Junction, TX by Clif McDonald

Junction, Texas

Emma Evans and Clifford McDonald

I was born in 1927 at San Angelo, Texas. My father was Clifford McDonald and my mother was Emma Evans McDonald. Milton McDonald, my older brother was known as Mack. My father was born at Roswell, New Mexico and my mother was born at Junction, Texas. My father died before I was a year old so I have no memory of him. Mother then married Alvy Smith; he had a son called Sonny who was much older than me and I very much admired my new big brother.

        In Junction I also had my Grandma McDonald and my Grandpa and Grandma Evans, my mother, Emma; Uncle Delmer, Aunt Margarete and Lola Mae. Aunt Lola was a great favorite of mine, she was only five years older than me and she had a very sweet personality that everyone loved. Everyone especially treasured Mother and Aunt Lola.

        On the McDonald side, I had Aunt Allie and Uncle Aubrey Sanders who had lots of kids. These cousins were Herbert Lee, Emma Dell, Odell, Henry, and Barbara Ann. My stepdad’s mother was Grandma Lettie Smith.

        I can remember Grandma McDonald telling me about living west of Roswell, New Mexico when there were trouble with the Apaches  and Grandpa moved the family back to Texas and he went back to New Mexico to get the cows and was never heard of again. I can remember living west of Junction near the North Llano River. There was a South Llano River also and these two rivers came together at Junction.

Evans' home near  Junction

        Pecan trees grew all along these river bottoms and along the small streams on our place but there was not much demand for pecans locally and most people let their hogs harvest them.

        During the early 1930’s during the Great Depression there was no money to be had so Daddy and Uncle Delmer, Mama’s brother,  got this idea to spend the winter gathering pecans and hauling them all the way to New Mexico and sell them house to house. He was intrigued with Grandma McDonald’s stories about New Mexico and wanted to visit the Sacramento Mountains in those parts. At my very young age of four, New Mexico sounded like a different world. It was about 400 miles away and everyone called it Mexico. Grandma Mack was the only person I knew that had ever been that far away.

Bodarc Store near North Llano River

Finally Daddy and Delmar  loaded up the pecans and made the rounds telling everyone goodbye. They expected to be gone for a couple of months and to me they were gone forever before they came back. I worried that they had gotten lost and would never find their way home again.

I was so excited when they returned. I said, “Daddy did you find those mountains?” He said, “Yes I did and you won’t believe how big they are and how tall the trees are. They have a train that comes into the mountains and gets logs and saws them up into lumber. We are going to move to New Mexico. I rented a place where we can graze some livestock and farm some land and has a house on it.” Mother wanted to know all about the house. We had a new brother prior to Dad leaving. His name was Alvie Junior, later known as Curley.
Our place is near Avis School and it is between Weed and Piñon. There is a store and post office at both Weed and Piñon. To the northwest is a small town called Cloudcroft and our nearest real town is about 50 miles away; it is Alamogordo and is the county seat of Otero. There were a few paved roads around Alamo but no paved roads that went all the way through Otero County. And all the roads in the mountains are unpaved. Well, we were used to that. Nearly all road in Junction, Texas weren’t paved either!

I had mixed emotions about moving. I didn’t want to leave my grandparents and cousins and especially Aunt Lola. I knew it was so far away it would be a long time before we could come back for a visit. And sure enough it was seven years before we returned to visit.

Well, we got rid of all our belongings on the North Llano River, loaded our truck and went into Junction and made the rounds to tell all of our friends and relatives goodbye. Everyone shook hands, hugged, and cried. Then we headed west.

Just before sundown we pulled off the road, built a fire, unloaded the chuck box, and cooked supper. Then we rolled our bedrolls and spent the night. In the morning we cooked breakfast and headed out again. Our truck broke down several times and Dad and Sonny had to work on it a lot and sometimes had to catch a ride to the next town to buy parts. We slept in our bedrolls every night and cooked every meal on a campfire, which was the normal way to travel in the early 1930’s. It took us nine days to make the 400 miles because the truck broke down so much. Finally Dad pulled up in front of our house at Avis and said, “Well, this is it. What do you think?” We all jumped out, looked around, ran through the house and cried and hugged each other. We were finally at our new home in the Sacramento Mountains.