It was a big lake. It
covered, I reckin, fifty acres, and these little Meskin huts just
surrounded that big lake. And fish! My goodness, you could just go down
there and throw your hook in without a bait and catch a fish. That was
what you call the =Laguna de Chacona=. That was out from Brownsville
about thirty-five miles. That ranch was owned by the old Meskin named
Chacon, where the lake got its name.

"It seems funny the way they handled milk calves--you know, the
men-folks didn't milk cows, they wouldn't even fool with 'em. They would
have a great big corral and maybe they would have fifteen or twenty cows
and they would be four or five families go there to milk. Every calf
would have a rawhide strap around his neck about six foot long. Now,
instead of them makin' a calf pen--of evenin's the girls would go down
there and I used to go help 'em--they would pull the calf up to the
fence and stick the strap through a crack and pull the calf's head down
nearly to the ground where he couldn't suck. Of course, the old cow
would hang around right close to the calf as she could git. When they
let the calf suck, they'd leave 'im tied down so he couldn't suck in the
night. They always kep' the cows up at night and they'd leave the calves
in the pen with 'em, but tied down. But buildin' just what you call a
calf pen, they'd set posts in the ground just like these stock pens at
the railroad and lay the poles between 'em. Then again, they would dig a
trench and set mesquite poles so thick and deep, why, you couldn't push
it down!

"Now, in dry times, they would have a =banvolete= (ban-bo-la-te). Hand me
two of them sticks, mama. Now, you see, like here would be the well and
you cut a long stick as long as you could get it, with a fork up here in
this here pole, and have this here stick in the fork of the pole. They'd
bolt the cross piece down in the fork of the pole that was put in the
ground right by the well, and have it so it would work up and down.
They'd be a weight tied on the end of the other pole and they could sure
draw water in a hurry. I made one out here on the Anderson Ranch. Just
as fast as you could let your bucket down, then jerk it up, you had the
water up. The well had cross pieces of poles laid around it and cut to
fit together.

"Now, about the other way we had to draw water. We had a big well, only
it was fenced around to keep cattle from gettin' in there. The reason
they had to do that, they had a big wh