RICHARD DYER:  This is the second tape in our series on the Black Ranch and its September the 5^th (1973) and were sitting in Agnes Black’s comfortable living room on Wards Ferry road.  Agnes, why don’t we continue our story about the ranch and maybe you could spend a little bit of time and tell us a little bit about what its like to be brought up in old Tuolumne county, to be a country girl out here in this beautiful land.  What’s the first thing you remember, Agnes?

AGNES BLACK:  Well I remember very clearly my father working on the ranch with the horses in the garden and the apple trees all around the house, and everything was green.  We had lost of water in the ditch right beside the house and many times as a tiny girl my mother helped me across the ditch to go down where my father was working in the garden and I remember very clearly following him down the rows of the garden and to this day I can still see the soft soil and walking in it and so cool and nice and…

DYER:  In your bare feet?

BLACK:  In bare feet and my mother standing beside the garden and the garden coming up and my father had to watch us very carefully that we didn’t pull up the plants and ah, instead of weeds.  So that’s one of the very first things I remember and the…

DYER:  How old do you suppose you were?

BLACK:  I imagine about three, possibly three and a half because it was in summer time and I was born in June of course so I must have been about three years old.  That’s some of the first things I remember and our yard was not green like it is now.  In those days pumps weren’t available as they are today, so the water was below the house.  Actually, you had a dry yard other than pretty flowers growing that you could water by hand.

DYER:  Did they use windmills around here at all?

BLACK:  No, not on this place.  There was not a windmill.  The water at one time was above the house, but that was before my father came here, so after he’d bought the ranch the water was right around just below the house.  So it was either carry water for just a few beds of flowers and the yard was of course dry.  And I do remember very clearly the yard extended from the house to about, ohh, three hundred yards beyond the house to where the corral was and that was just an old, not painted fence, probably pine wood or something.  And the barn was three or four hundred yards away from the house and it was all fenced off, but cattle getting loose could easily come right in the yard and many times they did. 

DYER:  Now let me see if I can orient myself.  From the house, from where we’re sitting, where was your garden located?

BLACK:  It was to the west of the house, down over the hill.

DYER:  Now that’s where there’s the meadow now and the apple trees?

BLACK:  Yes, yes.  It was down on the west side of the house, southwest I would say, which was all green because the water was available there.

DYER:  And what about the barn?

BLACK:  Now that barn was on the northeast side of the house.  It was almost directly north.

DYER:  So that’d be close to Wards Ferry road then?

BLACK:  Yes, the barn was just a few hundred feet away from the road, the old barn was and it was a beautiful oiled log barn.  There made with logs and then the boards of course on the other side.  And the chicken houses, they were north of the house. 

DYER:  And the corral was next to the barn?

BLACK:  Yes, it was.  The barn and the chicken houses was all fenced in with this old type fence. 

DYER:  So you’re about three years of age and you remember being a farm girl helping your father…

BLACK:  Oh yes, and very much so on my, our milk was all separated and I can still see him turning that crank on the separator to separate the cream from the milk.

DYER:  What do you remember about school as a young girl?  Do you remember your first schooling experience?

BLACK:  Yes, very much so.  We’ve, my brother and I, my brother Colin, the one younger than me, and I started school the same year.  I was six and he was five because my folks couldn’t let us walk where the old old school house was up on Cavalier road.  That was the old Curtis creek school house on Cavalier road.

DYER:  Now that’d be out near Standard road and Highway 108…

BLACK:  That’s right.  It was right in ah, its right where the girl scout camp is located now.  If anyone wants to know where that is its on, you turn on Cavalier road and then into the right you go on the girl scout camp road and right in that area among those oak trees was the old Curtis creek schoolhouse.  It was a one room schoolhouse and I even remember the schoolhouse vividly because my mother and father would take us there to the picnics and the programs that my two older brothers were in and…

DYER:  Now this was a school that was from kindergarten through….

BLACK:  No kindergarten, first grade.

DYER: … first grade through, uh…

BLACK:  First grade through eighth.

DYER:  … eighth grade.  And it was a one room.

BLACK:  One room school house and had one teacher.

DYER:  One teacher?

BLACK:  One teacher and the first teacher that I remember was Ms. Daily.  She taught there and then she was transferred down to the school house that was built at Standard, in the town of Standard.  And I started in the Curtis creek schoolhouse in 1914.  I was in, my brother and I were both in the first grade. 

DYER:  Mm hmm.  The first grade… how many years did you spend at the old Curtis creek school?

BLACK:  I spent the um, seven years.  My brother and I, it wasn’t because we were extra smart, but we made the first and second grade in one year, so that put us into the third grade.  So we spent seven years in Curtis creek school in the town of Standard.   

End time 7:31

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard

Interviewee: Black, Agnes

Name of Tape: Agnes Black on the Black Ranch (black_a_2_0)

When: 9/5/1973

Where: Wards Ferry Road

Transcriber: Nicol (3/5/09)