A Monthly Publication for Frontier Communities in Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona

Jerry McBride was raised at Fort Bayard "I was about 1 ½-years old when we moved to Fort Bayard," Jerry McBride of Cliff said. "My dad went to work there in the 1930s." Before moving to Fort Bayard, the family, consisting of Jerry and his parents, Ernest and Florence McBride, lived in a house in Central, that Jerry's father had bought when the town of Santa Rita was selling its houses. After they moved, the family rented out the house. "I lived at Fort Bayard until I went into the military," Jerry said. His father worked in special services at Fort Bayard, presenting activities for the residents. "He ran 35 millimeter movies in the theater," Jerry said. "The 16 millimeter projectors and films were on the floor. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights, we got to watch movies. They were all first-run movies." Jerry, at the age of 12 years, began running the movie projector at the theater. "They wouldn't let me run it at the tuberculosis ward," he said. Every few weeks a special act would perform in the theater. "My favorite was an archer, who shot an apple off the head of his helper," Jerry said. "It amazed me, but it outraged the authorities when he threw knives around a girl standing against a board."

Fort Bayard had a darkroom, and a man at the fort was self-taught in photography developing processes. "He helped me set up a darkroom in the basement for my Boy Scout merit badge," Jerry said. "They were all contact prints."

Special services had golf clubs, cameras, musical instruments, a recording studio, as well as recordings, which he explained were not tapes. Everything was available for the residents, staff and their families to check out and use.

"My friends and I formed a band," Jerry said. "We were horrible."

"On the golf course, I used to caddy for Billy Casper," Jerry said. "One time I got to play with him in a tournament."

Jerry said the activities at the fort for kids were "unbelievable."

Between the complex and the orchard was an old coal storage bin into the hill, with intricate rockwork. "They stopped using it for coal and put up basketball hoops and nets for tennis and badminton," Jerry said. "The Sojourner's Club was by the cemetery on a hill. It's a shame they tore it down. It had small rooms for visitors and had a small darkroom and a small stage."

Jerry rehabilitated the darkroom and made some use of it. "The big darkroom that my dad used, got enlargers that made prints," Jerry said. "He would paint the black-and-whites."

The fort provided a lapidary shop with saws and polishers for shining rocks and gems. "My dad read something about faceting and used synthetic rubies and diamonds to teach the patients," Jerry said.

Other amenities at the fort were two shuffleboards. Competitions were held. Just beyond the post office in the hospital was a poolroom and library.

Fort Bayard hired people for the Minor League Team, which played there. "We also had a Pony League and Little League, both of which I played in," Jerry said. "All this kept us out of trouble, and the patients enjoyed watching us."

The King and His Court softball team traveled, with a pitcher, a catcher and two deep fielders in the left field. One of the local softball teams would make up the rest of the team. "The pitcher was so good, he pitched from second base," Jerry said. "He struck me out blindfolded. Most of the time, he pitched from the mound, and the catcher would talk to him so he knew where to throw. He threw 90-mile-per-hour pitches."

When the team would travel, they clowned around against local teams, and usually beat the locals by one point. "I played softball in the Army 10 or 12 years later," Jerry said. "I played the King and His Court team again. The pitcher struck me out again from second base."

From the baseball park, the team would shoot off fireworks. The kids knew the last one had a parachute with a bag of candy, so they watched the way the wind was blowing.

Fort Bayard had a Canteen, where, according to Jerry, the "huge, delicious hamburgers sold for 18 cents each." A root beer went for 4 cents, as did a chocolate bar with almonds. "I would spade a garden for someone, get a quarter and run to the Canteen," Jerry said. The jukebox at the canteen stocked up on the top hit records and pop tunes for the teens, who would spend their time there until their curfew. There was also a three-hole golf course behind the round-shaped canteen.

"When I checked out a camera, I would check out two rolls of film and reserve a time for developing," Jerry said.

The school at the fort was for students from first through eighth grades, but "by the time I was in fourth grade, they bussed us to Silver City. We had the same teacher, Mrs. Koestenbader. Her husband was the principal."

He remembered when the German prisoners of war were brought to Fort Bayard in 1942. "My dad had made me a toy rifle," Jerry said. "I pointed it at them once, and they all jumped into the hole they were digging. My dad scolded me, but they told him they were just playing with me. "I saw one POW kill a pigeon to feed to his stray cat," Jerry recounted.

He said the POWs were always polite and would talk to him. Most of them were Germans, with a few Italians. They had one person supervising them, and sometimes no one was supervising them. He said they had nice quarters.

"I found lots of Indian artifacts after the POWs left, where they had planted apples, pears and apricots in the orchard," Jerry said.

On the way down to the orchard was a steep hill behind the motor transport along an arroyo. The POWS built a huge retaining wall, he said. The site always had big cottonwood trees, and sometimes the carpenters would "slip us some wood scraps. We built a real nice treehouse. We found a baby sparrow hawk, whose mama had been killed. We raised it. It would ride around on my shoulder." When it grew up, it flew away, "but about a week later, it hit my shirt. It had egg on its beak and birds were dive-bombing him. He went home with me, and I made him a cage for the night."

Jerry was delivering the El Paso Times to the patients at the time. "The supervisor called me in because of a complaint," Jerry said. "About 100 of the patients would no longer take the paper if I didn't bring in the bird. Several of the patients had been unresponsive, and the only thing that piqued their interest was the bird. I still had him when I went into the Army. Dad took to him. "The first time I came home on leave, the bird wasn't there," Jerry said. "I asked Dad where he was. He told me the wind was blowing hard, and the bird was trying to come into the house, when the screen door blew shut on him and killed him."

Jerry said the Parrish Bus Lines made trips to Fort Bayard, and then it became the Greyhound Bus, which went to the fort twice a day.

"We had numerous deer at the fort," Jerry said. "One day a doe got run over by a bus and left a small fawn. I bottle-fed it. The yearling thought he was people and would curl up on the couch. As he grew little horns, he got to playing rough and butted us hard. One day, my grandmother was in the garden, and he butted her into the ground. The federal and state authorities were called, but they couldn't catch him. I walked him into a trailer, and they took him about three miles north of the fort. He almost beat them home."

He reported that deer love graham crackers better than anything. "I tried to rope one, but couldn't catch her," Jerry said. "So I put a noose under a trellis, where I put apples and graham crackers. I jerked the rope and caught her around the middle. She pulled me through the trellis and tore my pants. Then, I had to get the rope off her, so she wouldn't get tangled up."

When too many skunks were at the fort, staff tried to catch them, but they got trap-wise. "I had a bow and practice arrows," Jerry said. "I shot a skunk, and it ran into the hospital. I ran home and hid the arrows. "The guards were the police force, and the chief guard came to talk to me and asked me about the shooting," Jerry said. "I showed him some other arrows, and he said: 'If you find out who did it, please let me know.' Of course, I had to clear it up. "We would catch the baby skunks and one of the nurses would de-scent them," Jerry continued. "We had a lot of pets, but they got trapped over the years and were taken off somewhere."

Guinea pigs were used for testing for tuberculosis. They were kept in a little house where they were raised. "One day, we came home on the school bus, and men were chasing guinea pigs. A guy had left the door open when he was feeding them. The guinea pigs came running us to us, and we got busted. We gathered as many as we could. We had been feeding them cookies."

He said several corrals and a barn held more than 20 old McClellan cavalry saddles, bridles and scabbards in a huge tack room. "There was a big project going on at the hospital, and they stored tar in the barn," Jerry said. "One night about 3:00 a.m., I saw a glow. We turned the water on it full force, and the hose started throwing us around. "One horse got singed, but all the horses got out," he said, "but the barn went up in flames with the McClellan saddles inside. Men had tears in their eyes."

Jerry said his father went to school only three years, and his first job was carrying food trays up the stairs. He went on to other jobs, including in the steam plant, and then to special services. "His boss was earning a doctorate in education," Jerry said. "My dad would buy textbooks of algebra and calculus, and the doctors would tutor him. His boss asked to give him an equivalency test, and my dad's learning was equivalent to a junior in college.

"He has always been my hero - Ernest H. McBride," Jerry said.

During Christmas week, Santa and his sleigh pulled by real reindeer would always arrive at Fort Bayard. The sleigh had wheels when there was no snow. Kids would get rides around the fort, and little kids would get gifts.

At the Sojourner's Club, supposedly Black Jack Pershing had driven a gold stake. "We kids spent lots of time looking for spikes," Jerry said. "The club was used for weddings, dances and parties. The adults had the big room for dances, and there was another smaller area for kids and teens.

"When I got out into the real world, I found out that not everyone lived like we did," Jerry said. "And I didn't take advantage of all I did have there."

A friend of his, David Fried, who was three years older than Jerry, lived next door to Jerry's family. He was of German descent and "a brain," according to Jerry. "He made straight A's and played trumpet. We decided we would build a rocket. We got pipe and explosives, and it blew up." They cut up copper tubing and soldered on copper fins and lit it. "We ran behind our barricade," Jerry said. "It melted one of the fins and shot over our heads. We found out that at Cape Canaveral, they used solid propellant."

The rocket they built next was two-feet long and a three-stage rocket. "David figured out how to make solid propellant," Jerry said. "We had to notify our folks, so they could watch. My friend was amazing."

David then wanted to make a crossbow, so he took the main leaf spring off an old Crosby car, bolted it onto a 4-by-4 piece of wood, used three piano strings from a wrecked piano and put them on the bow.

"The arrows are called bolts," Jerry said. "We didn't know that they weren't really bolts, so we found some 16-inch, 5/8 inch in diameter bolts and ground the ends sharp." The first time they shot it over the cottonwood trees and couldn't find the bolt. They took it to the orchard, and shot a bolt three-quarters of the way into a cottonwood tree.

David used to also make model planes out of balsa wood and gas engines. He held cables to control them, until he built a remote control. The plane had a four-foot wingspan. "He finally got it airborne," Jerry said. "It was a little jerky, and then got out of range. We couldn't see it until it crashed into a mountain beyond the orchard."

One time, Jerry's cousin was visiting. A rock wall behind the canteen was crumbling, and a rabbit ran inside. "We wanted to catch it and make it a pet, so we pulled out about five feet of rock wall before the supervisor caught us," Jerry said.

His paper delivery business grew from about 20 subscribers up to more than 100. "I had to pick up the papers at H.L. Barnett's in Central," Jerry said. "I was driving at an early age, and could drive down to the highway and walk into town to get the papers. "I spun a Brody, hit the gas and spun in a circle," Jerry said. "I spun onto the lawn, and that ended my use of the pickup. I had to ride my bicycle to get the papers. On Thursdays and Sundays, it took two trips."

At 2:00 a.m., he would go to pick up the papers, sometimes after only a couple of hours of sleep. "I was hard to wake up, so mother would send our parakeet into my room. It would bite me in the nose. I tried to kill it, but never succeeded."

He remembered when they changed from crank telephones to black phones.

Sometimes, he would check out a projector, and the kids would look at movies. "We saw everything from the Three Stooges to Tarzan and every Joe Louis fight in the 1940s and 50s," Jerry said.

"My friend Dean Matthews and I used to play Taps for Memorial Day," Jerry said. "I would play it, and he would play the echo."

Dean and his brother Gene were twins. "My dad used to call their younger brother Keith 'the triplet.'"

Jerry's father retired from the federal facility and was hired back by the state to run the steam plant for another 10 years. "He started when it was coal, and then it was natural gas-powered," Jerry said.