Chapter 4 — My Childhood Home — Before the Final Salute

When most people hear the words childhood home, they probably picture a house.

A street address. A bedroom that was theirs. A kitchen table. Maybe a backyard where they played.

Mine was a little different.

My childhood took me into the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico, to an area we called Capitan Gap because of the large opening between the mountains surrounding us.

At the base of those mountains sat a tiny cabin.

And when I say tiny, I mean tiny.

It was an old homestead cabin built by Ronnie’s grandparents sometime in the early 1900s. It couldn’t have been much more than twenty or thirty feet square.

Downstairs there was enough room for a four-burner wood stove, a bed, a couch, a little place to eat, and a closet with access to a cellar.

Upstairs was one big open room where us three boys slept—my brothers Robert, David, and me.

There was no electricity.

There was no running water.

And for a long time, that was simply home.

When the Lights Went Out

Actually, the lights couldn’t go out.

We didn’t have any.

When darkness settled into the mountains, we lit kerosene lanterns. During winter, the wood stove downstairs heated the cabin. Its stovepipe ran through our room upstairs, so the three of us arranged our sleeping bags around it trying to steal whatever warmth we could.

The cabin was old, and “weatherproof” probably wasn’t a word anyone would have used to describe it.

Snow sometimes found its way through cracks in the roof. My mom has told me there were mornings when she would come upstairs and brush it from our sleeping bags while we slept.

As an adult, that sounds pretty rough.

As a kid, I don’t remember thinking we were doing without.

I remember the warmth of the stovepipe, the glow of the lanterns, and the smell of kerosene and burning wood.

Even today, those smells can take me right back there.

Our bathroom was an outhouse about twenty-five to fifty yards from the cabin, which made winter bathroom trips a little more adventurous.

We used hot coals from the wood stove to burn down the waste.

It worked pretty well.

Until we burned down the outhouse.

Apparently, there is a fine line between sanitation and arson.

We got another one.

Of course, three boys living in the mountains didn’t always need an outhouse.

Some mornings, the best way to start the day was stepping outside into the cold mountain air to pee.

Fresh snow made it even better.

Naturally, the challenge became seeing how much you could melt.

It’s a ridiculous little memory, but I can still picture it—cold air, mountains all around me, and a little boy without a care in the world starting another day at home.

Water Had Weight

There was a main house near the road, probably half a mile away, where we got our water.

The three of us would load containers into wagons and pull them back uphill to the cabin.

If we needed water, somebody had to go get it.

Bath night required some work too.

We had a big black tub. We’d heat water on the wood stove, pour it in, and take turns washing ourselves.

The same tub.

The same water.

Three boys.

We learned pretty quickly:

It was always good to go first.

Looking back, it sounds primitive.

But I don’t remember it that way.

We were happy.

During those early years, our family was doing well. We depended on one another, and there wasn’t much room to get away from each other in a cabin that small anyway.

The World Outside Our Door

What the cabin lacked inside, the world outside more than made up for.

We had mountains and open fields.

About two hundred yards downhill was our garden. We had a pig pen, a big barn, and somewhere around fifteen or twenty cows at different times, plus their calves.

We also had Rottweilers throughout my childhood.

The dogs were part of the family, but they were also our responsibility. We fed and cared for them, and when they had puppies, we helped care for those puppies too.

There always seemed to be something around that property that needed feeding, watering, cleaning, protecting, or keeping out of trouble.

The same could probably be said about us three boys.

We had our own ranch brand, and Dad taught us how to brand the cattle.

We didn’t have a branding chute.

We wrestled them down ourselves.

We’d get a calf onto its side, hold it there, and apply the hot iron.

There’s something humbling about trying to convince a cow you’re stronger than it is.

Most of the time, the cow has evidence suggesting otherwise.

But that was life.

There was work that needed doing.

So we did it.

The cattle also helped feed us. We butchered our own cows, so there was usually plenty of beef.

The garden provided food too—assuming we could keep the jackrabbits out of it.

We killed the jackrabbits that were tearing into the garden.

Cottontails were different.

Those came home for dinner.

There was only one problem.

I was a picky eater.

Apparently I was perfectly willing to shoot a rabbit and bring it home. Eating one was where I drew the line.

Mom solved that problem.

She told me we were having chicken.

I ate it.

Turns out, that particular chicken had considerably longer ears than I realized.

Apparently I liked rabbit just fine.

I just needed Mom to lie about what was on the plate.

Three Boys and a Mountain

We learned to shoot young, starting with BB and pellet guns before eventually working our way up to .22s.

As we got older, the mountains became ours to explore.

We hunted dove, protected the garden from jackrabbits, brought cottontails home, and sometimes simply disappeared into the mountains together.

No phones.

No GPS.

Nobody tracking our location.

Just three boys with .22s wandering through the mountains.

I’m not entirely sure how we survived childhood.

One afternoon, Robert spotted two rattlesnakes before I stepped on them.

In that moment, my brother probably saved me from getting bitten.

Naturally, we responded with all the wisdom you would expect from three boys carrying .22s.

We unloaded on them.

Then we picked up the snakes and ran down the mountain to show Dad.

We were proud.

Dad was not.

The snakes still had enough movement left that they wrapped themselves around our arms while we carried them.

Imagine being a father and seeing your three boys running toward you proudly wearing rattlesnakes.

We expected congratulations.

Instead, Dad grabbed them and chopped their heads off.

Looking back, I understand his reaction considerably better than I did then.

He was teaching us to be capable.

Unfortunately, sometimes being capable made us believe we were invincible.

Our First Amusement Park

We had a tank dam where the cattle went for water, surrounded by a large dirt mound that was probably thirty feet high in places.

To the cows, it was a watering hole.

To us, it was a swimming pool and an amusement park.

We swam in the same water the cows drank from and cooled themselves in.

At some point we acquired barrels. We’d stuff pillows inside, climb in, and send ourselves rolling down the dam.

Eventually we upgraded our transportation. To a fire truck Power Wheels. It didn’t work.

Most kids might have considered that useless.

We saw potential.

We got the wheels rolling freely, pushed it to the top of the dam, climbed inside…

and rode it down. Again. And again.

No helmets.

No seatbelts.

No instruction manual.

Just gravity and poor decision-making.

Somehow, those are still some of the memories that make me smile the most.

A Quarter Felt Like a Lot

We didn’t go into town very often.

One of our occasional trips was to the laundromat.

Mom probably saw laundry.

We saw arcade games and a gumball machine.

If we were lucky enough to get a few quarters, suddenly washing clothes became an event.

It wasn’t much. But to us, it was.

Then we’d head back toward the mountains.

Back to the animals.

Back to the lanterns and wood stove.

Back to the smell of kerosene and smoke.

Back home.

We Didn’t Know We Were Missing Anything

The older I get, the stranger my childhood sometimes sounds when I describe it.

No electricity. No running water. An outhouse. Water hauled uphill. Heat from a wood stove. Food from the land around us.

But I don’t remember feeling deprived.

I remember having an entire mountain range for a backyard.

I’ve lived in a lot of places since that little cabin.

Different houses.

Different states.

Different countries.

Somewhere along the way, home became easier.

But that little cabin stayed exactly where childhood memories tend to stay.

I can still see the kerosene lanterns glowing after dark and smell the wood burning in the stove.

I see three sleeping bags around the stovepipe.

Mom brushing snow from them.

David, Robert, and me pulling wagons of water uphill.

Rottweilers running around the property.

Cattle in the barn and the garden down below.

I see a broken Power Wheels at the top of the tank dam, a quarter disappearing into an arcade machine, and Mom putting “chicken” on my plate without mentioning the ears.

And somewhere in those memories is Dad—working, teaching, correcting us, and occasionally wondering how three boys had managed to survive another day.

Back then, none of it seemed important enough to remember.

It was just another chore.

Another meal.

Another adventure.

Another day at home.

That’s the strange thing about childhood.

You don’t know you’re making the memories you’ll spend the rest of your life returning to.

You just live them.

Decades later, after seeing so much more of the world, I can still close my eyes and find that little cabin beneath the Capitan Mountains.

The cabin was small. Our world wasn’t.

And for a little boy growing up in Capitan Gap, that was home.

⸻

A Letter of Appreciation

Dear Home,

It’s strange calling you that now.

You didn’t have electricity, running water, central heat, or much space.

But somehow, you were enough.

As a boy, I never thought about what you didn’t have. I was too busy running out your door toward everything you did.

You gave me mountains for a backyard, brothers to explore them with, animals that depended on us, parents who kept us going, and enough freedom for three boys to turn almost anything into an adventure.

You taught me to work before I knew what a work ethic was.

You taught me responsibility before I knew the word.

And somehow, while giving us so little by today’s standards, you never made me feel like I was missing anything.

I’ve lived in many places since then. I’ve experienced comforts that little boy in Capitan Gap couldn’t have imagined.

But some of the things you gave me can’t be bought.

Toughness.

Resourcefulness.

Freedom.

Family.

And an appreciation for simple things.

I didn’t understand any of that then.

You were just where I woke up.