James Edward Bingham (Ted) continued

I don't know how Mom and Dad got together, how they courted or anything about their time together before they were married. We didn't come to the time when we questioned them about their getting acquainted or how they first went together. I think if any of us were married, we may have asked questions. I guess we never thought about those things at the age we were. It was the beginning of a love story. You hardly ever saw one of them without the other. We grew up in a home of great love.

They were married at Grandma and Grandpa Dunn's home. Arlo and I were married there, too. When they were first married, they moved a lot. They lived in Manassa when Keith was born and in Antonito when I was born. I Think all of my brothers and sisters were born in Grandma and Grandpa's home, except me. Daddy worked at several jobs. He went to Barber School, but never set up a shop. He worked on a ranch in Saguache for a man named Homer Crow. That man owned the house we lived in on the ranch. I think we bought it from Homer Crow. He worked on the railroad for a time. He was a meat cutter in a store in Antonito and just before he died, he worked as a meat cutter for Delbert Haynie in Manassa. It was the same store that Cletus Gilliland owned. After he and Mama bought the ranch he worked on the ranch through the growing season. He raised hay, grain, a big garden. He loved horses and always had 2 or three riding horses and a team of gray work horses. He never had a working tractor. He bought an old one that he never got to run. Some years when the crops were in he worked at jobs away from home. During the World War II he worked in Pando, It was in Colorado in the Mountains. I am not sure where that place is. They trained army personnel to ski. The soldiers were sent to a place in Germany, where they used their skill. He worked in Los Alamos when there was just a dirt road up to it. I think it was where they were working on the atomic bomb. Of course he had no idea what they were doing. He would work through the week and come home on weekends. My dad was a jack of all trades, but he said he was a "master of none", but he was was a hard worker. He used to repair our shoes. He could resole them. He had a last that the shoes fit on as he worked on them. We used wood and coal to heat with. Dad and the boys would take a wagon and go to the mountains to get wood. It would take them 2 days. One day to go there and load the wagon and a day to return home. Keith and Leon used to talk about going with him. It took several trips to get enough wood for the year.

I think that my Dad loved the ranch, but when Mama died, he could hardly stand to be there without her. He sold it and me moved into Romeo. He worked for the forest service when they were testing for a place to put the Platora Dam.