Sandra Day OConnor - Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest

Copyright 2002 by Sandra Day OConnor and H. Alan Day

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

R ANDOM H OUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

All photographs, unless indicated otherwise, are courtesy of the Day family.

Maps on page xv by Jackie Aher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

OConnor, Sandra Day
Lazy B / Sandra Day OConnor and H. Alan Day.
p. cm.
Ebook ISBN: 9781588361431

1. OConnor, Sandra Day, 1930 2. United States. Supreme CourtBiography. 3. JudgesUnited StatesBiography. 4. Ranch LifeArizona. I. Day, H. Alan.
II. Title.

KF8745.O25 A35 2002 347.732634dc21 2001041751
[B]

Random House website address: randomhousebooks.com

v3.1_r1

This is in memory of our parents, Ada Mae and Harry Day

There is something about living in big empty space, where people are few and distant, under a great sky that is alternately serene and furious, exposed to sun from four in the morning till nine at night, and to a wind that never seems to restthere is something about exposure to that big country that not only tells an individual how small he is, but steadily tells him who he is.

WALLACE STEGNER,
FINDING THE PLACE:
A MIGRANT CHILDHOOD

M OST ANY PLACE PROVIDES BETTER GRAZING THAN THE sparse, open high desert country south of the Gila River on the border of Arizona and New Mexico. The rainfall averages ten inches a year or less. There are semiarid mesas ringed on the south and west by volcanic hills littered with boulders and rocks of vesicular basaltangry black and dark red rocks that are heavy but full of holes. The bubbling liquid from an ancient volcanic core cooled suddenly, before the bubbles burst. To the north is the Gila River, small and timid most of the year. It flows from the nations first national wilderness areathe Gila Wildernessand runs across all of Arizona to join the Colorado River below Yuma. For thousands of years prehistoric Indians made camps along the river, as well as on the mesas, where occasionally the rains would form shallow lakes. Around these lakes lived an impressive array of animals, reptiles, and birds: deer, rabbits, antelope, javelinas, coyotes, bobcats, quail, ducks, doves, rattlesnakes, bull snakes, Gila monsters, desert tortoises, and a wide variety of insects. It was no country for sissies, then or now. Making a living there takes a great deal of hard work and considerable luck. Our family stayed there for 113 years.

H. C. Day, our grandfather, was a New Englandershrewd, conservative, careful with his money, intelligent, not afraid to tackle new ventures. He was named for Henry Clay, whose Whig politics were popular in New England before the Civil War. H. C. Day worked on the family farm in Coventry, Vermont, until 1865, when he turned twenty-one. Then, a free man, he opened a general merchandise store on the Canadian border, some ten miles north of Coventry. He made a nest egg and moved west to Wichita, Kansas, a central hub in the westward expansion. There he opened a building-supply business, furnishing materials for the rapid expansion of that city after Congress abruptly appropriated lands claimed by several Indian tribes. He acquired a cattle ranch outside of Wichita, as well as various other properties. In 1879, at age thirty-five, he married Alice Edith Hilton, the eighteen-year-old daughter of John Price Hilton of England, the rector and founder of St. Johns Episcopal Church in Wichita.

The following year our grandfather decided to take advantage of the availability of public lands for the grazing of livestock in the New Mexico Territory, in the area covered by the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico. All one needed was a herd of cattle and a few people to watch over them; God and the free market would do the rest. H.C. bought a herd of cattle in Mexico and put them on a parcel of land. He hired Lane Fisher, the son of a Wichita judge, to run the ranch operations. The Mexican cattle were branded on the left hip with a B lying down flat. A brand lying down is called lazy. Lazy B Ranch it became, and so it remained.

In 1880 the cattle business looked good enough to attract even some canny investors from Scotland and England to the western United States. Once the mother cows were purchased, they would produce calves, which could be sold a year later at a handsome profit. Demand for beef cattle was strong. The grazing on the public domain was essentially free for the taking. Some of these investors put cattle in Montana and Wyoming and later learned to their sorrow how the excessive snow and severe cold weather could destroy the herds. In the Gadsden Purchase area, snow was virtually unknown, and the chances were better that the cattle could forage for grass year-round. Only an occasional Apache raid or a summer drought would cut down the herd.

The problem in the ArizonaNew Mexico area was water. Water was scarce and limited the use of the land. Wells could be dug, but often they had to be several hundred feet deep to reach water. Even at that depth, a well was apt to produce only a small stream of four gallons per minute or so. Windmills provided the power to pump water out of the wells. The deeper the well, the larger the windmill required to fit the sucker rod and pump out the water.

H.C. and Alice took their son, Courtland, to England to visit Alices relatives, and then to Germany, where they stayed for six months. While there, H.C. learned that Lane Fisher was putting his own brand on many of the calves. The Days returned to Wichita and H.C. traveled to Lordsburg, New Mexico, to see what could be done. He consulted a local lawyer, whose advice was, Mr. Day, get a gun. H.C. was more inclined toward negotiation than a shoot-out. Lane Fisher left, but H.C. had to take over the Lazy B or lose his investment there. H.C. built a house near the Gila River, and a one-room school nearby for his children. He planted an orchard and a garden, brought a schoolteacher from Kansas, and moved in with his family. There Alice gave birth to three daughters, Eleanor, Nina, and Alice. Our father, Harry, their fifth and last child, was born at the family house along the Gila River in December 1898.

The Day family stayed at the Lazy B for ten or twelve years, until a new manager could be located, a pleasant man named Sam Foster. H.C. then moved his family to Pasadena, California, and to a more comfortable life. In the summers, H.C. visited the ranch, taking our father, Harry, along, and supervised improvements to the wells, the building of windmills and fences, and the management practices for the cattle and horses. Harry learned at his fathers side how to minimize unnecessary expenses and how to accomplish improvements without major capital outlays. He learned well. As we were growing up, we saw that nothing would ever be thrown away if it had any conceivable practical use. Nothing would be wasted. Repairs would be made on any and all equipment right on the ranch with whatever means were available. A purchase of new equipment or objects was a rare event. No task was too small to be done as well as possible. No task was too large to be undertaken. And no day went by without hoping and praying for rain.