My Dad – Part I
I had never met my grandfather on either side of our family. I do remember that August Behrman moved here in the late 1800’s and was a blacksmith whose shop was near the present Hi Rocky store.
My dad was born in Buena Vista in 1888 worked in his father’s shop. I have little history of his early life other than he was a prankster. For instance, he tipped over an outside toilet with someone in it. There are other ornery things he did that he related to his kids.
As a young man of fifteen, he ran away from home, caught a freight train and rode the box car westward and worked on a ranch in Nevada. Later he worked in the Latchaw Tunnel on Mt. Princeton and drove a stage from the Hot Springs to St. Elmo.
The family had some holdings north of Buena Vista, and his part of it was several acres of farmable land and many acres of unfarmable land west of the Arkansas River. He built a hewn log house on the property and it was there that the oldest three of the four boys were born. I was born in Salida in the home of a friend of my mother.
Ben Behrman was a straight shooter, honest and a hard worker. He developed the farm, (We called it the ranch) and got water for irrigation and for domestic use from the Riverside Ditch with water taken from the Arkansas River a few miles upstream. A few other farmers along the way used the ditch for their crops of grain and alfalfa.
All the field and farm work was done the hard way in those days. I remember hearing my dad singing in the fields well after dark as he set the water for the thirsty crops. He would arise before dawn to return to the fields to reset the water. He had a bout with blood poisoning which nearly took his life and left his hand and arm crippled.
He ran for County Commissioner while he was still farming and won. In fact he ran for six, four year terms and won them all. We have pictures of my dad cutting ribbon on Cottonwood pass. As County Commissioner, he was instrumental in getting the road opened to public traffic several years ago. Before a seventh term, he resigned feeling that he was getting old and couldn’t do his best. In 1946 he sold the ranch for the amazing sum of $11,500.