Art: Well, I know Ulus Herard one time—when we were over there, he was riding a mule. And he asked—or my dad asked him how come he rode a mule? And he laughed. He says, "I rode the first mule the first year, because I lost a bet." He said, "Since then, I've rode 'em out of respect." He said he was coming down that Medano Crick, beyond the Sand Dunes one time, on the mule, you know, going somewhere to do what, I don't remember at all. But he says his mule just kept a raising cane, and he just figured it's a lion off in the brush somewhere the mule was smelling. And he said, he just kept getting worse, getting worse. And he said, "I was getting concerned." He said, "I finally reigned him around" and he said about a quarter of a mile up, he says "there was an eight foot wall of water a coming at us."
BH: Oh my goodness! In Medano Canyon?
Art: Down—down between the mountain and the Sand Dunes. And he said, "Me and that mule got out of there" and he says, "I've had a lot of respect for 'em ever since."
BH: Wow! And you think that might have been '11 or '21—one of those times?
Art: I would say it was, but you know, it's anybody's guess. '21—he wouldn't have been a young man at all. '11 he'd have been middle-aged. But you know, back in those years, though, people rode horses all their lives. You know, they just never did quit. That's the only transportation. Ah. . . up there. . . there used to be an. . . a body of a Model T car up there in Medano Crick that I assume was his car. But in that sand, it couldn't have been very useful. Maybe he did take it out the other side, I don't know. You know, at times.
BH: Do you know what happened to that Model T?
Art: Yeah. Some guys from over the hill went in there and loaded it up, and came out this side, and they had a note that where they had bought it from this guy, but its always puzzled me why they came in from the other way, and loaded it, and then came out this side to go home.
BH: That is kind of interesting, yeah.
Art: It was a pretty neat body, too. You know. A Ford coupe, about something in the middle twenties, probably. It was definitely different than an eighteen or nineteen model.
BH: And it was Ulus's car?
Art: It was what?
BH: The car belonged to Ulus to start with?
Art: Apparently. I don't know that, but I would assume it did. I never heard anybody say anything about him driving, but it had to get there some way. Well, too, Everett Entz, up here, he's just been dead two or three years—he said when he was a kid, somebody left a full Ford over here on—between Alamosa and Monte. He said every time they went by it, he and his brother would start yapping at his dad, "Let's take it home. Let's take it home." He said his dad finally told 'em, said, "If that sets there one more month, you can take it home." He said, "It sat there one more month." He said, "We went and took it home." That was his first car. But it quit somebody, and they just walked off without it. You know, nobody was mechanical minded back then—very few. But the oldest son that built these buildings that are falling down here—and I haven't found out what year—but the first car he owned was about a '25 or '26 Dodge, and he got that in the late twenties or early thirties. He traded two loads of firewood for it, you know. Well, it quit running, and this old guy didn't know beans about it, so he just parked it in a fence corner. But—you remember that Ford (unintelligible) that Junior Dieckmann had?
Therma: Hun huh.
Art: That was setting down there at Cooley's. And he had an old Dodge car setting there when I was a teenager. But my younger brother and a friend bought that old Ford for —I don't remember—$50 or $60, I guess. I did follow it for a year or two—but what happened to it, I don't know. Well, when I was a teenager, you could buy just a pretty darn good old car for $25-$50, and a good one for $75. But—but it took a while to earn that money, too.
BH: Yeah, I imagine.
Art: Now you don't buy nothing for less than $2000, $2500, and that's a junker, really.