By Marilys Johnson
If you live in Yarnell you’ve probably seen her – the quiet 85-year-old lady who walks to and from the post office every morning. You probably didn’t notice her, but don’t take her for granted. She has contributed much to Arizona, and has many fascinating stories to tell.
“It was a beautiful setting. Just gorgeous!” Ruby Cook mused as she recalled her days at the little cabin in the forest where she lived for five summers, working beside her husband, Ken.
It was May, 1940, the first summer that they left Peoria and traveled to General Springs Canyon on the Mogollon Rim to fight fires.
“Originally it was called General’s Spring Guard Station, because it was General Crooks’ favorite camping ground. The locals called it Tunnel Gap, but that’s another story. There’s a lookout tower to the west called Baker’s Butte”, she remembered.
Most young American men were serving in World War II at the time. So due to the shortage of manpower, the Forest Service hired “older” men like Ken, who was 29 at the time. Their wives went along because it wasn’t safe to send a man out alone to fight fires.
Conditions were primitive at the little cabin where the Cooks lived with their two young sons, Jim, 6, and Dean, 3. There was no electricity or running water, unless you’d call carrying a bucket of water from the nearby spring, “running water.”
Ruby washed clothes on a washboard and heated the wash water on a big camp fire in the front yard. She cooked on a wood burning cook-stove in the corner of the main room.
“The main room was about twelve square feet I’d say, and the bedroom was very small,” Ruby said. “Just enough room to get the bed in and walk down beside it, and then we had the fold-away for the kids – in the same room,” Ruby said.
She kept busy with her housework, taking care of the family, answering the battery-operated telephone and, of course, fighting fires.
Whenever they received a call from one of the lookouts, Ken first deciphered where the fire was located by crossing strings on a map posted in their cabin.
Having done that, they’d pack up the kids and head out in the direction of the fire, driving their own family car. Ruby remembers getting one fire call at around 4 p.m. one day and returning home about 4 the next morning. Jim and Dean stayed by the car. “Luckily the car was parked where I could see them,” Ruby recalled.
It wasn’t uncommon, upon returning from a fire, to find holes burned through the back of her sweater or Ken’s hat. When a fire was severe, extra firefighters were brought in to help.
It was the practice back then to cut down certain trees that were on fire. “I helped cut down trees with a six-foot cross-cut saw. Now days things are much different because of the environmental situation. Everything has changed now. It’s all different,” she said.
About two weeks after they arrived for their first season of work, a late June dry thunderstorm struck. “Well anyway, that was our initiation,” Ruby laughed. “We had about 250 fires that year.” The following year, summer rains came to the Rim, so Ruby and Ken only fought about 10 fires that season.
“There are so many stories to tell,” Ruby’s eyes twinkled. “Like when the rats got in. Or the time the skunks moved in under the house. And the time the porcupine was gnawing under the floor.
Life at the little cabin was not only primitive, but extremely isolated. The closest neighbor was eight miles away. Occasionally the ranger, or ranger’s assistant, would come by on business,” Ruby said. “For one year and part of the next, a couple from Winslow came up there every few weeks for picnics. I guess they just wanted to get out of Winslow for the day. They brought the kids some funny papers and me some magazines and things like that.
The Cooks had a battery-operated radio and a couple of the boys’ favorite programs were “Fibber McGee and Molly,” and, of course, “The Lone Ranger”.
About once a month, Ruby and her family would travel to the little store at Clint Wells which was about an hours’ drive. They’d stock up on supplies and picked up their month’s mail.
They couldn’t leave their job until after 8 p.m. and it was always the middle of the night before they arrived home. During the war, certain food was rationed.
“You couldn’t depend on getting bacon or things like that. Sometimes the storekeeper saved back a couple of cans of Spam and that was all the meat we had,” Ruby recalls. “The people at the store lived in the back and would open up for us whenever we got there, no matter what time it was.”
After the war was over in 1945, Ruby and her family moved to Camp Verde, which was the winter quarters for the Long Valley Ranger Station, and Ken, while still on fire call, started working for Timber Sales. Their daughter, Wanda, was born in 1947.
After the Forest Service started using walkie talkies and radios, the General Springs cabin was in a “blind” spot for reception and had to be moved further up the hill. In 1960 it was designated a historical building. Jim attended the dedication.
Ken and Ruby moved to Yarnell when he retired in 1972, after 32 years with the Forest Service. Ken passed away in 1982.
These days Ruby enjoys quilting, and every Tuesday she quilts along with the Happy Tackers sewing group at Yarnell Community Church. Her interests still include trees and plants.
(Correspondent Marilys Johnson has lived in Peeples Valley since 1992.)