by Walter Thomas (Tom) Scates The featured Scates Family photo is from 1954: Faith & Harry in back, Tim & Tom in front. 1957: After we moved to 548 28 Road, Grand Junction, CO 81501, during the summers, while I was in high school, we swam in the Grand Valley Canal, which was about ½… Read More Saving A Drowning Brother
by Walter Thomas (Tom) Scates Featured photo is Tom, Erskine Sr. & Tim in 1953 The first words in the title to this story is an oxymoron, because we never took vacations. Well, almost never. I can recall two trips that for those of us living at home then seemed like a vacation. One was… Read More Vacation(s) With Dad and Mom
1966: featured photo is our auntie Grace Oldman in front of her hooghan at Red Mesa AZ, which is a log structure (picture an eight sided one room log cabin) with log roof (picture logs in a bowl shape and turned upside down on the octagon shaped “cabin”) and covered with the clay soil for… Read More Hooghan (Hogan)
By Walter Thomas (Tom) Scates Featured photo is 5 Scates Boys in 1950: Tim on David’s shoulders, Harry in the middle and Tom on Junior’s shoulders. 1948/49: At the age of 6 or 7 I recall a Sunday evening church service. Tim and I were sitting next to other children in about the second row… Read More A Righteous Spanking
By Walter Thomas (Tom) Scates Featured photo is the actual burning of the Scates home in 1945, Clifton CO. 1945: When I was 4 years old, our house in Clifton, Colorado caught fire on December 20th (address unknown). My memory is that I looked up and saw fire licking up from the living room heating… Read More House On Fire
1966: This is Evelyn Kitseally. She was my dad’s Navajo grandmother (shimá sání – literally “little mother”) Traditionally the Navajo are matrilineal and the land is passed down through the woman’s family. The daughters live close to the mother, typically in the same camp of hogans (homes). This cultural system is very practical and works… Read More Hashtł’ishnii (Mud clan)
1966: After writing and posting this I found a postcard written by my mom, Peggy Scates, to her mother, Lucille Wyrick on May 9, 1966. Here’s what she says: “… everything is happening at once. We are not moving to Crownpoint [between Coyote Canyon and Borrego Pass]. The Red Mesa area has opened very rapidly,… Read More Teec Trailer And The Water Tank
1966: We were at the Borrego Pass school holding VBS that summer. Our family of 6 plus 3 high school girls – so we would have taken more than one vehicle. To get to Borrego Pass we would have driven at least 60 miles on dirt road. My dad, David Scates, had purchased a very old Cadillac about… Read More The Cadillac And The Airplane
1966: Somehow my parents met Clifford and Marjory Martin who lived in a very remote area called Borrego Pass, NM. Clifford was the principle of a day school, which was a rare exception on the Navajo Reservation, as most Navajo children were shipped away from home to a Boarding School, sometimes on the reservation and… Read More Borrego Pass, NM
1965: Dad needed to raise support to move our family to Red Mesa, AZ. That means travel and that’s a lot easier if you aren’t hauling 4 kids around with you, so he first moved our family to live in an apartment at Intermountain Bible College in Grand Junction, CO. By this time Dad had… Read More Salary $350
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