finding a broken kettle with a hole in the bottom, and a frying pan with a broken handle, both of which she carried home and washed and saved. In the early twentieth century, in rural New Mexico, the people saved glass containers and tin cans; they straightened nails and hinges for reuse, and they kept piles of remnant 2Ã4s and pieces of galvanized steel roofing. At Laguna the people were accustomed to reusing stones from fallen down walls or buildings.
Aunt Alice saved everything. All of her wedding gifts had been opened but then were carefully repacked in their boxes, labeled and put in order on the shelves that reached from floor to ceiling in her back room. As a child I loved to go back into the cool dim room that smelled of adobe clay and cedar wood. Aunt Alice didnât have a flush toilet, but she had something far more fascinating: a commode. Behind a curtain hung from the ceiling up on a wooden platform was a big wooden chair with a skirt around the bottom of it to hide the slop jar that had to be carried to the outhouse and dumped followed by a scoop of old stove ashes.
After Aunt Alice died, Grandma Lillie went to help Uncle Mike go through her things and they found boxes neatly packed with catsup bottles that sheâd washed, balls of string and pieces of used aluminum foil she saved.
Aunt Alice had no children. She was always very kind to us. She often babysat when my parents drove to Albuquerque in the evening to see a movie. Aunt Alice was at her best when she was telling us girls the old-time, hummah-hah stories. The stories about Kochininako, Yellow Woman, being abducted by strange men who turned out to be supernatural beings were Aunt Aliceâs favorites.
My mother thought Aunt Alice was sexually repressed and the racy Yellow Woman stories that she told were her outlet. (My mother thought this because Aunt Alice only saw her husband twice a year: for eight weeks in the summer, and for a week at Christmas. Uncle Mike who was Mescalero Apache worked on the Santa Fe Railroad and lived in Richmond, California. This seemed to suit each of them just fine. They were entirely devoted to one another.)
Aunt Alice was my grandpa Hankâs first cousin; Aliceâs mother, Margaret, from Paguate village, was married to Walter Gunn Marmon. My grandfather recalled when he was a young boy, he and the other children were afraid to walk past the yard if they saw Aliceâs mother outdoors.
Margaret apparently suffered a nervous breakdown sometime before 1900. Aunt Alice would have been a young child at that time too. Grandpa Hank said Margaret used to scream at him and the other young children and threw rocks at them when they walked through the large yard and garden area the families of the two Marmon brothers shared.
My great grandmother, who seldom had anything negative to say about anyone, told my mother a strange story. John Gunn, not Walter Gunn Marmon, was Aunt Aliceâs biological father. John Gunn and Walter G. Marmon were first cousins, and John Gunn came to Laguna with Robert G. Marmon, my great grandfather, in 1875.
Great Grandma said Margaret had a saddle horse she liked to ride very fast around the Laguna-Acoma area. While Walter G. Marmon was gone on months-long survey and map-making excursions, his wife saddled up her horse and galloped off for liaisons with John Gunn.
Grandma Aâmooh said Aliceâs mother became so sexually active with white men that some people got together and stopped her out in the hills where she was riding her horse. They confronted her about her behavior and then they partially scalped her.
For me this story never quite added up. My great grandma was a stern Presbyterian who never lied about anything. She was very fond of my mother so why would she tell her such a story if it was untrue? But Grandma Aâmooh must have left something important out of the story. The violence of the confrontation points in the direction of something else.
Marital
Aunt Alice saved everything. All of her wedding gifts had been opened but then were carefully repacked in their boxes, labeled and put in order on the shelves that reached from floor to ceiling in her back room. As a child I loved to go back into the cool dim room that smelled of adobe clay and cedar wood. Aunt Alice didnât have a flush toilet, but she had something far more fascinating: a commode. Behind a curtain hung from the ceiling up on a wooden platform was a big wooden chair with a skirt around the bottom of it to hide the slop jar that had to be carried to the outhouse and dumped followed by a scoop of old stove ashes.
After Aunt Alice died, Grandma Lillie went to help Uncle Mike go through her things and they found boxes neatly packed with catsup bottles that sheâd washed, balls of string and pieces of used aluminum foil she saved.
Aunt Alice had no children. She was always very kind to us. She often babysat when my parents drove to Albuquerque in the evening to see a movie. Aunt Alice was at her best when she was telling us girls the old-time, hummah-hah stories. The stories about Kochininako, Yellow Woman, being abducted by strange men who turned out to be supernatural beings were Aunt Aliceâs favorites.
My mother thought Aunt Alice was sexually repressed and the racy Yellow Woman stories that she told were her outlet. (My mother thought this because Aunt Alice only saw her husband twice a year: for eight weeks in the summer, and for a week at Christmas. Uncle Mike who was Mescalero Apache worked on the Santa Fe Railroad and lived in Richmond, California. This seemed to suit each of them just fine. They were entirely devoted to one another.)
Aunt Alice was my grandpa Hankâs first cousin; Aliceâs mother, Margaret, from Paguate village, was married to Walter Gunn Marmon. My grandfather recalled when he was a young boy, he and the other children were afraid to walk past the yard if they saw Aliceâs mother outdoors.
Margaret apparently suffered a nervous breakdown sometime before 1900. Aunt Alice would have been a young child at that time too. Grandpa Hank said Margaret used to scream at him and the other young children and threw rocks at them when they walked through the large yard and garden area the families of the two Marmon brothers shared.
My great grandmother, who seldom had anything negative to say about anyone, told my mother a strange story. John Gunn, not Walter Gunn Marmon, was Aunt Aliceâs biological father. John Gunn and Walter G. Marmon were first cousins, and John Gunn came to Laguna with Robert G. Marmon, my great grandfather, in 1875.
Great Grandma said Margaret had a saddle horse she liked to ride very fast around the Laguna-Acoma area. While Walter G. Marmon was gone on months-long survey and map-making excursions, his wife saddled up her horse and galloped off for liaisons with John Gunn.
Grandma Aâmooh said Aliceâs mother became so sexually active with white men that some people got together and stopped her out in the hills where she was riding her horse. They confronted her about her behavior and then they partially scalped her.
For me this story never quite added up. My great grandma was a stern Presbyterian who never lied about anything. She was very fond of my mother so why would she tell her such a story if it was untrue? But Grandma Aâmooh must have left something important out of the story. The violence of the confrontation points in the direction of something else.
Marital
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