Lizards on the Mantel, Burros at the Door : : A Big Bend Memoir / / June Cooper Price, Etta Koch.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Koch, Etta,; Price, June Cooper,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2013]; ©1999
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (214 p.)

A woman who went West with her husband in the 1840s must have expected hardships and privation, but during the 1940s, when Etta Koch stopped off in Big Bend with her young family and a 23-foot travel trailer in tow, she anticipated no more than a civilized camping trip between her old home in Ohio and a new one in Arizona. It was only when she found herself moving into an old rock house without plumbing or electricity in the new Big Bend National Park that Etta realized, "From the sheltered life of a city girl of moderate circumstances, I too would have to face the reality of frontier living." In this book based on her journals and letters, Etta Koch and her daughter June Cooper Price chronicle their family's first years (1944-1946) in the Big Bend. Etta describes how her photographer husband Peter Koch became captivated by the region as a place for natural history filmmaking-and how she and their three young daughters slowly adapted to a pioneer lifestyle during his months' long absences on the photo-lecture circuit. In vivid, often humorous anecdotes, she describes making the rock house into a home, getting to know the Park Service personnel and other neighbors, coping with the local wildlife, and, most of all, learning to love the rugged landscape and the hardy individuals who call it home.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- One Mere Is Everybody? -- Two The Long load to Texas -- Three Under the Piiion Pines -- Four exploring the Basin -- Five Terlingua -- Six Dignitaries -- Seven Pets -- Eight Polecats and Horses -- Nine Boquillas -- Ten Of Mountains and Basins -- Eleven The Droken Blossom -- Twelve Mama Has a Birthday -- Thirteen The Winter of Change -- Fourteen Reflections on the Rio Grande -- Fifteen The Spa -- Sixteen Into the Limestone Lodge -- Seventeen Maggy -- Eighteen Menagerie -- Nineteen The Nail Comes on Holiday -- Twenty first, do fill the water bucket -- Twenty-one A Lizard, [Ike, and Other Winter Visitors -- Twenty-two Mexican Wedding -- Twenty-three The Steps That Led to Spanish -- Twenty-four Have Some Deans? -- Twenty-five Rocks of the Ages -- Twenty-six Water Tales -- Twenty-seven A Christmas to forget -- Twenty-eight Flight -- Twenty-nine Second Summer -- Thirty On lop of Mt. Bailey -- Thirty-one Kaufman's Draw -- Epilogue