By Edna Ballew Patton
(Edna Mae Ballew Patton lived in Skull Valley for over 60 years. In the late 1990s, she committed many of her memories to paper. Her first published memoirs appeared in the Days Past issue of November 20, 2008 and can be read there. Mrs. Patton died on July 31, 2008, five days after giving Sharlot Hall Museum permission for her memoirs to be published.)
My husband, Warren Ballew, went to work in the winter of 1941 for Karl Fackler in Skull Valley. To avoid daily commuting, he boarded with Wiley and Pearl Coughran until I moved down from Prescott with our son, Daryl, late July 1942. There was no electricity so my washing machine, refrigerator, iron and radio were of no use. The creek ran all the time so I dug a hole and put a five-gallon bucket down in the water. I could even get my Jello to set! It also kept my round steak cool for Sunday dinner. I got up one Sunday morning and discovered a big dog had knocked the board and rock off my bucket and ate everything. That was the last time I used the creek as an icebox! Daryl was six years old and would ride his stick horse over to Bochat’s and get one pint of milk every day.
The Skull Valley Service Station at that time was run by Jack Medd. It was one long room with a pool table. There was a very small area in the corner with a round table where men gathered to play poker.
The first time I was in Skull Valley, I walked around on the footing of ‘Uncle’ Frank Ehle’s house. He and Jay Davis built it with native rocks. We bought this house in 1953 and still live in it (late 1990s).
Soon Warren (and Karl Fackler) went to work driving ore trucks at the old Commercial Copper Mine for Fred Schemmer while I went to work in January 1943 at the Skull Valley Store for Mrs. J. H. (Vi) Warren (who later became Mrs. Irving when she remarried after her husband died). It was a good store. Besides groceries, it had about everything: horse shoes and nails, pipe fittings, Levis, shirts, socks, pretty wrapping paper, medications, coal, hay, cement, grains and feed of all kinds. If you wanted a windmill, Mrs. Warren would see that you got a windmill!
After ‘Uncle’ Frank Ehle died, his wife Ideala lived alone. She was a big, heavy woman and seldom left the place, but we looked up one day to see her running to the store. I ran to meet her. An Arizona Public Service man was up a pole at her house and had touched a hot wire and was hanging unconscious. Steve Gillmore had the gas station at that time and he was also an electrician. He no doubt saved the young man’s life by taking him down and on to the hospital in Prescott. The man was burned but recovered.
There was a jail break in Prescott one night. The next day, Violet Mishler came over to the store and said she believed those two men were coming to Skull Valley. While she was sitting there, a strange, very nervous young man came into the store and bought a few groceries. After he left, Violet said, "I’m just sure that’s one of them." There was a deputy getting gas at the station across the street so she ran over and told him. The young man jumped over the bridge near the school and went down the creek. The deputy called for help and sure enough, the escapees caught a freight train to Skull Valley and were holed up at the church. They broke open the birthday bank and used that money to buy the groceries. When Warren, Daryl and I got home that night, we got the rusty key down off the nail and locked our door for the first time. The church was never locked in those days.
Edna Ballew Patton lived in Skull Valley from 1942 until 2002.
This and other Days Past articles are available on sharlothallmuseum.org/archives and via RSS e-mail subscription.
Your stories and experiences are important. The public is welcome to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact Scott Anderson at Sharlot Hall Museum Archives at 445-3122 for information.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Photo courtesy of Daryl Ballew) Reuse only by permission.
Edna and Warren Ballew in front of the rock house they bought in 1953. Warren died in 1992. Edna remarried and, together with husband Fred Patton, moved to the Arizona Pioneer Home in 2002.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Photo courtesy of Daryl Ballew) Reuse only by permission.
Warren Ballew owned and operated the Skull Valley service station from 1953 until 1978, shown here in the mid-1950s. Note the hand-cranked gas pumps and Warren’s old Studebaker on the left.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb117f2i3) Reuse only bypermission.
The Skull Valley Store (June 1981) where Edna Ballew worked for many years beginning in 1943. Note the flag at half-staff in recognition of the death of long-time Skull Valley resident, George E. Clark.