Through Time and the Valley

Preface to the New Edition

Preface To The New Edition It has been twenty-three years since Bill Ellzey and I made our journey through time and the valley, and as you might expect, much has changed. Many of the people whose stories appeared in the book have passed on since it was published in 1978: Harold Hudson, Leroy McGarraugh, Jack Jines, G. H. Holt, Elrick Wilson, Ben Hill, Hugh Parsell, Johnny Isaacs, Tom Conatser, Drew Cantwell, Bert Sherman, Ben Ezzell, and others. Bill and I began our trip down the river at Plemons, once the county seat of Hutchinson County and a ghost town when we saw it in 1972. If we were making the trip today, we wouldn't find much at Plemons. I heard last week that the old foundations have been bulldozed and buried, leaving only the cemetery to mark the spot. Down at John's Creek, Ben and Nancy McIntyre still live up on the flats north of the river, but Ed and Lilith Brainard moved into Pampa years ago. Their five children are grown now and have children of their own. I don't see Ed and Lilith very often. The last time I ran into them was, of all places, in San Diego, California. They were attending a National Cattleman's Association convention and I was there signing books. Bud Brainard is still living in Canadian but his health is fragile . Ed's health hasn't been so great either. I heard that about a year ago, he was sorting horses in a pen, and one of them ran over him. He almost died from the injuries and has been a long time getting over them. Leroy McGarraugh died more than ten years ago, from complications after a stroke. Mrs. McGarraugh moved to Amarillo and the ranch in Government Canyon is now operated by their daughter Etoi and her husband, Pat Trammell. The Lips Ranch, which was put together by old man Bill Whitsell, is still intact. The man who had leased it since the 1950s, ix Marshall Cator of Sunray, finally gave up the lease in 1994. At the age of ninety-two, his eyesight was failing, yet at the last branding in December of 1994, he was horseback and dragging calves to the fire. I had never met Marshall Cator at the time I wrote this book, and that is one mistake I would correct if I were doing it today. He is a remarkable man, but so quiet and modest that he rarely talks about himself. The Lips ranch is now being operated by the Courson family of Perryton. Billy Sizelove lives at the Pat's Creek camp and Dave Nicholson is running the east side. He and his wife Starla live at Red Camp with their two children. I saw Dave at a New Year's gathering not long ago. He said that back in the summer, he got thrown from a horse. He knew his ribs were hurt but he didn't go to a doctor until he began having trouble breathing. The doctor's report ran something like this: "Dave, the bad news is that you have three broken ribs, one punctured lung, and pneumonia. The good news is that you're here instead of anywhere else." On down the river, a young fellow named David Cleveland is living on Grandma Killebrew's place, where Bill Ellzey and I stopped for water. The place looks about the same as it did in 1972, except that Walter Killebrew has added a hay barn and has stocked the ranch with Longhorn cattle. Walter lives on down the river several miles in a partial-underground house at the foot of Mt. Rochester . If this book had a star character, it was Jim Streeter, alias The Angel of Picket Creek, and I'm proud to report that Jim and his wife Laura still occupy the old Tandy house on the north side of the river, the same place where Bill and I camped withJim for three days in 1972. Jim has been Mr. Canadian River since he came to this country in 1953 to work on the Lips ranch for Marshall Cator. He and Laura lived at Red Camp for several years, then moved downriver to the Tandy outfit. They raised three daughters on the river, and they did it without a telephone. Roberts County north of x the river does not have phone...