arizona became a state, was there a time when there were more problems between the Mexican people and Anglo people?

GOMEZ: No.

SOLLIDAY: Was there a lot of prejudice that the . . . ?

GOMEZ: The first school I went, there was only one teacher in that whole school was that way. Her name was Mrs. Spencer and she was a widow. She's the only teacher in the whole school that mistreated me. You know what she done? She put me with the . . . . There was five kids that was ALWAYS in trouble, and she set me with them bad kids and then I got the same punishment they did: stay after school for a couple of hours in the evening. And she was the only teacher that mistreated me. The others, and this Chloe Jackson, her dad worked on the railroad track, he was a foreman, and we were the models of the school, we never got in trouble. And I remember Mrs. Spencer was a little teacher in the third grade, and when we moved to the new school, they put her as teacher as fourth grade where I started in the other school.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, so you had her one more year?

GOMEZ: Yeah. And from there on, she'd go to the door, go outside and go to the door and peek through the keyhole. (chuckles) And the erasers were going all over the darned school, throwing them at each other. And there was a lady that had four daughters, but three of them were in school and the other one was too small, and she used to work in the theater before they had a speaker on the moving picture, and she used to play music, and the other three girls, one played a violin, and three different instruments, and they done the music for the silent pictures.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, so it wasn't just the organ or the piano -- they had all different instruments.

HORMELL: Was that Mrs. Cotter?

GOMEZ: Mrs. Benson was the little teacher, and Mrs. Scudder was. . . .

HORMELL: The one that played the piano?

GOMEZ: Yeah, I think it was. She had three girls that played the piano in the movie. And they was just as ornery as the other kids. Boy, they were in trouble. . . . (laughter) One of them was in my room.

SOLLIDAY: I know one of the pictures that Irene showed me was of you leading the parade. It was one of the Fiestas Patrias, and you were leading the parade on horse[back].

GOMEZ: Yeah.

SOLLIDAY: Were you involved with a lot of the parades there in Tempe?

GOMEZ: Oh yeah, whenever they had one, I had to be right in it.

SOLLIDAY: Well, it looked like you were leading the parade in that one.

GOMEZ: Yeah, I always did the parades.

SOLLIDAY: Was that one of the biggest things there in Tempe at that time?

GOMEZ: Yeah.

SOLLIDAY: People didn't have television then, and it seemed like these kind of things had to be much bigger.

GOMEZ: Yeah, you was always looking for that parade, you know.

SOLLIDAY: Was that for the Cinco de Mayo celebrations?

GOMEZ: Yeah, we celebrated everything that come along. They was _____________ celebrate.

SOLLIDAY: What kind of parades? For Fourth of July they would have one?

GOMEZ: Yeah.

SOLLIDAY: Would everybody in town (GOMEZ: Yeah.) come for all these?

GOMEZ: The Yaquis had their own parade up there at the Yaqui town [Guadalupe], way out south of where we lived, straight south of where we lived on Eighth Street here, and they lived way over there. And they used to be in a parade. They had their own parade.

SOLLIDAY: Their own parade? Guadalupe? Or they _____.

GOMEZ: Guadalupe, yeah. They celebrated their own.

SOLLIDAY: Did you go out there very often?

GOMEZ: There wasn't too many people there, but now I go down there and there's two blocks, and I don't know how wide, just full of houses, and GOOD houses, good nice houses. And at that time there was only a few. I don't know, there was only ten or twelve families, and the men used to be the ones that cleaned them first big canals to bring the water from the dam up there, to irrigate with. And they was always the guys that done that work, with a shovel. They only got about a dollar and a half a day for ten hours.

SOLLIDAY: It was always the Yaquis that did that though?

GOMEZ: Now I go through there, for a half a mile or three quarters of a mile, there's a lot of houses on both sides of the street, and a lot of business out there, stores and stuff. It really grew big. And I wonder were all them people, they HAS to work outside. And at that time there, they didn't hire 'em, only to work, clean on big canal. That's when they first brought the water from the dams up there to irrigate the Valley with, and they were the only ones that done that hard work. They only got a dollar and a half, I think. Now they get four or five dollars, I guess.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, it must have been the hardest work there was around here then. Let's see, I think I got through all these questions I had here. I don't know, is there anything else you wanted to say about what you remember about Tempe back in those years? I know it's changed so much today, but any other things that you remember, that you . . . ? The good memories that you have about Tempe when you were growing up?

GOMEZ: No, I left there and went to buying cattle on the reservation. ____________ clear down into Mexico. One time I went into Mexico and bought a lot of cattle to go to California. Bob Swank was a partner with Art Houser up there by that big mountain up there where the lights are, the other side of Casa Grande -- Picacho Peak. And Art Houser had a farming deed, a lot of acres of farm land on that side. And they sent me to Mexico, and I'd ship a lot of them cattle straight to Swank or Houser, and then Houser would put 'em on pastures and get 'em in good shape so he could sell 'em over there. And I shipped a lot of cattle to California. God darn, as soon as the cattle got there, old Swank, next morning before my bank opened in Tempe, that check would be there -- they'd wire that check. I bought cattle and sold it to them for many years up there. And I bought 'em out of Mexico. It used to cost three dollars every time you go in Mexico, and then pay three dollars to get out. And Ernesto Elias had an office there, a brokerage exchange, and I used to get my permit to go in and out. He had an uncle that had a big ranch towards -- well, it was about 25 or 30 miles from Casa Grande, south. He had a big ranch over there, and he had three sons that run the ranch, but he was a man at the gate, the brokerage exchange. You could go in there with a permit and pay three dollars to get out. And I bought his cattle and shipped 'em to California to Swank. And after that, I had a free pass. I never had to pay three dollars to go in and out. I could go as many times, and he was the head guy there at the gate for the Mexican side. You had to pay, you had to check in, but coming out you had to pay three dollars to get out. So he. . . .

END TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE

GOMEZ: . . . company from Phoenix, south of Phoenix down the river, went up there, and I offered three and a half [cents per pound], and I was only paying three, because I couldn't get any more than two and a half for 'em, and haul 'em in that far. And there's a guy from Casa Grande went up there and he started buying for three and a half. No, he started buying them for two cents, and I was buying for two cents, but I could only get two and a half. So he got some guys from Phoenix that wanted a lot of cattle and he took them over there. He offered three cents for 'em, and the Indian told me, "You want 'em?" and I say, "I want 'em," and I paid three cents for 'em, but I got to this end and explained to the guys that I was buyin' 'em for, and they went up the other half cent. And I stayed with 'em, and when them cattle went up, the reservation's about 80 miles, 90 miles away, I think, BIG reservation. And you know when the priced started going up, them Indians would wait for me to haul them out. And then one time I went with a guy that was helping me drive, I went two weeks without going to bed. Two hours one sleep, and the other one sleep on the truck, you know. And when the Depression broke, then the price went up. Them Indians all over the reservation wouldn't sell to nobody but the one that stayed with 'em when the deal was bad, you know. And boy, I really went to town then! I bought an extra-big truck and an eight-wheel trailer, and I hauled that. Then I had another boy that drove another truck, and he had a load. We'd bring a BIG load, so we really moved the cattle in. I had a place where I could sell all of 'em, and the money just like that. It paid off right now. So I really went to town, but them Indians wouldn't sell to nobody else but the one that stuck with 'em when the price was bad. That's a BIG reservation, boy! Burns a lot of gas!

HORMELL: He worked with the Indians. You worked in Sacaton with the Indians, right?

GOMEZ: Oh yeah . . . up here. And we had about 900 head of God darned cattle I could handle on those fields. And I had 300 to each field for three fields, and then one of those fields went to the next two, and made another three. I had nine deals, and I handled a lot of cattle. Then this new manager took over, and he came and told me, "Now we're gonna do this different." He was a young guy, and he's still with 'em, and he done really good. But he hired this guy that was working, teaching the kids about farming, and that guy was dumb! (laughter) They sent him to Arkansas and he bought a trainload of cattle -- I don't know whether it was. . . . 600 head of cattle the first time, and they put 'em on the train, and I used to stop 'em in Tucson and feed 'em overnight, and then the next night they'd come to dock where I unloaded 'em and I drove 'em across the river to those fields, you know. And I never had no trouble. I didn't lose no cattle. And this guy went up there and bought those cattle and they gypped him up there on the other end -- he didn't know nothing about the cattle business. You know (chuckles) I used to get cattle from there. It's a very big ranch, I don't know how many miles, and it's all fenced on the outside, but many, many sections of it. And he went up there and bought 'em. No shrink. And I used to shrink 'em, you know, not let 'em water 'em and everything, but then paid 'em without taking the shrink off. And he went up there and put 'em on the darned train, and he didn't stop 'em in Tucson, and they were on the train three days without nothing to eat or drink, and they came to dock where we unloaded 'em, and then I used to drive 'em across. He had to pay a bunch of trucks to HAUL them across the river. And that cost a lot of money. (laughter) That guy that hired him, he didn't feel too good. I made him feel worse! (laughter) He had a farm, because he started handling those cattle in the field, and the first time them 300 head died that night. And the guy that used to work for me, you know, he'd learned quite a bit about cattle. He'd have been the right man to put there, because he knew how. And they sent him up to get me to come and tell 'em what happened. I said, "Don't ask me, I can't tell somebody that knows more than I what to do." I said I couldn't help 'em out. But I sneaked up there to look at 'em, and there was 300 head of God darned cattle died that night. They went in that field, and they were so hungry. . . . And another thing that was different from the way -- I used to buy two different kinds of salt like that, and put in there. He went and bought some salt, granulated salt, and they just hungered for [water]. They came and tanked up and drank a lot of water, you know, it makes 'em thirsty. Drank a lot of water and 300 head died that night. Can you imagine that?! And it was all messed up. "Don't ask me, because I didn't learn that from a book. What I know, I had to learn it the hard way, so I don't know nothing about books." (laughter) They hired him because he knew all he knew with a book.

HORMELL: Dad, can you tell us a little bit about the ranch that Tio Monroy, how you started cowboying with Tio Monroy.

GOMEZ: No, my folks were cattle people, the whole family. There was five girls and one boy, and he was the youngest, John Jones, Johnny Jones. My grandfather was Dr. W. W. Jones from Virginia. My grandmother was a girl that was going to where her folks were in California in the '49ers when they struck gold over there, and she was on the way up there. When they stopped at Yuma, there was the first United States Army that was just come in there and stationed there, and two officers, two of the head guys -- there was three of 'em -- were the heads of the thing, the General and the other two were his assistants. And she was going to her folks in California where they were when they discovered gold up there and everybody went crazy going up there. And she stopped there, and this Dr. Jones came from California, him and Goldbergs [Goldwaters] that were big businessmen in Phoenix there for a long time. And there was four of them brothers, but three of them were old enough to work and the other one was a little bitty boy. And they met there and went in partners with my grandfather, and two of them boys would bring the freight from California on wagons and horses to Yuma, and put it on a boat, and the other brother would take it up to Ehrenberg. And my grandfather had two wagons and four horses on each one, and then he had about half a dozen cavalrymen on horseback to follow them wagons because the Indians were all over the country, you know, everywhere. And they'd come up there shooting at 'em, and by gosh they could hold them off at a good distance when they started cracking those guns at 'em. So they finally got to where they wouldn't bother 'em, you know. And he's hauling the freight to Prescott, but in a few years more, they'd haul it from Prescott to two different places clear up to the mountains before they go over the mountain into Jerome up there. And that's as far as they'd go, but they had to send two trucks to take that up to those two different. . . . So they found out that I could do it, so I had to go to Prescott and deliver it, and then I'd have time to sleep or something, so I'd have to go up there and deliver at them other two places. Finally, Arizona went partners with the Spaniards that owned that mine up there, and then I had to go up there and deliver to that mine, and then they had four of the biggest cattle outfits in Arizona belonged to Babbitt Brothers, and Calcourts had a ranch towards the town of Basin, the Sunflower Ranch, and I worked as a cowboy there in the biggest ranch in the United States. I went to work when I got in the middle of the year, the last half of '20, and I worked there the next half of '21. The first time they gave me a vacation for two days, after working six months. And then the next time, before their big roundup started, they give me a vacation for a week. And I came and went to visit a friend at Tovrea Packing Company, and he'd been working three years and a half, and he was the one that handled the guys that couldn't talk English, you know, the wetbacks, and he was a foreman there. And I went to visit him, and he says, "Hey, I've been working here for three years and a half without a vacation. You take these guys." They went all over the plant, you know, doing the clean-up work and everything. And he left me there. And when he come back, the God darned superintendent was a Jew and I was out there at the ice plant loading some stuff on a truck that didn't have no clutch, one of the old trucks that they brought from the old packing house by Douglas, over there. And I saw him standing on his little office on the outside of the dock of the packing house, and pretty soon when I backed up the truck and loaded it with junk and stuff to take it out to the different dump-a-dump, and it didn't have no clutch at all, I had to mess with it. And he watched me, and I went back where the other guys had been making a mistake -- they had a tailgate on the truck and it was straight like that. The chain was, thay had it so it went like that. So I saw what the deal was, and I kind of headed that way, and boy it didn't have a clutch and it just made a heck of a. . . . And I went and pulled that thing up and tied it with the chains up here like this, so I had it real close. And instead of bumping, it didn't bother at all. I could feel if I'd touch it, and I'd just stop there. And the old superintendent stood up there on the dock and he had a little office. And when I got ready to go on the truck, oh my God, here goes my job, and I just started! (chuckles) You know what he said? "Son, I got a lot of confidence in you, and I'm gonna put you on the Miami run on one of the trucks that carried the long distance stuff." And I didn't believe it. God darn, the guy that I took his place, was a small guy, you know, and he'd been with the company since they started over at Douglas so many years. And the other guy, they called him Dutch, and he had an old white truck that he used to drive up there, and it was a good truck, but it was four cylinder. And the one I got belonged to this little guy. The only new truck, they had an International with six cylinders on a big truck. And I'd say, "Oh, God, I just started and. . . ." He said, "Son, I got a lot of confidence in you, and I'm gonna put you on the Miami run." And by God, I started there and I went up and up and up 'til I was. . . . After I quit, the guy that owned Tovrea owned the packing house, and he had a big home on the hills up there that way from the packing house. The old man got sick and died, and he lived in the corner, they had a big house. And he only had that one son. Gosh, the old man sent me up there to clean up that house up there where he moved after that and the boy took over. And the boy moved up to the old man's house, a great big house. God darn, I stayed with 'em almost 'til they shut down. But I went on a vacation up to the mountains, up to the roundup where my folks had cattle, and there was a big company of cattle, the Babbitt brothers, they had one ranch there, but they had three other ranches. And I went on my vacation up there, and damn if I didn't get hooked up with that outfit, and I was __________ for six months one year and then six months the next year, and me and the boys, his dad was the one running the outfit, but the boy was the one that done all the work. And me and that boy worked together as a team, and then during the roundup time, a lot of other cowboys he hired. I worked six months and had about two days vacation. And then the last time I got a week's vacation and I never went back. And you know that boy used to go into Mexico because he loved to hunt and he had some dogs that liked to hunt, you know. And he went down there and got caught in a big swamp for two days and nights, and I'll be darned if he didn't get pneumonia and die. And then the old man run the ranch for about a year, and the first thing I knew, he bought this ranch on the other side of Tabletop there, and I went when I found out that he was there, that he let me know. I went up there to see him, and I thought maybe I'd go up there and work for him again, you know. And he just kept it one year, and he couldn't get used to these deserts here because it was a bad year. You know, the feed doesn't come out like it does up there in the high mountains, you know, there's always good feed up [there]. And he just had it a year and sold it to somebody else for less than he paid for it. And he had a lot of money because he was a partner with the Babbitt brothers, and that was the biggest cattle outfit in the state. And I worked for him for one year.

SOLLIDAY: Well, Mr. Gomez, it sounds like. . . . You've told me about a lot of different things you've done just all around the state of Arizona. I appreciate you letting me interview you.

GOMEZ: I was a good farmer, because my folks had not a big farm, but I worked on all them neighboring farms, BIG farms, you know. In them days the wages was a dollar and a half for the big guys, and that guy that was underage was a dollar, and I'd do the same work as the big guy did. They didn't go by the eight hours, they went by ten and ten and a half hours, whatever. The sun went down, as long as they could see, they'd keep working. They didn't give a darn, they wouldn't pay you no more. When I was that size, first they put me to driving the horses and there was two guys on each side cutting the heads on the maize, you know, and throwin' 'em in there, in the truck. And after that, I worked for another guy, and he paid me more and the same deal. He paid me good and I didn't have to work but eight hours, so that changed things a lot. But this son of a gun was sure chintzy. God darn, I was working as much as a big guy, helping him, and helping him throw those sacks that the thrasher came and put the grain in sacks, you know, and I'd have to pick one end, and he was a big, husky guy. Heck, he could. . . . But he made me pick up one end and him a great big old husky guy, and throw it on the truck all day long, and then go unload it. I thought that (laughs) was terrible, you know.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, it was a lot of hard work.

GOMEZ: Another guy came and bought that part of the farm, and boy I sure had a good deal then. He paid me more and I was the head guy of the thing, you know, raised a lot of hay and a lot of grain.

HORMELL: Did you raise cotton?

GOMEZ: There was no cotton in them days.

HORMELL: Because, see, Chavarria told me that they had raised cotton. Must have been my mother ____________.

GOMEZ: Later years when I was still pretty young, the folks started planting the first cotton, but it wasn't very good.

HORMELL: Not a good crop.

GOMEZ: We had some milk cows and we'd milk 'em, and my brother used to take the milk about three miles to the creamery before going to school. And I had to go pick up the cows when it was still dark, at the different fields where I was pasturing 'em, and bring 'em in and milk 'em and take 'em back before I went to school. And we had to ride horses them days.

HORMELL: What did you do for fun?

GOMEZ: For fun?! Work a little harder! (laughter)

HORMELL: There wasn't any dances or any. . . . You said you went to theaters?

GOMEZ: There was no fun -- then we had to go to school. (laughter)

HORMELL: Do you have enough [tape] to ask him about my Uncle George?

SOLLIDAY: Yeah.

HORMELL: Can you tell him a little bit about Uncle George, how he went into. . . . Tio _________, Uncle George, about how he started with the airport? [In Casa Grande.]

GOMEZ: Well, he had this airport up here. He had one boy and a girl was his family. And his wife is still alive.

HORMELL: Yeah, Aunt Dell.

GOMEZ: Yeah, the daughter picked her up and she run that deal up here at the airport. They had a bar there, and she run it for years and years. And here the last couple of years she got to where she'd work in the daytime, and then part of the night -- they left at midnight. And she got down and she had to stay in bed for three hours every afternoon and take a nap. She worked too many hours, 'til after midnight in that bar, goin' after my brother died, you know.

HORMELL: Floyd, how did George get into the airport, how did he start at the airport? George, your brother.

GOMEZ: Well, there was no restriction, and it was the only airport here. Afterwards they come in during the war for the government, and I had that section leased, and I let 'em have half of it and I had the other half here, but they was supposed to put a fence between me if they wanted it, and they didn't do it, so I just left it alone. And then there's a company here in town, and they went and started building up there on the entrance to MY place, you know, on that side.

HORMELL: Is that the airport?

GOMEZ: Yeah.

HORMELL: When did it first become an airport?

GOMEZ: So then I let them have that quarter of that half- section -- I let them have it, and the other one just laid over there. It was still in my name, you know.

SOLLIDAY: That was ___________ down in Casa Grande?

GOMEZ: I'd have had to fence it, and I told them to fence it, and they was supposed to fence their half off, you know. And my brother and his son were the ones that were training those boys for the service, and both of them got killed on their airplane when they was -- the young boy was spraying cotton over in Maricopa, and George went to Phoenix to pick up one of the boys that he had trained to fly over at Phoenix, coming from California, and got married, and he was ___________. And he went to pick 'em up, and I'll be darned if he didn't get killed up there this side of Sacaton, where that little mountain is straight out. He was coming in at the right height, and there was a guy coming from back East to California that just got married and he had three kids, you know, from a first wife. And he was coming across, but he was flying 200 feet off of course, off of the height he was supposed to. And I'll be damned if he didn't hit him on the back end of his and broke the tail off of it and he went head-first down in a coal shop over there, and he told his wife that he was going down at so many feet -- I forgot how that was -- and the guy hit him and went and dropped off next to the canal up there about a mile and a half from where it happened, upside down. I went up there and looked at it, and his wing was way back here and his deal was up there, upside down. And he got killed in it, him and. . . . They was just married and going to California to get married or some damned thing. And that guys that was up there picking it up, trying to say it was George's fault, but it wasn't, because I says, "You look up there and see that he lost his wing up way back there where he hit." And it knocked the tail end off of the truck on George, and he went head-first into it and just blowed up. You know, it ignited and that other guy just turned it over and he didn't burn up. And they tried to say that it was George's fault, and I said, "Look, the left wing on this deal is off, and George's back end, where it hit the back end, was broke off of his deal." And I'll be darned, his boy was spraying cotton over in Maricopa and. . . .

END TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE

END OF INTERVIEW