9. Jacqueline Chatfield & James Frederick Mallon

Confirmation services were held Sunday evening at Christ church by the Right Reverend J.F. Spaulding, bishop of the Colorado diocese of the Episcopalian church.

The canticles and hymns were sung by the full choir and all who listened to the music pronounced it especially fine.

The following persons by confirmation were taken into full communion: …, Mrs. J.A. Small, …, and Miss Jacqueline Chatfield. Mrs. Small and Miss Chatfield were also baptized in the church by the Rev. Allen the previous Friday evening.

Chatfield, Arthur: son, born Aug 1878, age 21, born Nebraska, father born Ohio, mother born Illinois, R.R. (railroad) laborer

Chatfield, Mabel: daughter, born Oct 1883, age 16, born Colorado, father born Ohio, mother born Illinois, book Keeper

Chatfield, Jacqueline: daughter, born Feb 1886, age 14, born Colorado, father born Ohio, mother born Illinois

Chatfield, Levi: son, born Sep 1888, age 11, born Colorado, father born Ohio, mother born Illinois

Chatfield, Margaret: daughter, born Nov 1893, age 6, born Colorado, father born Ohio, mother born Illinois (note: Marjorie)

The El Jebel literary society met on last Thursday evening, and an interesting program was rendered, among which was a recitation by Jacqueline Chatfield, and a song by Mabel Chatfield, both of Basalt. There was also a spelling match, in which Jacqueline Chatfield and Will Balcom came out victorious.

Next Friday evening the Basalt public schools will give an entertainment at I.O.O.F. hall, the proceeds will go towards purchasing a flag for the school. A program has been carefully prepared, which will be rendered by the school children. This entertainment will be give for a worthy cause, and every one should turn out and help swell the receipts. Admission on 25 cents; children under fifteen years, 15 cents. Don’t miss it, as our school needs a flag.

“Long may it wave.”

Following is the evening’s program (partial list included in the line-up of 25 performances):

Music………….Glenwood Mandolin Club

Pantomime….Jacqueline Chatfield,

Claude Russell, Albert Harris

Recitation—Ralph Bates

Vocal Solo—Bertha Sebring

Dialogue—Blanche Smith, Olive Troendly,

Fannie Hartson, Guy Russell,

Harry Nelson, Albert Harris

Poem and Parody—Blanche Smith,

Jacqueline Chatfield

Jim Mallon was jumping sideways at Aspen’s big celebration.

J.F. Mallon has bought 180 tons of alfalfa; consideration, $5.

Clark S. Chatfield, Jr., and J.F. Mallon will open their new meat market Monday, December 16, first door west of postoffice. They will handle meat both wholesale and retail. We predict for them an astonishing success.

Chatfield & Mallon’s meat market opened up last Tuesday noon and has had a rush of business since. They handle a well selected stock of meats and canned goods. There is no need of climbing the hill, good people; just step in at Chatfield & Mallon’s. They will treat you right and do it all the time. First door west of postoffice.
Chatfield & Mallon received a consignment of fresh oysters and Eastonville creamery butter this morning, which can be had at lowest prices.

CHATFIELD & MALLON

Fresh and Salt Meats, Canned Goods.

FOR RANGE CATTLE.

The following named property:

One mare, 6 years old, weight 26oo.

One Studebaker Wagon, (good as new.)

Twenty good milk cows with calves by their side.

One 14 inch John Deere walking plow, new.

One 14 inch Canton Clipper, walking plow.

One Lever Harrow.

One Cultivator.

One Potato Pitcher.

One Buggy, only been run a few times.

Two sets single harness.

Two sets double harness, (good as new.)

JAMES MALLON. Call on or address James F. Mallon, Box 53, Basalt, Colo.

Mr. Jim Male, Miss Jacqueline Chatfield and Mrs. Dr. Gill took in the dance at Pinger’s store Thursday evening.

Jim Mallon of Basalt, was in this city Tuesday looking into all the furniture stores in the place in search of some suitable furniture to furnish his nice little three-roomed house in Basalt. Now, what’s this all for? Jim says he is going to rent that house furnished hereafter and he wants some real nice furniture in it, too. That don’t look reasonable to any sane person unless he is going to rent it to Mr. and Mrs. James Mallon. The furniture he selected was done with the assistance of a member of the fair sex and her wishes were followed in every detail, so it looks like Jim would have to ‘fess up.

A marriage license was issued several days ago to Jacqueline Chatfield and J.F. Mallon, both of Basalt, but owing to their wishing to keep their wedding a secret from friends the Democrat refrained from publishing the item until now.—Aspen Democrat.

Married Sunday.

Sunday evening witnessed the marriage of two of Basalt’s prominent young people, Miss Jacqueline Chatfield and Mr. James F. Mallon. The ceremony was performed by Mr. Leland.

The happy event had been expected for some time, but the couple succeeded in keeping the date from the public until it was all over.

Both young people are well and favorably known in Basalt and their many friends and THE JOURNAL unite in extending them best wishes for a long and happy life, crowned with contentment and an abundance of the world’s best.

Mssrs. Chatfield and Mallon was branding and dehorning their cattle at the Morrison ranch this week.

The Knights of Pythias and the Rathbone Sisters held a joint installation and reception Friday which was attended by a large number of guests. The program was an entertaining one.

The new officers are as follows:

KNIGHTS OF PYTHIAS

C.C. Clark Chatfield

V.C. Dr. Gill

M.A. James Mallon…

We received a letter from J.F. Mallon, a former resident of Basalt, a few days ago. Mr. Mallon is now located at Princeton, California. He says that Levi Chatfield arrived safe and sound and is enjoying himself among the roses and orange blossoms. Mr. Mallon invites all his Basalt friends to call and see him when in California.

Mrs. J.F. Mallon arrived from Princeton, California, and will make and extended visit with her mother, Mrs. C.S. Chatfield.

Mallon, Devere J.: son, age 5, born California, father born Kansas, mother born Colorado

Mallon, Marjory: daughter, age 3, born California, father born Kansas, mother born Colorado

Mallon, Neva: daughter, age ?, born California, (note: age 17 mo) father born Kansas, mother born Colorado

AGE IN YEARS: 44

Date of Birth: Nov 19th, 1873

RACE: White

CITIZEN: Native Born

Present occupation: Farming & Stock

Employer’s Name: Self

Where Employed: Princeton, Colusa, Cal

Nearest Relative: Mrs. Jacquelin Mallon

ADDRESS: Princeton, Colusa, Cal

Height: Medium

Build: Stout

Color of Eyes: Gray

Color of Hair: Brown

Mallan, De Vere: son, age 15, born California, father born Kansas, mother born Colorado

Mallan, Marjorie: daughter, age 13, born California, father born Kansas, mother born Colorado

Mallan, Neva: daughter, age 11, born California, father born Kansas, mother born Colorado

Chatfield, Mary: mother-in-law, age 70, widowed, born Illinois, father born Nebraska, mother born Nebraska

Chatfield, Leslie: nephew, age 15, born Wyoming, father born Nebraska, mother born Illinois

Mallon, James D.: son, age 25, born California, father born Kansas, mother born Colorado (De Vere)

Mallon, Neva H.: daughter, age 22, born California, father born Kansas, mother born Colorado

Mallon, James D. Farmer, Orland Dem.

Mallon, James D. Farmer, Orland Dem

Funeral services will be held Saturday afternoon for James F. Mallon who died yesterday afternoon at his home west of Orland. Death was due to a heart ailment.

Born in Salinas, Kansas, in 1873, he was married in 1902 to Jacquelin Chatfield in Colorado. Upon coming to California, the couple settled at Princeton where he had a large part in the development of irrigation and reclamation districts in Glenn and Colusa counties.

He was among the first in planning the Central Valley Irrigation project, being vice-president of the California State Irrigation Association. He was in charge of the building of the Hamilton City-Harrington railroad. He also developed the first rice project in Colusa county.

The family moved to Orland in 1928, acquiring the Allen Moore ranch in the buttes, and engaged in the livestock business. He was an active member of the Federated Church here.

He is survived by his wife and three children, J.D. Mallon of Orland, Mrs. Stanley Truman and Mrs. Neva Aubin, both of Oakland. There is one brother, G.E. Mallon living in Colusa, and two brothers and four sisters, all living in Kansas.

Funeral rites will be held at the Federated Church at 2:30 Saturday afternoon, with interment in the Graves cemetery.

ORLAND, April 13—(AP)—James F. Mallon, 70, who is believed to have developed the first rice acreage in Colusa county, died yesterday of a heart ailment after being ill since December. Mallon started rice production near Princeton in 1904, later moving to Glenn county.

Mallon came to Willows in 1906 and became associated with the Sacramento Valley irrigation company, later becoming general superintendent and having complete charge of all construction work and operation of the irrigation system.

In 1911 he resigned his position with this company, and went into business for himself, organizing the Maxwell Irrigation District and later the Compton-Delevan Irrigation District, constructing two large pumping plants for taking water from the Sacramento river and a complete distributing system for the irrigation of several thousand acres in each district.

A little more than 20 years ago Mallon acquired a large stock ranch consisting of 6,600 acres west of Orland and has made his home there since 1930.

He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Jacquelin Mallon; a son, James DeVere Mallon; two daughters, residing in Berkeley, and a brother Ed, of Colusa.
Funeral services will be held at the Orland Federated church, Saturday afternoon at 2:30.

James F. Mallon, pioneer of reclamation and land development of the Sacramento valley, community leader and prominent farmer of Orland, died at his home west of Orland Wednesday, April 12th, after an illness of several months. Born in Salina, Kansas, on November 19, 1873, Mr. Mallon was married in Colorado in 1902 to Jacqueline Chatfield, and they came to California and settled in Princeton, Colusa county.

Mr. Mallon was among the first in the planning of the Central Valley irrigation, being vice president of the California State Irrigation Association when it was formed. He had charge of the building of the Hamilton-Harrington railroad, known as the “Beet Line,” which runs from Wyo, north of Orland, through the rich river country and connects with the main line below Colusa.

Mr. Mallon pioneered much of the irrigation and reclamation districts and had the distinction of developing the first rice project in Colusa county.

In 1928 Mr. Mallon bought the Allen T. Moore ranch west of Orland along Stony Creek and since that time had devoted his time to the livestock business. Since coming to Orland he had been active in the work at the Orland Federated church.

Mr. Mallon is survived by his widow, Mrs. Jacquelin Mallon, one son, J.D. Mallon of Orland; two daughters, Mrs. Stanley R. Truman, and Mrs. Neva Aubin, both of Oakland; one brother G.E. Mallon of Colusa, and two brothers and four sisters, all of whom live in Kansas.

Services will be held Saturday afternoon at 2:30 at the Orland Federated church with interment at the Graves cemetery, west of Orland.

The Federated church was filled Saturday by the friends who came to pay their last token of respect to J.F. Mallon. The front of the church was banked with flowers. Mrs. Neva Aubin, daughter of the deceased played her father’s favorite hymns as a prelude to the services. M.H. Beck, a lifelong friend, read a number of his favorite passages of scripture. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Farrell sang, and Mrs. Norma Brown, of Oakland, sang one of his favorite songs. Dr. Simonds spoke simply and quietly of the deceased and the work he had done during a long and useful life.

Many friends and relatives from out of town were present, among them being the following:

Mrs. Marjorie Tuck, Berkeley, Mrs. Marjorie Truman, Mrs. Neva Aubin, Oakland, Mr. and Mrs. A.W. Chatfield, Colusa, Mr. And Mrs. Lee Chatfield, Butte Meadows; Mrs. C.S. Chatfield, Williams; (et al).

Graveside services were held this afternoon at the Graves Cemetery here for Mrs. Jacqueline C. Mallon, 78, who died in Oakland on December 7 after a prolonged illness. A native of Colorado, she had lived in Oakland for the past 20 years, since the death of her husband, James. F. Mallon. The Mallons, who had been longtime residents of Colusa, moved to Orland to take over what had been known as the Allen T. Moore ranch. The homesite is now part of the Black Butte Reservoir.

Mrs. Mallon was active in the Federated Church and in community social affairs during her residence here.

She was the mother of James D. Mallon of Orland, Mrs. Stanley R. Truman and Mrs. Neva M. Aubin of Oakland, and sister of Mrs. Marjorie Tuck, also of Oakland. She had four grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren. Mrs. Mallon was a member of the College Avenue United Presbyterian Church of Oakland.

There is a place for me, there, another for my mother, and one for my husband, should he choose to occupy it. Others of the family have already arrived. My grandfather was the first —James Frederick Mallon, always known as J.F. Then came Nana (Jacquelin), then my uncle James De Vere Mallon (J.D., of course), and next his wife, Sally. They were married latish in life. Sally had been his college sweetheart, but it took them a long time to get together. It was a quarrelsome marriage and they had a lifetime of arguments to accomplish in a relatively small number of years. Lacking his favorite sparring partner, my uncle argued with anyone he could collar for the six years of life left to him following Sally’s death. Several years passed before the next arrival, my mother’s sister, Marjorie Mallon Truman. Her husband, Stanley, joined her in 1993.

Each new family occupant of the Graves Cemetery (just off Highway 32, west of Orland, California) was escorted by a caravan, a troupe family—a dwindling number of elder members and the occasional representative or two of the next generation. These heedless young ones would whoop and gallop among the leaning, mossy headstones at the “old” end of the grounds, while the rest of the party stood about and made small conversation, “Well, I see the Lindous haven’t been pruning the shrubs here lately,” or “Looks like the pyracantha is getting out of hand there next to the Glenns’ plot.” Recent arrivals were noted and commented upon.

I love this place. It occupies a windy knoll where the breeze lifts my hair, and brings to me the perfume of the neighboring dairy farm on the north—a splendid place of mud and green grass and alfalfa bales, a white barn and harlequin Holstein cows who view their world with acceptance and large, soft eyes. If I turn toward the south, I can count a dozen tiny ranch-houses, mostly ramshackle, each with its allotment of more-or-less dilapidated farm vehicles, randomly deployed chickens, a goat or two, and the inevitable clothesline bedizened with work-clothes, bedsheets and towels. Turning to the west, I look up into the buttes—foothills of the Yollabolly range. Here begins sheep country. My grandfather at one time owned a goodly portion of this land. It wasn’t especially desirable acreage, but sheep managed to thrive here, and a living could be made if the rains came, and the grasses flourished, and one didn’t lose too many head to coyotes and harsh winters.

On a spring day, there is nowhere lovelier than this knoll. The trampled grass smells peppery—sharp and clean and the wild mustard stripes the hillside with yellow from a giant painter’s brush. Golden poppies open to the sun—gaudy polka-dots flung across the waving green. There are olive trees. The breeze ripples through their gray leaves, with a sound like water tumbling over river-pebbles. Meadowlarks hurl their silvery cadenzas from fenceposts, and mourning doves croon softly to each other.

A specialized taste is required to appreciate this place in summer, for it is not then lovable. The lushness of spring has evaporated. The opportunistic grasses have dried to stubble, and the north wind blows a hot dry breath across the knoll. The weather is not friendly to the shrubs lovingly planted next a loved one’s resting-place. But in the evening, the ground-level markers retain the sun’s warmth, and rattlesnakes emerge from their daytime crannies to hunt for field mice, and to bask on the friendly, rough stones. They find no ill in the summer wind—as could no sincere lover of this unique and lonely spot.

In December of 1964, our family caravan escorted my grandmother’s ashes to the knoll. My tall, spare, sinewy “Nana” was as much a part of the land where she lived—just over the buttes and beyond Stony Creek in the next valley—as were the bending willows and the sturdy oak trees on the family ranch. She found glory in winter—each clap of thunder and flash of lightning. She loved the wind, although she was heard to remark, “The north wind just dries up the milk of human kindness in my veins!” Praise and thanks were given for sun and shower alike: all were part of God’s bounty. During the darkest storms she would simply sing a little louder, “Rock of Ages”, “Cleft for Me” or “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam”.

By the time of our winter assembly at the graveside, a storm began to boil up over the hills, and the wind howled at us from every direction, stinging our faces with needles of cold. We stamped and snorted like horses anxious to return to the barn. As the short service drew to a close, above the roar of the wind, we heard the unmistakable honking of geese. Far above us, piercing tattered clouds, the ragged chevron appeared, great wings bearing them toward the south, calling encouragement amongst their ranks. We watched until we could see them no more. Then my mother said, “This is a day Nana would have loved!”

Any day on the knoll is a good day. It’s a fine place to rest.

She was, without a doubt, an ungainly young girl, and she grew to be six feet tall. Tall women were not in vogue in the small mining towns of Colorado, nor were they in vogue anywhere else in the late 1800s. She was not a beauty, with her pronounced jaw, straight narrow lips, and legs like the trunks of young trees (long skirts would cover these until well into the next century). She was, apparently, the only child in her large family who was never graced with a middle name—if there was one we never knew it, and, somehow, we did not ask. Now there is no one left who could tell us.

At fifteen, she married a rancher from Kansas, eleven years her senior. He was kind, gentle, perhaps a bit weak. He saw in Jacquelin Chatfield the strength and spirit and gristle he lacked. She never let him down.

I do not think she ever went dancing, she never saw a theatre production, never tasted liquor. Her formal schooling did not stretch beyond the eighth or ninth grade, but her longing after knowledge lasted her lifetime. Books opened worlds to her: she told me “I read things I had no business reading—I read everything I could get my hands on.” She read Plutarch’s Lives, mythology, the Book of Mormon, old encyclopedias, history.

She must have read in the evening, by the light of kerosene lamps, during hours borrowed from precious sleep, for her days were filled with endless chores unassisted by the conveniences of city life. The washing was done in a galvanized tub, on a washboard whose legs were extended to accommodate her height. Wire clotheslines, strung between house and shed, billowed with sheets, towels and work-clothes and plain, serviceable undergarments. The laundry, stiff and smelling of sun, received its finishing touches from a series of irons with interchangeable handles, used in succession as they heated on the woodstove. They were called “sad-irons,” she couldn’t tell me why, but I knew: “Grandma, they’re called sad-irons because you feel ‘sad’ when you have to iron with them.”

If my grandmother felt sad about any of her domestic travails, no one ever knew it. She sang as she went about her chores—”I Come to the Garden Alone,” “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” The Old Rugged Cross,” with an occasional secular addition, perhaps “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” or “A Bicycle Built for Two.”

My grandmother’s relationship with her Maker was solid and personal. Her Bible and Weymouth translation of the New Testament were limp with frequent use. She never missed her “quiet time” after lunch—a half-hour of meditation, scripture reading and prayer. Nighttime prayers were offered on her knees at bedside. She taught a women’s Bible class at the Federated Church in Orland. She was respected as a teacher and counted many of her pupils as friends, though I doubt that in her entire lifetime she ever had a true chum: it would have been impossible to imagine her exchanging girlish confidences with a contemporary.

She made the bread, grew vegetables, killed chickens, churned butter, made cottage cheese. During sheep-shearing season she would feed ten or twelve around the kitchen table, three meals a day. She made her own clothes on a New Home treadle sewing machine. The preferred style had a slightly gored skirt (“easier to move around in, and not bulky,”) and a wide collar with a bit of ruffle down the front (“I am so flat-chested”). The dresses were always of flowered cotton, purchased at J.C. Penney, the only department store in town, fifteen miles through the foothills, over a mostly dirt road. When the dresses were worn out, they were transmogrified into hot-pan holders, or given to the Ladies’ Circle for quilting squares.

I was delivered into the arms of Jacquelin Chatfield Mallon at the age of nine months, and would call her “Mother” for the next several years. Her love for me was fierce, protective, and yearning, She was unique, and somehow frightening. To this day, I cannot tell you whether I loved her. She was the rock of my existence, my disciplinarian, my conscience. Most simply put, she defined the boundaries of my child’s world.

The view from the attic window was not extraordinary. From it I could see down the slope of a gentle hill, leading to the road which connected the ranch with the main thoroughfare. There was never any through traffic, save for the rare driver who had lost his way in the unmarked, unpaved, dusty back roads of Tehama County. The ranch was the last stop. We lived, as my grandmother put it, “on the ragged edge of nowhere.”

For the first seven years of my life I lived on the ranch, thousands of acres of ungenerous land on which my grandparents made a marginal living, raising sheep, a few dairy cattle, and alfalfa. There was love enough to go around, and time now and then stolen away from chores; my grandmother taught me to read before my fourth birthday—it was, without a doubt, her greatest gift to me. Still, I was a child whose life was inward-focused, solitary and dreamy.

The attic was reached by means of a narrow and perilous stairway. The heat, as I climbed up on a summer day, would probably be more than I could bear today—it was a place no one visited in winter. I recall no discomfort: memories of oppressive heat or cold seem to be blessedly brief. What I can bring to mind in an instant is the smell of the sun-baked wood of the old walls, the sight of the blistered, flaking paint on the window sill, the sound of the wasps who made their papier-mache houses in high corners where the roof and walls met. Do you realize that wasps end each hum with a question mark?

The attic window was not important for what I could see outside. It was indispensable to my activities inside. For, under the windowsill, illuminated by this small rectangle of daylight, was a large chest, and in that chest was the fuel for wonderful imaginings. There were beaded, dainty handbags, lined with silk so brittle with age that a clumsy child’s hand would shred it. What family coquette had peeped over the rim of the faded Chinese fan—and who had chosen it, and where? Gold-rimmed eyeglasses—so tiny, who could have worn them? They were in a hinged, stiff black leatherette case, lined in rich blue velvet. It pinched my fingers when it snapped shut. There were long cotton dresses, tucked and embroidered. Had they ever been white? Who had laundered them and, most of all, who had stood over an ironing board and pressed out the wrinkles with a series of sad-irons, heated on the wood stove?

Every National Geographic since the beginning of time was stacked in the attic. They were never thrown away, and never, never cut up for pictures. The maps, too, were sacred. I loved the National Geographic, but got impatient with the printed parts. The old copies of Life magazine, however, were my window on the world. There was glamour, drama, gritty reality. Every copy was there, right back to the one with Hoover Dam on the cover.

I was not encouraged to spend time in the attic. My grandmother would have much preferred that I play out-of-doors, and get “some roses in my cheeks,” and help feed the chickens, or bring in kindling for the stove. So my attic visits were rare, and when I had settled myself amongst the treasures there I would be very quiet, and listen to the wasps, and smell the wood, and my child’s imagination would visit the whole wide world, lit by one small window with flakes of paint on its sill.

Of varieties there were three: Plymouth Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, and White Leghorns. The Plymouth Rocks were my favorites, with their handsome black-and-white barred feathers, puffed and proud, feet of gold, combs of red. Besides, their chicks were coal black and soft as thistle-down. The Rhode Island Reds always looked cross, and the White Leghorns were spare and tall and moved jerkily, with high steps, their yellow eyes full of suspicion.

Those ladies among them mature enough to be titled “laying hens” lived in the east wing of the dairy barn, in nests built over feeding bins and mangers. The nests were nothing more than wooden boxes set on their sides, with straw beds to accommodate the occupants. Egg-gathering was, for a very small girl, an activity fraught with peril, for laying hens did not give up the product of their day’s labor without complaint—they pecked fiercely. So it was not a chore given to me (I was also far too little to reach the hens’ nests, let alone slide my hand under the warm feathers and seek out the warm brown eggs). My grandmother was the egg-gatherer. She held out her apron, and, clucking and making hen-soothing noises, she managed to distract the biddies long enough to fill the apron-pouch with eggs and make her getaway.

There were two categories of chicken which made their glorious exits from this life by way of the Sunday dinner table. One, alas, was the laying hen, who, having supplied the breakfast board with eggs for some time, aged beyond her productive years, achieved redundancy in the work force and was tagged for the stewpot. The second group were those young males who were hatched to the fast track—these were the fryers, who experienced but a brief glimpse of life, and would not live to strut and fret upon the poultry stage as did those few self-important roosters who were retained to repopulate the barnyard.

When my granddad brought a hen to the yard for beheading, he held it by the feet, swaying at his side, its wings drooping, head bumping against his khaki workpants. It must have been a position the hen found comfortable, if not mesmerizing, for there was no squawking or struggling or beating of wings.

The place of execution was the side yard, between the kitchen door and the woodshed. It was a tree-stump, dark stains streaking its rutted top surface. A hatchet was, it seemed to me, permanently affixed to one side of the stump—although I am sure that was not the case, for the hatchet was not rusty, its edge was kept shiny and sharp.

The kitchen-yard was my grandmother’s venue, and at its gate she relieved Grandpa of his charge. She had already carried in a bucket of water from the yard pump and set it to boil on the kitchen stove. When the subject chicken was brought into the yard, Grandmother, hatchet in hand, wasted no time. She took the chicken, still by the feet, swung the body up on the stump, and with one swift whack of the hatchet, separated head from neck.

Grandmother stepped back from the killing stump, letting the body of the hen drop to the ground. The expression “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” had its most graphic definition in the next minute or two, for the body of the chicken, having received no contrary message from the head, proceeded, in its way, to elude its executioners as it had failed to do in life, spurting gore into the dusty yard. The flip-flopping and scrambling continued until, at last, some ultimate realization of the futility of it all reached the last muscle and tendon, and the headless torso collapsed in a heap of bloody feathers.

Grandmother brought the hot water out to the yard and poured it into a galvanized tub. Taking the body of the chicken by the feet, she plunged it into the steaming bath, then began plucking feathers, pulling and ripping, and tossing them onto a spread newspaper with her strong hands. When the bird was all but naked, the remaining pin-feathers would be singed off over a flame on the wood-stove, the bird disemboweled (this was called “dressing” although that seemed to me a clear contradiction) and stored in the wooden ice-box for later preparation.

Wouldn’t you think I’d have felt some hesitation over the Sunday drumstick or (my personal favorite) wishbone? Truth to tell, I never to my recollection gave a passing memorial thought to the creature who had travelled, uncomplaining and upside down, to its death on that gory stump. For one thing, I believe all farm-children have a different view of life and death—a necessarily acquired pragmatism. And for another thing, chickens, beyond their fluffy early days, took on, for me another character entirely. If you have ever looked closely at a chicken’s yellow eye, you will see something akin to the eye of a demon. It is the coldest gaze imaginable, and it is easy to understand that chickens practice cannibalism with enthusiasm. Early on, I determined that chickens just weren’t human.

It was a great, looming blunt instrument, king of the kitchen. And like some fierce and hungry god it demanded frequent feeding and gingerly attendance. To its acolytes it dispensed warmth and comfort. It was the great, dark, pulsing heart of the ranch house.

My grandmother arose at five o’clock to start her fires. Wood chunks, kindling and bits of paper ignited, roaring in the cast-iron furnace, as clear a call to be up and about one’s business as any gong or steeple bell.

The wood supply was stacked in fairly haphazard fashion in a shack—a true woodshed—a thing of peeling paint and ill-fitting door. Sometimes I would bring in wood for the next day’s fires, if the weather was fine and I was wearing a sweater with long sleeves (to minimize collection of splinters in my arms)—sent out always with the admonishment “watch out for snakes!”

The stove had places for six pots to cook—they sat on round lids which could be removed with the aid of an iron handle in order to add more wood, should a pot go “off the boil,” as my grandmother would say. Grandmother had large, capable, bony hands, and she was quick with them. She could open the hatches in the stove and shove a fresh chunk of wood right into the glowing coals and leaping flames and escape without a singe. It seemed a miracle, like those I heard about at Sunday School: she was protected even in the fiery furnace!

There was a great oven, capacious enough for a big turkey, some baking potatoes, and a pie or two. When I heard the tale of Hansel and Gretel, I understood exactly how the children shoved the cruel witch into her own oven and turned her into gingerbread — her oven was just about the size of ours: of course there was plenty of room.

This stove was a hard taskmaster: it demanded attention the year around. In summer it was covered with foaming cauldrons of jelly and preserves and huge pots of water boiling the impurities from mason jars and jelly glasses. The temperature outdoors might be well past 100, and my grandmother would be mopping her forehead with her cotton print apron and tucking back damp strands of gray hair which had escaped her ‘Psyche knot,” never missing a phrase as she hummed “Bringing in the Sheaves”, or “Brighten the Comer Where You Are”.

During sheep-shearing season extra men would be hired, meals included in their pay. Bacon, ham, Philadelphia scrapple, baking-powder biscuits cut out with a jelly glass, dozens of eggs “over easy” or “sunny side up,” gallons of coffee, strong and black—they all issued from the roaring beast in an endless procession, to fortify and nourish the sinewy, sun-cured shearers, who would ply their craft for some days, then move on to the next ranch, the next kitchen.

In winter, of course, the big black stove made life bearable there in the chill, stubbly foothills. To its warmth came my grandfather and my uncle, bursting through the kitchen door, pulling off their stiff leather work-gloves and offering their ruddy, chapped hands, rubbing and blowing, and stamping their boots on the worn linoleum floor—exulting in a few minutes of respite from the north wind and the frost.

Very near Christmas is lambing season. The little ones are born in the depths of winter, often during the night, often in the most miserable of weather. They and their mothers must be found quickly at this time when they are at their most vulnerable, and protected from the cold and from coyotes and mountain lions. This is not the only reason they must be located immediately. The occasional mother ewe will not survive lambing, leaving an orphan; other ewes will, unaccountably, refuse to nurse their offspring and drive the babies off.

My grandfather would tenderly collect these outcasts, known as “bummers.” He would bring them to the ranch house, into the kitchen. Their nursery was a large box, lined with flour and feed sacks, which fit handily into the space between the back of the stove and the kitchen wall—an area about twenty inches deep, toasty warm. It was my special job to feed the lambs—warm milk from a ketchup bottle with a long black rubber nipple.

It was an important assignment: often a surrogate mother could not be found for perhaps a week or more. One baby remained a pet, and grew to adolescence in or near the ranch house. I named her Bouncing Betsy.

The baby lambs, to me, were a more significant part of the winter season—almost—than Christmas. I knew exquisite joy, crouching on the kitchen floor hugging the wriggling, woolly, knobbly lambs, while the aroma of cinnamon rolls—spicy, yeasty—curled up from the great oven, and Grandmother shook a pan of popping com on top of the big black stove.

My grandmother Jacquelin Chatfield Mallon (known in later years as “Nana”) embraced, in her early adulthood, a plain-spoken Evangelical Fundamentalism. Within its canon, the Bible was accepted quite literally as God’s word, every word true. The blueprint for one’s life was to be found in its pages, all questions regarding deportment between its covers.

A lot of the rules of behavior were spelled out pretty clearly, and those I understood. On the Sabbath (Sunday, in our case), one did not visit any commercial establishment, because, other than the tithe placed in the church collection-plate, money was not to change hands. Aside from last-minute preparations, such as chicken-frying, Sunday dinner was prepared on Saturday. Other than the most basic chores, there was no ranch work done which could be put off until Monday. (Of course, if one’s ox fell into a ditch, it would not have been considered good form to leave it until Monday—this was a given.) Sunday was to be a day of rest—as much rest as was possible to find on a hardscrabble sheep ranch in the ungraceful valley foothills.