TX BIOS:  Mrs. C. G. Landis
   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
   Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
   
   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
   For more information about this text and this American Memory
   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   00011
   
   Mrs. C. M. Cohea
   
   Amarillo, Taxas
   
   Pioneer Women, Experiences
   
   Wordage: 1756
   
   March 7, 1938
   
   Potter County
   
   District 16
   
   200
   
   Interview with Mrs. C. G. Landis, 1119 Jackson, Mar. 1, 1938.
   
   Mrs. Landis, whose parents pioneered in Belle County, Texas, and the
   adjacent [DEL: [?] :DEL] region, where as a girl she often saw the
   early settlers in that territory pick up rocks and stones from fields
   before they could be cultivated and make fences of these same stones,
   pioneered with her husband in the Texas Panhandle in the early '90's.
   Mrs. Landis, a native of the "deep South" - Mississippi - had heard
   many stories of Texas. She pictured the cowboy as an uncouth
   individual with rough dress and rougher manners. Her idea of a
   "sweater" was something to wear instead of a free boarder at a line
   camp or ranch headquarters during the "slack" season. Line riders were
   a deep mystery until she found it convenient to board several of [DEL:
   his :DEL] their type at her home near the present Jack Hall ranch
   northwest of Amarillo in the early '90's. Here the lucky line riders
   had a room in their private dugout near the Landis home of pine
   lumber, where Mrs. Landis learned to know the Panhandle cowboy as he
   really is, a true [DEL: [?] :DEL] knight of the saddle , and where she
   laid the foundation of a new home and many pleasant and interesting
   memories of the country and its people.
   
   Mrs. Landis recalls the Christmas of 1892, spent in this frontier
   home, when the ground was covered several inches deep with snow on the
   level. Even the line rider [DEL: board :DEL] boarder was staying close
   to his dugout. But a little matter of weather [DEL: [?] :DEL] does/
   not phase a mother. Mrs. Landis had several small children, and Santa
   Claus Day was fast approaching. She had to get to town, Amarillo ,
   some way and get something with which to fill those tiny expectant
   stockings. The line rider told her she could not go in that weather.
   Her husband added his negative advice. That made the [DEL: [??] :DEL]
   vote unanimous. She decided to make the trip the next morning.
   00022The night before the line rider took two big rocks and placed
   them on the box stove in his dugout to heat all day. That night they
   did not entirely lose their heat and were easily rewarmed again on the
   morning of the journey. Rising early, Mrs. Landis prepared the
   children for the trip to town, for half of the pleasure of the great
   day lies in "seeing Santa" at the stores, even if they were only two
   or three little frontier general stores.
   
     NOTE: C12 - 2/11/41 - Texas
     
   Placing the two older children [?] the bed of the wagon, the heated
   rocks next them to keep them warm, she covered them snugly with a
   blanket and took the baby on her lap on the spring seat. A second
   blanket covered the baby and the laps of her and her husband and
   protected their nether limbs from the icy draft [DEL: [??] :DEL]
   beneath the raised seat.
   
   Across [DEL: [?] :DEL] the uncharted prairie, where the snow had
   blotted out every familiar landmark and trace of roadway, the Landis
   family rode those cold miles to the young cow town of Amarillo. Toys
   and goodies for the children's Christmas [DEL: [????] :DEL] purchased
   at Smith and Walker's or one of the other general stores open at that
   time. Most of the pioneers stores carried general merchandise, drugs,
   dry goods, groceries, often adding [DEL: [??] :DEL] postoffice [DEL:
   [?] :DEL] and bank for good measure. Cold and tired, but happy the
   little cavalcade reached [DEL: [??] :DEL] home late in the evening.
   
   Mr. Landis, being for many years connected with the political and
   official life of the city, recalls many interesting anecdotes
   pertaining to court and lawyers. Don Marrs a Kentuckian practicing law
   in the early days of Amarillo with his office where the Green building
   now is, brought his mother to visit with him from the home state. Mrs.
   Marrs, [?] visiting her son at his office one day, found a group of
   political sages occupying most of the office space - and chairs. One
   of the group was a pompous old gentleman who always knew everything
   and everybody - to hear him tell it. Introduced by Marrs to his
   mother, he boasted, "Why, I know Mrs. Marrs well. Fact is, I was
   almost your (Don Marrs) father". After the departure of this bombastic
   old 00033fool, Mrs Marrs remarked with a look of dazed surprise on her
   face, "Why, I never saw that man before in my life".
   
   At still another time the cosmopolitan gentleman, self-styled, was one
   of a group of men when one of their number said, facetiously, of a
   long-bearded old man who had just passed by, "There goes Rip Van
   Winkle". The know-it-all gentleman spoke up quickly, "Rip-why, I used
   to know him quite well, very well indeed".
   
   Mrs. Landis, who herself has passed the more than [DEL: biblically
   :DEL] Biblically allotted three score years and ten without a tinge of
   gray noticeable in her lovely brown hair, tells the following story of
   her mother, who at 88 still has raven looks. A lady in a group at a
   quilting bee once aske, enviously - she herself was a great deal
   younger and quite gray. " Mrs. Green. ( [DEL: that was her :DEL] Mrs.
   Landis mother [DEL: mother's name :DEL] ) how do you keep your hair so
   black?"
   
   Mrs. Green, unblinking, replied tartly, "I just drink black coffee."
   
   Mrs. Landis also relates an amusing incident involving a cosmetics
   salesman who was urging her to buy a certain lotion that would "keep
   her looking not a day over thirty". Her son laughed and told the
   salesman that the joke was on him as his mother was then 46 or 7. But
   the enterprising cosmetics seller was really "taken in" by the
   youthful appearance of his subject. Mrs. Landis at 70 still retains
   the appearance of a woman of at least 20 years younger.
   
   One of the most exciting experiences which Mrs. Landis recalls as a
   new comer to the plains happened on a trip, her first, to the scenic
   Palo Duro Canyon, where many of the early settlers went in the fall to
   gather wild grapes and plume which made delicious jellies, conserves,
   and deep dish cobolers. However, Mrs. Landis herself admits, somewhat
   ruefully, that she never could quite make grape jelly jell.
   
   00044
   
   One day in October of 1892, when the grapes were at their ripest and
   best, friends of the Landises in Amarillo who ran a livery stable at
   the present location of the Grand and Silver five-and-ten store, came
   out and invited the former to go on a fruit-gathering outing to the
   Grand Canyon of the Panhandle. The next day the party, starting from
   the Golither home , where the W. H. Fuqua residence now stands, made
   the all-day drive to the canyon. School was in session and the
   Golithers left their children at home, all except / the baby. The
   Landises had their children with them, the youngest now being the
   jailer at Amarillo. Mr. and Mrs. Landis took quilts and blankets and
   the [Goliters?] a mattress an bedding for the two nights which they
   expected to spend in the Palo Duro, the night of their arrival and the
   second night after the one day of gathering grapes and plums and
   enjoying the gorgeous view before returning the second day.
   
   [???????????? ??????????????]
   
   Driving down the canyon floor for five or six miles, they selected a
   suitable spot and pitched camp for the night. While the women folks
   were preparing supper, thunder growled overhead. That night rain came
   down in torrents. However, the next morning the group went out to find
   the fruit for which they had made the / long trip. The men cut down
   trees heavily laden with grape vines twisted about their branches and
   with luscious purple grapes hidden among their [DEL: [?] :DEL] leaves.
   
   Stepping across the tiny trickle which was the creek, the women placed
   the children on a wagon sheet spread upon the sandy "beach" of the
   Plao Duro Creek. Looking up the canyon, Mrs. [DEL: Lantos :DEL] Lantis
   beheld a sight which was strange to her uninitiated eyes.
   
   Calling to her friend, she said, "What is that great white mass
   00055up the gorge [DEL: . :DEL] ? I can't make out what it is. It
   looks like snow, but I never saw anything like it before."
   
   Mrs. Golither, [DEL: [???] :DEL] who was better acquainted with the
   vagaries of the plains than her friend, took one look at the
   grayish-white wall towering up the canyon and cried, "A headrise! Run
   for your lives!"
   
   Mrs. Landis recounts those exciting moments:
   
   "We gathered up the young'uns and started for camp across the creek,
   over which we had stepped but a few minutes before, as fast as we
   could go, but before we got across the water was swirling about us
   waist - deep. Mrs. Landis and Mr. Golither hurriedly drove the wagon
   and team upon a higher level where they thought they would be safe
   from the flood waters, but soon they had to move the outfit to a still
   higher ledge. For three days and nights we stayed in the canyon, with
   food only for [the?] one day and the two nights planned for theouting.
   We had to wait until the water receded en ugh so that we could find
   the back trail to the point where we had entered the canyon, as that
   was the only way out. There were [DEL: [?] :DEL] no roads, only cattle
   trails, in the Palo Duro at the time."
   
   Headrises are sudden and swift in the deep canyons and ravines [DEL:
   [???] :DEL] of the high plains. A dry arroyo may be a destructive
   avalanche of water in a mere fraction of time. Had not the floor of
   the canyon been "spread out" at the point wherethe outing group was
   caught, the story might have had a different and tragic ending.

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