Interview with Juan Maucio & Maxine Ribera by John Motter in 2000
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Interview with Juan Maucio & Maxine Ribera by John Motter in 2000
Carracas home a house that love built
By John M. Motter in November 9, 2000 Pagosa Sun Newspaper
When Juan and Maxine Ribera count their blessings, they look at the photograph-covered walls in their Carracas home. Smiling back at them are the loving faces of 11 children, 24 grandchildren, and nine great-children, a treasure worth more than the wealth of the world.
"We are still close," Maxine said, a faint, confident smile brightening her face "Our children are scattered around, but they stay in touch with us regularly."
Juan is age 88, Maxine 74. They married April 9, 1947, in the Rosa Church. Fr. Oliveras from Lumberton officiated at the wedding. Now the Rosa church is gone, even Rosa is gone, buried beneath the waters of Navajo Lake. Joining Rosa, the world in which Juan and Maxine grew up is gone, buried beneath the shifting sands of time.
The place where Juan Mauricio Ribera first saw the light of day Sept. 22, 1912, was Cimarron, N.M. Juan's father, José Eutimio Ribera, had been born in Ponil, a small community just north and east of Cimarron in Colfax County. The elder Ribera fed and clothed his family of seven boys and three girls by cutting timbers used to shore up the walls of mines, especially the coal mines of the Cimarron area. His mother, Maria Dolores Valdez, was also born in Colfax County.
Cutting timbers was hard work and José longed for an easier way of earning a living to support his family. A brother, Alfonso Ribera, had homesteaded 160 acres near La Fragua, a small community close to the San Juan River south of Rosa, N.M. La Fragua means the forge. If José would come to La Fragua, maybe he could file for a homestead, get his own land. Then life would be better.
In 1922, José moved his family to La Frague. The trip was not easy.
"In those days, the roads were just like cow trails and we didn't have a map," Juan recalls. "Dad had a Model T truck. It didn't have much more than a chassis and a rack. It didn't have much power. When we climbed hills, I'd walk along behind and block a wheel. Then he'd rev it up and move a little bit and I'd block the wheel again. I had a handle on the block so I could stay out of the way."
The trip took about four days. The route was southwest from Taos to Taos Junction, west to Ojo Caliente, and north through El Rito and Canjilón. Instead of sleeping in motels and eating in restaurants, the family camped along the roadside as they traveled.
At La Fragua, they lived with Alfonso in a dugout, perhaps 12 feet by 30 feet. The dugout was constructed in the following fashion. A hole was dug by hand approximately six feet deep. Rock walls were laid around the perimeter of the hole on top of the ground, the rocks shaped to fit together. José knew how to shape rocks. Cedar posts, called vigas, were laid across the top and a layer of soil packed on top of the cedar posts. Dirt formed the walls and floor of the one-room abode. The roof often leaked and was in need of constant repairs.
"We were never cold," Juan recalls.
The house was heated by a wood stove.
"There were no roads or sawmills nearby, so lumber was hard to get," Juan says of those days while explaining the choice of building materials. "We used what we had and did what we could afford to do."
Not much furniture was in the dugout, maybe a kitchen table, a few chairs or benches, and a real bed.
José homesteaded nearby at La Jara, where he also built a dugout home. The families raised angora goats, some chickens, a vegetable garden, and sometimes wheat and sorghum.
"When my uncle (tio) raised wheat, he cut it with a hand scythe with a cradle," Juan remembers. "He bundled it in the field by tying a strand of wheat around the bundle. To thresh it, they placed the bundles on packed adobe earth and drove the horses across the bundles."
The nearest mill for grinding wheat into flour was located at Allison. Rosa provided the nearest shopping for residents of the La Fragua, La Jara areas. Until Navajo Dam was built creating Navajo Lake and flooding Arboles, Rosa, and the adjacent valley, a road ran down the east side of the San Juan River to La Jara Canyon up the canyon and on to Gobernador. Mail was delivered from Arboles to Gobernador along that route.
Animals raised by the subsistence farmers of the time included horses, mules, chickens, and goats. Some raised sheep and cattle, but not the Riberas. Wild game did not help the family table, since, except for a few rabbits, there was no wild game.
Formal education was a sometime thing for Juan. When he stayed with an uncle working at the Monero, N.M., coal mine he attended school there or at Dulce. His total formal education amounted to about five years. When Juan reached a feisty 16 years old, the siren call of the outer world proved stronger than he could resist.
"My dad worked me very hard," Juan recalls. "I was tired of working for my dad. I flew the coup."
Juan drifted across the San Juan Mountains to the San Luis Valley where he worked on ranches, then caught on with a New Mexico construction company building roads. The company's name was Scoussen. The job moved Juan from place to place - Wagon Mound, Socorro, Santa Fe, east of Glorietta Pass. After a couple of years on the road, Juan hitchhiked and hopped trains back to La Jara.
When World War II came along, Juan joined the Army, on June 2, 1942, to be exact. After training in Denver and attending cook's and baker's school, Juan joined the millions of American doughboys in first England, then France, and later Belgium.
Following the end of WW II, Juan returned home. Soon Maxine Gomez from Cabrestro (it means the rope), a few miles east and some north of La Fragua and near Vaquero caught his eye. Maxine had been born July 12, 1926. Her parents were Miguel Antonio Gomez and Ciria Baca Gomez. Her mother's father was José Procopio Baca from Canjilón, N. M.
"The last time I saw her, she was only two years old," Juan said and they both giggled. "I am 14 years older than her. I was an old man when we began courting."
The young couple spent their honeymoon planting a garden for Maxine's mother. The next years passed as they lived in sawmill camps and raised children. Juan found employment working for a number of the small lumber mills scattered across Archuleta County. Among those mills was J.C. Bunch's mill on Fossett Gulch Road and on Yellow Jacket just west of the Piedra River bridge.
"When Bunch got mad, he'd throw his hat on the floor and stomp on it," Maxine remembers.
Juan also worked at mills located at Juanita, for Pagosa Lumber Co. in Pagosa Springs, and at the Ponderosa on Yellow Jacket just west of the Piedra River Bridge. Early on, Juan and his growing family lived near whichever mill happened to be employing Juan at the time.
Often the mill owner supplied a plot of ground and allowed workers to take low-grade, unsellable lumber and construct a house. And so Juan and his family lived in lumber shanties, also called tar paper shacks because the rough lumber siding the walls and roof was often covered with tar paper to keep out wind and rain. Lumber mill shanties seldom contained more than two small room and usually had no running water or electricity, even in the 1950s. Baths were taken in a wash tub heated on the kitchen stove, itself normally a wood-burning range.
One luxury Maxine always had was a washing machine. Consequently, washing the endless supply of diapers was not as difficult a task as it might have been.
"I made him buy me a washing machine when we got married," Maxine said. "I've always had a washing machine."
Those early washing machines were of the kick-start variety, like a motorcyle, and were powered by gasoline engines. As we talked last week, Maxine pointed to the place in the door of her home where the water hose for emptying her washing machine used to exit the house.
In 1956, Juan and his family moved to property on the north side of the San Juan River between Carracas and Navajo Lake. Juan eventually bought the property and built a home there using materials from two lumber mill shacks salvaged from the Ponderosa Mill. The new home contained two small rooms, but no running water, electricity, or telephone. Juan did all of the work himself, including building the doors from scratch. One wall was a built by the family when Juan couldn't be there to help. Juan set up what amounted to a miniature sawmill and manufactured the 2x4s used to construct his home.
From the Carracas home, Juan and Maxine's children rode the school bus to Pagosa Springs and the public schools there.
"All of them graduated from high school," Juan says proudly, "and they all have gone on to make something of themselves. One is a school teacher and one a civil engineer and one a government purchasing agent and one a planner and so on. The Ribera children are: Mauricio Jr. who lives in Oregon, Maxine, Waldo, Daniel, Patrick, Ramona, Irene, Chris, Val, Bella and Josie.
"I really owe the community because the schools gave my kids incentive," Juan said.
Progress came slowly to rural Archuleta County compared to more metropolitan areas. The Riberas were not served by electricity until 1970-1975, and did not have a telephone until 1981. During earlier times, water was dipped by bucket from a well dug near the San Juan River. When the ground was covered with snow and surface water capped by ice, the family melted snow for water. In later years, after the kids left home, they got together, added a lean-to to the two-room home, and installed running water and bathroom facilities.
"You know you make plans, but it doesn't always work out that way," Juan says.
"My dad had plans when he left Cimarron and moved over here. It didn't work out the way he planned. We've had plans down through the years, but it didn't work out that way."
What about the changes in Pagosa Country that have altered forever the way people live?
"I think things have changed for the worst," Juan says. "We've been in a drought with no rain. We used to get two feet of snow every winter in Carracas. I wouldn't change anything if I had it to do over again. There is nothing we can change. But what can the poor people do now? They can't afford to live in Pagosa Springs."
Maxine only recently returned home after spending some time in Denver recovering from a serious illness. She is still the family matriarch, the mother who used to wash every Thursday, the woman who ironed and mended clothes so the kids were always clean and respectable. She's in the process of sewing a quilt for each of the children. Seven quilts are finished. There are four quilts to go.
And the pot is always on, simmering on the kitchen stove. Family and friends are, as ever, welcome. As I sat at the table talking with Juan and Maxine, warmth and peace prevailed. Somehow, we were not sitting in a lumber shanty. We were sitting in the house that love built.
By John M. Motter in November 9, 2000 Pagosa Sun Newspaper
When Juan and Maxine Ribera count their blessings, they look at the photograph-covered walls in their Carracas home. Smiling back at them are the loving faces of 11 children, 24 grandchildren, and nine great-children, a treasure worth more than the wealth of the world.
"We are still close," Maxine said, a faint, confident smile brightening her face "Our children are scattered around, but they stay in touch with us regularly."
Juan is age 88, Maxine 74. They married April 9, 1947, in the Rosa Church. Fr. Oliveras from Lumberton officiated at the wedding. Now the Rosa church is gone, even Rosa is gone, buried beneath the waters of Navajo Lake. Joining Rosa, the world in which Juan and Maxine grew up is gone, buried beneath the shifting sands of time.
The place where Juan Mauricio Ribera first saw the light of day Sept. 22, 1912, was Cimarron, N.M. Juan's father, José Eutimio Ribera, had been born in Ponil, a small community just north and east of Cimarron in Colfax County. The elder Ribera fed and clothed his family of seven boys and three girls by cutting timbers used to shore up the walls of mines, especially the coal mines of the Cimarron area. His mother, Maria Dolores Valdez, was also born in Colfax County.
Cutting timbers was hard work and José longed for an easier way of earning a living to support his family. A brother, Alfonso Ribera, had homesteaded 160 acres near La Fragua, a small community close to the San Juan River south of Rosa, N.M. La Fragua means the forge. If José would come to La Fragua, maybe he could file for a homestead, get his own land. Then life would be better.
In 1922, José moved his family to La Frague. The trip was not easy.
"In those days, the roads were just like cow trails and we didn't have a map," Juan recalls. "Dad had a Model T truck. It didn't have much more than a chassis and a rack. It didn't have much power. When we climbed hills, I'd walk along behind and block a wheel. Then he'd rev it up and move a little bit and I'd block the wheel again. I had a handle on the block so I could stay out of the way."
The trip took about four days. The route was southwest from Taos to Taos Junction, west to Ojo Caliente, and north through El Rito and Canjilón. Instead of sleeping in motels and eating in restaurants, the family camped along the roadside as they traveled.
At La Fragua, they lived with Alfonso in a dugout, perhaps 12 feet by 30 feet. The dugout was constructed in the following fashion. A hole was dug by hand approximately six feet deep. Rock walls were laid around the perimeter of the hole on top of the ground, the rocks shaped to fit together. José knew how to shape rocks. Cedar posts, called vigas, were laid across the top and a layer of soil packed on top of the cedar posts. Dirt formed the walls and floor of the one-room abode. The roof often leaked and was in need of constant repairs.
"We were never cold," Juan recalls.
The house was heated by a wood stove.
"There were no roads or sawmills nearby, so lumber was hard to get," Juan says of those days while explaining the choice of building materials. "We used what we had and did what we could afford to do."
Not much furniture was in the dugout, maybe a kitchen table, a few chairs or benches, and a real bed.
José homesteaded nearby at La Jara, where he also built a dugout home. The families raised angora goats, some chickens, a vegetable garden, and sometimes wheat and sorghum.
"When my uncle (tio) raised wheat, he cut it with a hand scythe with a cradle," Juan remembers. "He bundled it in the field by tying a strand of wheat around the bundle. To thresh it, they placed the bundles on packed adobe earth and drove the horses across the bundles."
The nearest mill for grinding wheat into flour was located at Allison. Rosa provided the nearest shopping for residents of the La Fragua, La Jara areas. Until Navajo Dam was built creating Navajo Lake and flooding Arboles, Rosa, and the adjacent valley, a road ran down the east side of the San Juan River to La Jara Canyon up the canyon and on to Gobernador. Mail was delivered from Arboles to Gobernador along that route.
Animals raised by the subsistence farmers of the time included horses, mules, chickens, and goats. Some raised sheep and cattle, but not the Riberas. Wild game did not help the family table, since, except for a few rabbits, there was no wild game.
Formal education was a sometime thing for Juan. When he stayed with an uncle working at the Monero, N.M., coal mine he attended school there or at Dulce. His total formal education amounted to about five years. When Juan reached a feisty 16 years old, the siren call of the outer world proved stronger than he could resist.
"My dad worked me very hard," Juan recalls. "I was tired of working for my dad. I flew the coup."
Juan drifted across the San Juan Mountains to the San Luis Valley where he worked on ranches, then caught on with a New Mexico construction company building roads. The company's name was Scoussen. The job moved Juan from place to place - Wagon Mound, Socorro, Santa Fe, east of Glorietta Pass. After a couple of years on the road, Juan hitchhiked and hopped trains back to La Jara.
When World War II came along, Juan joined the Army, on June 2, 1942, to be exact. After training in Denver and attending cook's and baker's school, Juan joined the millions of American doughboys in first England, then France, and later Belgium.
Following the end of WW II, Juan returned home. Soon Maxine Gomez from Cabrestro (it means the rope), a few miles east and some north of La Fragua and near Vaquero caught his eye. Maxine had been born July 12, 1926. Her parents were Miguel Antonio Gomez and Ciria Baca Gomez. Her mother's father was José Procopio Baca from Canjilón, N. M.
"The last time I saw her, she was only two years old," Juan said and they both giggled. "I am 14 years older than her. I was an old man when we began courting."
The young couple spent their honeymoon planting a garden for Maxine's mother. The next years passed as they lived in sawmill camps and raised children. Juan found employment working for a number of the small lumber mills scattered across Archuleta County. Among those mills was J.C. Bunch's mill on Fossett Gulch Road and on Yellow Jacket just west of the Piedra River bridge.
"When Bunch got mad, he'd throw his hat on the floor and stomp on it," Maxine remembers.
Juan also worked at mills located at Juanita, for Pagosa Lumber Co. in Pagosa Springs, and at the Ponderosa on Yellow Jacket just west of the Piedra River Bridge. Early on, Juan and his growing family lived near whichever mill happened to be employing Juan at the time.
Often the mill owner supplied a plot of ground and allowed workers to take low-grade, unsellable lumber and construct a house. And so Juan and his family lived in lumber shanties, also called tar paper shacks because the rough lumber siding the walls and roof was often covered with tar paper to keep out wind and rain. Lumber mill shanties seldom contained more than two small room and usually had no running water or electricity, even in the 1950s. Baths were taken in a wash tub heated on the kitchen stove, itself normally a wood-burning range.
One luxury Maxine always had was a washing machine. Consequently, washing the endless supply of diapers was not as difficult a task as it might have been.
"I made him buy me a washing machine when we got married," Maxine said. "I've always had a washing machine."
Those early washing machines were of the kick-start variety, like a motorcyle, and were powered by gasoline engines. As we talked last week, Maxine pointed to the place in the door of her home where the water hose for emptying her washing machine used to exit the house.
In 1956, Juan and his family moved to property on the north side of the San Juan River between Carracas and Navajo Lake. Juan eventually bought the property and built a home there using materials from two lumber mill shacks salvaged from the Ponderosa Mill. The new home contained two small rooms, but no running water, electricity, or telephone. Juan did all of the work himself, including building the doors from scratch. One wall was a built by the family when Juan couldn't be there to help. Juan set up what amounted to a miniature sawmill and manufactured the 2x4s used to construct his home.
From the Carracas home, Juan and Maxine's children rode the school bus to Pagosa Springs and the public schools there.
"All of them graduated from high school," Juan says proudly, "and they all have gone on to make something of themselves. One is a school teacher and one a civil engineer and one a government purchasing agent and one a planner and so on. The Ribera children are: Mauricio Jr. who lives in Oregon, Maxine, Waldo, Daniel, Patrick, Ramona, Irene, Chris, Val, Bella and Josie.
"I really owe the community because the schools gave my kids incentive," Juan said.
Progress came slowly to rural Archuleta County compared to more metropolitan areas. The Riberas were not served by electricity until 1970-1975, and did not have a telephone until 1981. During earlier times, water was dipped by bucket from a well dug near the San Juan River. When the ground was covered with snow and surface water capped by ice, the family melted snow for water. In later years, after the kids left home, they got together, added a lean-to to the two-room home, and installed running water and bathroom facilities.
"You know you make plans, but it doesn't always work out that way," Juan says.
"My dad had plans when he left Cimarron and moved over here. It didn't work out the way he planned. We've had plans down through the years, but it didn't work out that way."
What about the changes in Pagosa Country that have altered forever the way people live?
"I think things have changed for the worst," Juan says. "We've been in a drought with no rain. We used to get two feet of snow every winter in Carracas. I wouldn't change anything if I had it to do over again. There is nothing we can change. But what can the poor people do now? They can't afford to live in Pagosa Springs."
Maxine only recently returned home after spending some time in Denver recovering from a serious illness. She is still the family matriarch, the mother who used to wash every Thursday, the woman who ironed and mended clothes so the kids were always clean and respectable. She's in the process of sewing a quilt for each of the children. Seven quilts are finished. There are four quilts to go.
And the pot is always on, simmering on the kitchen stove. Family and friends are, as ever, welcome. As I sat at the table talking with Juan and Maxine, warmth and peace prevailed. Somehow, we were not sitting in a lumber shanty. We were sitting in the house that love built.