..inte:

Ben Bellman

..intr:

Beryl Morton

..da:

1991

..cp: 

1993..007.005
Ben Bellman on tractor, Safford, Arizona, 1936

..ca:

..ftxt:
An Interview

with

Ben Bellman

1991

Transcriptionist: (?)

Interviewer: Beryl Morton

Arizona Jewish Historical Society


		Ben Bellman Interview

Beryl: That's the building you were talking about?

Ben: When I was a kid in high school, I used to run a hand grain business
out of that building.

Beryl: You ran the business? Not your father or your uncle?

Ben: Well my dad did it but I drove the truck.

Beryl: Really!

Ben: Yeah. See right back here there was a big door.

Beryl: Oh, a loading door.

Ben: Yeah. You would go in that back door and there was a big warehouse
building. There was a staircase that there, down into the basement. That
basement was absolutely memorabilia. All sorts of things. Invoices, bills
of lading . . .

Beryl: From Solomon. And that all burned?

Ben: Yes.

Beryl: What a tragedy.

Ben: You know, nobody realizes what the value is of anything, until it's
gone.

Ben: There is more history connected to that building than anyone could
ever imagine.

Beryl: Well, I want you to tell me about every little adventure you can
think of in that building. We have got about seven or eight different views
of that building. It is possibly the most photographed building in Arizona.
it is a very important building. Oh, look what you brought.

Ben: These are some photographs of my father.

Beryl: Let's date them.

Ben: We'll guess at the dates.

Beryl: Well, I know that you can only guess. He looks like a pretty young
man.

Ben: I would say that's somewhere in the 60's. 1960's. He isn't too young
anymore.

Beryl: Really? He looks young.

Ben: There's one from about the 1940's.

Beryl: Oh, doesn't he look like a cowboy.

Ben: Yeah. Businessman cowboy.

Beryl: Oh look. The photographer ... hazel eyes and gray hair.

Ben: That one is a little faded.

Beryl: It's faded, but it's on a horse. I'm looking for these horsey
pictures. Oh, this is '49. It's got the date right on it.

Ben: There's my pride and joy right there. That's sometime in the middle
30's.

Beryl: And this is your father?

Ben: That's my father, yeah. Standing in his business clothing in a barley 
field watching them cut the barley with a cigarette in his hand, which is
an absolute no, no. It was a no, no there too.

Beryl: In a barley field, oh yeah, I should say.

Tell me about this. Did he supervise or did he have a manager or did he run
it and just have laborers?

Ben: Actually, he share cropped it. To the Mexicans.

Beryl: What does that mean?

Ben: In other words, they did the work, they provided the machinery, the
labor and he provided the seed, the water, most of the expenses and
whatever the net on the crop that year was, they would share 50/50.

Beryl: I see.

Ben: That still exists to this day.

Beryl: This particular piece of land?

Ben: Not this one, no. This one was sold in.....

Beryl: Where was this?

Ben: This is a place called Glenbar, Arizona.

Beryl: Does that still exist! Is that one word?

Ben: Glenbar, G-L-E-N-B-A-R.

Beryl: Does that still exist! Glenbar, Arizona?

Ben: Oh yeah. Well, it's just a little wide place in the road. It's near
Safford. It's fourteen miles from Safford.

Beryl: He grew barley. He had how many acres?

Ben: There was about 250 on that farm. He had another farm in Ashurst,
Arizona.

Ashurst is named after Senator

Beryl: Right. Henry Fountain Ashurst.

Ben: That farm we still own. The Ashurst farm we still own and I'm on my
way there tomorrow to see what's going on. There's a picture of my dad
shortly after he came from Europe. Must have been about 20 to 22 years old
in that picture.

Beryl: What year would you guess.

Ben: I would say about 1917. Guessing at it.

Beryl: It was taken in Safford by DuBois.

Ben: Incidently, I think it's about to fall out of there.

Beryl: It's going to come out of here and go into mylar. We'll keep this
because that too is a relic.

Ben: Here's a little article on mother and dad on their 50th anniversary.
Sort of gives you an idea what the people of the community thought about
them.

Beryl: That was in the Safford paper?

Ben: Yes.

Beryl: Do you happen to remember the name of the paper?

Ben: It was the Eastern Arizona Courier.

Beryl: Is that a weekly, daily, monthly?

Ben: It's a weekly.

Beryl: O.K. I can't tell You how grateful I am for this. If You come across
anything tomorrow when you, are in Safford that might be appropriate in
terms of farm implements or farm accouterments or farm anything? Nothing?

Ben: I kind of doubt it. The tenants don't have any desire to keep anything
like that. it doesn't serve their purpose, it goes into the junk. Just like
during World War II where so many of the farm implements that could be of
such great value now all wound up in the scrap iron drives. We used to
scour the farms for old plows and old anything that was made of iron.

Beryl: Your family's interest was strictly in farming; there were no
animals involved?

Ben: Oh yeah, my father raised horses; a few horses for his own use, and he
had a small herd of Black Angus cattle.

Beryl: Did he really? Did he have a brand?

Ben: Yes he did.

Beryl: Did he have a branding iron or anything like that?

Ben: The branding iron, if I could only find it.

Beryl: Will you look for it?

Ben: I doubt it.

Beryl: Marshall sent us a list of brands and I have that. But if you could
find...

Ben: If I could find the iron . . . I would love to find it. I'll see if
it's possible it's still there. I doubt it.

Beryl: We've got some branding irons from Aubrey Grouskay and he gave us this
saddle.

Ben: It's a very good saddle. It looks like an M. Porter saddle. I bet it
is.

Beryl: Marshall took it over to his man in Wickenburg and had it all
cleaned and oiled and fixed up. It came right off the feed lot.

Ben: M. Porter. That was the finest saddle made. I can recognize the style. I
used to have one.

Beryl: Do You have any pictures of yourself out there in the field, or
doing anything "farmish"?

Ben: I didn't think you needed anything on me. I thought you wanted it on
my family.

Beryl: Oh, well we want the family. You're part of the family, or your
brothers or sisters.

Ben: No brothers or sisters.

Beryl: Were you an only child? That's interesting.

Beryl: Do you have pictures of your mother?

Ben: Yes, I should have brought the picture of her. I've got a beautiful
picture. Believe it or not, my mother and my father never really found the
time to take a picture together unless they were either on a trip somewhere
or some occasion like that. One of my daughters managed to find two passport
pictures. One of my mother and one of my father. You know how passport pictures
are. She found a photographer and he put those two pictures together. It's the most
beautiful, loving picture I have ever seen. I should have brought it.

Beryl: How often do you get to Arizona?

Ben: Two or three times.

Beryl: We're going to have a fund raiser I certainly hope you will come in
for that. We'll be honoring the farmers and ranchers.

According to the notes that I took, first ... you were born in Safford?

Ben: No, I was born in El Paso.

Beryl: Oh, they married in El Paso.

Ben: My parents were living in La Mesa, New Mexico at that time. I was
almost born in the middle of the ______. Fortunately they got me to El Paso
in time.

Beryl: But then shortly thereafter...

Ben: They moved to Safford when I was six weeks old.

Beryl: Oh, six weeks. So you grew up, basically and went to school in
Safford, and um . . .

Ben: Kindergarten through junior college in Safford.

Beryl: Really. Was that Eastern Arizona... ?

Ben: E.A.J.C.

Beryl: Tell me about your early memories. We are going to focus in on the
farm, grain, hay, feed business, or whatever you were in.

Ben: Let me say this. The farm was an avocation of my father's.

Beryl: Yes, you told me. He was an agriculturist.

Ben: They basically were merchants.

Beryl: But he still owned the acreage?

Ben: Yes. It was very unusual for a Jewish man to get into the farm
business. It was very cliquish.

Beryl: That's why we are having this. Honoring the farmers and ranchers,
because it was so unusual.

Ben: It was a very tight knit group. It was very difficult at the time to
find any land to buy, except that it happened to be during the Depression. 
It was through a friend of my fathers, Mr. Fay Rab, who was very close to 
my dad at the time. Mr. Rab sort of introduced my father into the farming
business. Rab was a large cotton broker at the time. Married, incidently,
to Mrs. Rinaman who was a daughter of the Shuster family of El Paso.

Beryl: There was a Shuster family in northern Arizona too.

Ben: The Shusters of El Paso. Somewhere there was Jewish lineage in the
Shusters.

Beryl: Were they related to the Shusters of northern Arizona?

Ben: I don't think so. My dad got into the farming business and he liked 
it because to him it was a hobby. He did manage to turn a hobby into a 
viable business. He was a member of the Ditch Board which governs the use 
of the water from the river to the farmer in that district. He was a Farm 
Bureau member. He was also a member of the Gin Company Board for awhile.

Beryl: Did he work cotton?

Ben: Yes. That's the main cash crop.

Beryl: Well that's another thing. It was a cash crop. He obviously grew
barley.

Ben: That's the only thing that makes money in Safford Valley is cotton.
Everything else you grow is just a break even proposition. In other words,
to rotate your crops, you cannot grow cotton on one piece of ground
forever. If you do, it eventually gives out and you get nothing. So you
rotate your crop from this field, over to this one. and then you plow up 
this barley field and you put the cotton over here in the third year.

Beryl: Can you put barley over here in this first field where you had
cotton last year?

Ben: Then you would put alfalfa and then you graze cattle. You keep a sort
of cycle going. If you don't do that, your land is out and you are like the
Oklahoma dust bowl. So, what else might I add.

Beryl: I want you to recall for me, your earliest memories of your father
doing whatever he was doing farm-wise. Whatever you did farm-wise. I mean,
let's start with your earliest memories and work up.

Ben: All I remember of my father and the farm is that it was a ritual for
us to go every Sunday to the farm. Come rain or shine, the family loaded
into the car and we went to the farm.

Beryl: You lived in Safford and the farm was ...

Ben: 14 to 15 miles away. We didn't live on the farm.

Beryl: So, was this like a Sunday outing?

Ben: Yeah. We had a picnic and did all sorts of things. As long as it was
at the farm.

Beryl: Was there a swimming hole?

Ben: No, but we had beautiful cottonwood trees and areas along the river.

Beryl: The river runs through the property?

Ben: The river runs right adjacent to it. There were very pretty places to
picnic and enjoy. For awhile we used to keep a couple of riding horses and
we would take a ride. It was very pleasant.

Beryl: It was almost idyllic?

Ben: It was indeed.

Beryl: So what was father doing during the regular business week? What
business was he in?

Ben: We were in the retail clothing business. My father first came to
Arizona . . . he settled in El Paso with a brother he had there and
eventually from El Paso he moved to a place called La Mesa, New Mexico. He
ran a small retail store there, at which time he met my mother. La Mesa,
New Mexico is about 15 miles from El Paso. A full day's drive in a Model T
Ford. He met my mother. Both of them came from Lithuania, they came within
just a few months of each other. They came from little towns about eight
miles from each other in Lithuania. They did not meet until they got to El
Paso.

Beryl: What was her maiden name?

Ben: My mother's maiden name was Lebiush, L-E-B-I-U-S-H. That is the way we
are related to Marshall Lehman, is through my mother and Marshall's
father's mother. My mother and Marshall's father's mother were sisters.
That's how we're related.

Beryl: They were sisters?

Ben: That's right. Shall I continue?

Beryl: Yes, go ahead.

Ben: Shortly thereafter, my parents moved to Safford. My dad bought a store
that had already been established and was known as the Army & Navy Store,
specializing in surplus army items. My dad and mother operated it through
the 20's and through the 30's, when I was in high school, and through the
40's. After I got out of school, my destiny as the only son was to go into
the business. I went into it also in about the middle 40's. At that time we
decided to upgrade it and we changed the name to Bellman's Department Store
for whatever that's worth. We operated the store until 1959 as Bellman's
Department Store, at which time I decided to take a fling into something
else. I moved my wife and family to El Paso and was in the process of doing
that and one night, on the 13th of February, 1959, our entire store burned
completely to the ground. I was in California. That caused a rather big
jolt in the family, but I proceeded with my new venture. I lived in El Paso
for about one and a half years while my mother and dad were trying to put
the old business back together again. Finally, I figured, "Well, I can't
handle this running back and forth", so I just chucked everything in El
Paso and moved back to Safford where I helped them build the business back
and ran it until 1973.

Beryl: When you say build the business back?

Ben: We built the buildings back and built the business back up again.

Beryl: The fire happened to your place in El Paso?

Ben: No, to my place in Safford.That was a rather dark era for all of us, 
but it all turned out very well. Those are high school memories that I have. 
That is in the year 1934, 1935, 1936. That's right in the heart of the 
Depression. My father bought that building from the Bank of Safford. The Bank 
of Safford had foreclosed on that building and my father bought it for a song.

Beryl: Who owned it at that point?

Ben: I don't know. The bank owned it. I really don't know who had it before
the bank. For what reason my dad bought it, I think it was mostly sentimental,
because he had no earthly use for it.

Beryl: Did he know the Solomon's?

Ben: He may have known them very slightly. He did know the daughters and he
knew some of the sons-in-law, he knew them quite well. By the time my
father got there, the Solomons had pretty well disappeared.He was very friendly 
with the Frudenthal family, with the Lesinskys. He knew the daughter who married 
the judge . . .

Beryl: Weinberger.

Ben: . . . in San Diego. He was really more with the second generation than
with I.E. Solomon. That was before my dad's time. As I look back on it, I see 
my father might have bought this for strictly sentimental reasons. First off, 
Solomon is five miles east of Safford and our farm is fourteen miles west of 
Safford. No connection whatsoever if anyone were seriously thinking of going 
into some business, he certainly wouldn't run from one end of that valley to 
the other. 

Beryl: This was in Solomon?

Ben: Yeah. This is Solomon. The history in that building is
something else. The meeting hall is upstairs there. That was the original
Graham County Courthouse.

Beryl: Really? I didn't know that. That was the original Graham County
Courthouse. Did they use the upstairs loft?

Ben: When they split the two counties of Greenlee and Graham, that was the
courthouse. Everything upstairs were county offices. There was a superior
courtroom up there, there were offices for the assessor, there were offices
for the collector, for everything, the justice of the peace, all that
upstairs was offices and meeting halls.

Beryl: I knew the bank started in that building.

Ben: Oh yeah, but that was long, long before.
So, in this period of time when my father decides to go into the hay and
grain business, he buys a 1933 used Dodge flatbed truck, and he announces
to me, he says, "You're going to drive the truck this summer, and you're
going to deliver the hay and the grain."
So we would harvest the barley and put it in sacks and I would haul it to
Solomon and store it in the back. As we would harvest the hay I would haul
the hay and we would store it in the back. If someone needed a ton of hay,
my father would tell me, here, deliver this to so and so and I would go
back to Solomon and get the hay and deliver it. This was my high school
deal for one summer. I learned a few very, very important lessons which
have never left me.

Beryl: Like?

Ben: The best one I remember, and the man that taught it to me was a fellow
in Safford by the name of Wert. I was delivering a load of hay to, I think,
the Ellsworth's. The Ellsworth's were very prominent. I was to deliver it
to their barn. When I got there, Mr. Wert, who was their foreman, said,
"Alright, put the truck over here. I have to stack the hay. " He had a wall
that was about twelve feet high. It was another four feet higher than this.
I pulled the truck up there. He says, "What do you want to do. Do you want
to buck the bales off or do you want to stack them?" Well, it was so simple
and so obvious, that the least work would be to take the bales from the top
of the truck and just throw them over the wall and let him stack them. This
is snap judgement. The only thing I did not remember, is that every layer,
and there were about six layers of bales, and bales are about as big as
this desk, every layer that you toss to him, you go down one layer. So
eventually, it gets to a point where you have to take the bales and raise
them up and over to get up over the wall. As you do this, every layer
becomes tougher and harder and more difficult and hotter and the sweat is
running in your eyes and the hay leaves are running in your nose. And he is
down therelaughing his head off. Because he knew he pulled a fast one on me. 
That taught me then and there, what looks easy right now might turn out to be
very tough. So now sometimes give it a second thought. I never forget that.
That's one little bit of . . .

Beryl: Your father sold the building, and then Uncle Alex bought it back in
. . .

Ben: We sold, my dad sold the building and he said, "Good riddance."

Beryl: He didn't want to be in the hay growing business?

Ben: No. He got rid of it and he got out from under it and he said, "Thank
God that's the end of it." My uncle Alex, whom I love dearly, he's one of
the sweetest men in the world, not necessarily the smartest man in the
world but one of the sweetest. At some time, without consulting, my dad,
maybe a year and a half or two years after he sold it, he buys it back. I
forget who the people were he bought it from, but he buys it back.

Beryl: For what purpose?

Ben: Well, he decided he was going to make a pool hall out of this section
right here. He bought all of this too. This building that was here. He
bought this building and this building. And he was going to make a pool
hall and a restaurant and so forth. He divided these two buildings and he 
had a little dry goods store on this side and he rented this corner to a 
drugstore. He renovated the entire upstairs. He tore out some of the 
partitions and put in others and made living quarters for he and his wife 
Sara and my two cousins and they lived there. This was during the time my 
cousins were going to high school. My father was furious. He was absolutely 
so furious that he almost didn't speak to my uncle for a couple of years.

Beryl: It was a bad buy, a bad venture?

Ben: Yes. He never talked to my dad, he never asked my dad's opinion or
anything, he just went ahead and did it. And so, there were some bad
feelings for a long, long time over that. The people who had the drug store, 
by the name of Clare, I still remember the name, she was a city girl and I'm 
not too sure she was too happy with the location. And although we really had 
no proof of it, at some time on one very, very cold morning, a fire started 
in the drug store and completely consumed the building. It almost got my 
uncle, my aunt and my two cousins. Almost. They got out of there with nothing 
except their clothes on their back. I think that was true, but I'm not going 
to say that. It's very suspicious.

Beryl: But the Solomon's had left?

Ben: Oh they were, the Solomon's were long gone.

Beryl: Yes, but still remaining from the Solomon's, in the basement, were
all these . . . ?

Ben: All the records and stuff. Oh Sure Nobody bothered to clean all that
stuff. There was a safe in the bottom.

Beryl: That could have been just a fire hazard in and of itself.

Ben: No, I don't think it was. It was covered with dirt. It was nothing.
Just all dusty, cobwebs and so forth. There was a safe in there, what you 
would find in a bank. It was what you would call a time safe that you could 
only open at a certain time no matter what you did. You couldn't blow it open, 
you couldn't carry it, You couldn't do anything with it except put only the 
most valuable of valuables in it. It had three Waltman Railroad Watch movements 
in it to activate this safe. I used to go down and open this safe up and look 
at those watch movements and say, "One of these days I've got to get somebody 
to take these out of here." I kept saying and kept saying it and one night I 
went down and somebody went down and did take them out of there. That safe alone
would have been something, a fantastic antique. Everything was destroyed.
That was the end of that era until they built it, back in 1983. We were in
Solomon just about four weeks ago. We went through Solomon and the replica
of this building sits there and I do believe it was one of the most foolish
things Valley Bank ever did.

Beryl: Well, they wanted to do it for historical reasons.

Ben: They may have had more money then they have now. It wasn't a good
idea.

Beryl: Solomon is just a nothing little burg now. I mean Safford is a
metropolis by comparison.

Ben: Safford is going about the same way as Solomon did.

Beryl: How much time did you spend in Phoenix? I mean with Abe Korrick.

Ben: Well, I knew Abe Korrick. We met, this was in the later years with
bond drives and things like that. I knew the Korricks although we weren't .
. .Logistically it's difficult to come from Safford to Phoenix. The highway is
bad and it was even worse in those days.

Ben: To get from Safford to here was a big job. It was much easier to go
from Safford to El Paso, even though it was another 40, 50 or 60 miles. The
trip was much easier. We really had very little connection with Phoenix.

Beryl: Really?

Ben: Unless, of course, it was business or something.

Beryl: You're from El Paso? El Paso is a really big Jewish community.

Ben: Yes it is.

Beryl: Speaking of which, what . . . were you able to do anything Jewishly
in Safford, at all?

Ben: Oh well, of course, I think we had the most unique set up anywhere.

Beryl: Tell me about it.

Ben: Well, of course my father's entire formal education was Hebrew school.

Beryl: A Cheder type thing.

Ben: And we had as many as . . . how many families did we have ? In the
area we had Wilcox, Clifton and Morenci and Duncan, we probably had about
15 families.

Ben: In 1951 I built a house in Safford. I built it so the activity room,
we had a bedroom, could be used as a temple or shul or whatever. My father
was the Rabbi. He was accepted.

Beryl: O.K. Before 1951, what did he do, or you, or the other
families, what did you do before you built this so that you had a place for
everybody to come to? What did they do?

Ben: We would still use someone's
home. We would go to El Paso, or Tucson or . . .

Beryl: Just for high holidays. What about Passover? Did you have a Seder?

Ben: Always. In Safford. We never missed.

Beryl: You never missed a Seder?

Ben: We must have had about 50 to 60 people.

Ben: Not with my mom you ever missed one.

Bery1: 50 or- 60 people?

Ben: Yes. They would come from everywhere.

Beryl: But, before you had the big house?

Ben: Well, we would do it in the small house. It didn't matter. In my
childhood, we never missed a Passover, we never missed a . . .

Beryl: So did she come to Phoenix to get matzahs and stuff like that?

Ben: They would ship them to her. She had a sister who lived in El Paso and
they would send us matzos and they would send us . . .

Beryl: All the stuff . . .

Ben: Yeah. We never missed a holiday.

Beryl: So, as far back as you can remember, whoever was Jewish in the
surrounding territory . . .

Ben: Absolutely welcome to come to have the ... always would be in my
father's house.

Beryl: Really? For the whole ...

Ben: For awhile we had a few years there where we had some very wonderful
people move from El Paso to Safford and they were very active and helpful.
Two wonderful people that were related to the Cates family in El Paso.

Beryl: So you really, much more, had a connection in El Paso than in
Arizona?

Ben: Oh yeah. We were isolated in Arizona, like the side of the wall there.

Beryl: So, your connection was much more with El Paso. That's interesting.
Particularly that you leap frogged over New Mexico into Texas.

Ben: It isn't really that far.

Beryl: I know it isn't. I was looking at a map, I saw where El Paso is. It
should have been in New Mexico.

Ben: El Paso was probably the landing place of most of the Jews in the
west.

Beryl: That's right. And Galveston.

Ben: First Galveston and then El Paso.

Beryl: When did You move to California?'

Ben: 1973.

Beryl: From Safford?

Ben: Yes.

Beryl: So you never tried El Paso again?

Ben: No.

Beryl: You do come back here with some frequency, don't You?

Ben: Oh yes. I have to because we still own the farm and we still have some
property. I'm still Arizona. I always will be. You can't get it out of your
system. I've lived in California almost 20 years and I still feel like a 
visitor.

Beryl: Where in California do you live?

Ben: I don't really have any real roots. I live in San Diego.

Beryl: Marshall gave me quite a list of people that I might investigate.
There's Krup. 

Ben: Krups. Yeah. The Krups were . . . (END OF SIDE ONE)

Ben: . . . was my father's sister.

Beryl: Oh, really?

Ben: They were in Safford before we were.

Beryl: But they weren't in farming or ranching?

Ben: Strictly in mercantile.

Beryl: O.K. Then we will take them off the list.

Ben: My aunt is strictly a pioneer in that.

Beryl: O.K. Bendalin he mentioned. Howard Bendalin.

Ben: Howard Bendalin? Howard Bendalin is a generation or so later. Howard
is quite a farmer.

Beryl: Still?

Ben: Oh yes. He is right here.

Beryl: Sherman's father.

Ben: Yes.

Beryl: Kipnis. He said Harry is dead but his son, David Kipnis, is in feed
lots, stockyards.

Ben: I don't know that.

Beryl: You did raise barley, alfalfa and cotton. That was the cycle, the
rotation. What are you raising there now?

Ben: Same thing. Problem there is that there is no money in any of them
now. Prices are so low and weather is so bad. We had a terrible year last
year. Worst year in the history of the farm was last year.

Beryl: Was that before the El Nino?

Ben: I don't know whether you would call it El Nino or whatever.

Beryl: They say El Nino started about last Christmas. It has been all this
year of 1992.

Ben: We had total failure last year. I'm hoping we don't have it this year
because I can't afford it.

Beryl: How many acres do you have now?

Ben: About 300 acres. This, the Ashurst farm, is bigger than the other one,
but a lot of it really doesn't have water rights. Unless you have rights to
the river water, you have nothing to brag about. You can pasture cattle or
whatever, but you can't really grow anything or sell anything off it. All
very regulated by the government now. They allot you so much land to plant
cotton and that's all. If you grow any more than that, why you lose your
supports.

Beryl: What happened to your father's Black Angus cattle?

Ben: After my father passed away, the farmer decided it was too much of a
hassle to handle them, so they sold them all off. It's funny, when I go
back there, I still see some Black Angus on the farm.

Beryl: On your farm?

Ben: Yes.

Beryl: So what does that mean to you? That they are now down to a few?

Ben: It means that there is some monkey business going on. That's why I go
back occasionally now.

Beryl: To look things over.

Ben: Yes. Dad introduced the Black Angus, pretty much, into the area. He
fell in love with them, I don't know where he saw them, and he decided he
wanted a pair of them.

Beryl: What year would that have been, approximately?

Ben: Oh, I would say back in the late 40's.

Beryl: Maybe he saw a movie or something?

Ben: He thought they were beautiful and he bought them, I think he bought
them at some sort of a cattle show or auction. He had a registered bull and 
that would have been something if I only had some of the pictures of my 
father and his big Angus bull, and they're huge. That bull was to my father 
like a dog is to some people. He would follow my father. My dad would pet 
him and feed him just like you would feed a dog.

Beryl: Isn't that something.

Ben: Beautiful animal.

Beryl: When do you think you will be coming in again? Do you think it will
be before Christmas?

Ben: I don't know. Barbara is getting all settled, and Marshall... They're
taking up golf.

Beryl: I would really appreciate if you would let me know, in advance, so
that I can get this real oral history set up.

Woman: Tell us when you want us to come.

Ben: I 'm sure that you knew or heard of a very good friend of my father's
and a good friend of mine, Mr. Bert Fireman.

Beryl: Oh, yeah. Esther is on our board.

Ben: Well, Bert and my dad were kinda close and I think that Bert might
have had some information on my dad at the time.

Beryl: Well, Esther has got every article he ever wrote.

Ben: I think Bert wrote some articles on my folks.

Beryl: Really? Well, let me hang on to this and I'm going to talk to
Esther, because she has given us a lot of copies of his articles.

Ben: I don't remember where it is, but I know that Bert would come to
Safford and lecture at the college. He got acquainted with my dad and he
used to swap stories. Dad was a great story teller. Bert just ate it up.

[Transcript ends abruptly.
End of interview.]