Our place used to be the stopping place for all tourists. We never knew of my Father and Mother turning anybody away from their house that came and asked for food, not one person. My Mother and Father didn't have too much, but they would share it with them.

This one family came through and they drove on west. They just got halfway to Rocky Ford (that is about 10 miles west of La Junta) and there was a little pushy-paw, and it had a kind of a cloud burst.

Those people were from Arkansas and they didn't know anything about these streams. They drove in that and the horses were drowned and one little girl was drowned. They got the rest of them back.

A man came by from Rocky Ford and they said, "Well, what will we do with these people?"

They said "Take them down to the Millers."

About sundown here they came in, bringing that little dead girl and all the kids unloaded themselves.

We only had three rooms then, but mother had a tent she put up out on the room for people to sleep in when we had too many for the house.

They got the doctor there and he rolled that little girl on the floor, back and forth, but he never could get the water out of her lungs.

My father liked to dress up when he went places. He kind of liked to spread it on a little. He wore shirts that were starched down the front. They were just as stiff as a board and we would iron them and make them shine with the heel of the iron. When he wanted to dress up he would wear one of them.

We had to put a tent out in the yard for the overflow. Father had bought me an organ and I was so proud of that organ. I was taking music lessons. They were going to have the funeral in our big room. There weren't very many people. My music teacher was going to play the organ and sing.

Mother gave this old man a tub of water and she says "Now you go out there in the tent and take a bath and put on some clean clothes, and I will give you one of Mr. Miller's white shirts to put on."

It was a hot July day. I don't suppose he ever took a bath before. He took the water out there.

He was late in getting in the house and he came in with the shirt on hind side before. If somebody was going to kill me I couldn't have kept from laughing. When he came in there you can't imagine how he looked.

We had kept them there 30 days, but we didn't furnish all the groceries. The town people were awful good. They had started out with $500 in a little tin box. It went down with the stream. They didn't have any money at all, but they stayed there and people would bring things in for mother to cook for them.

The woman wanted to go back home and the town people decided they would try to see if they couldn't take up a collection and get enough to pay their way back to Arkansas. They were talking. He was bound he was going to find that little box of money but his wife was tongue lashing him every time he went up there and telling him he couldn't never find that money.

They were going the next day, they had got enough money to have the little body taken up and embalmed, to pay the fare for them and he slipped off from that old woman.

He slipped one over on her and went up to this little stream to look for that money. Well, the poor old fellow, he went to see if he couldn't find that little box. What do you know, if he didn't find that box and it had never come open. It had the $500 in it. They got ready the next day and took French leave for Arkansas. Was we ever glad.