My mother was born in the Windy City in 1920. She rarely talked about her childhood. From pictures, it appeared her family was successful. Her father was a banker, and they lived in a very nice house in a good neighborhood. In every photograph, my mom and her brother, Earle, were clean and very well dressed. For some reason, though, Mom didn’t get along with her father and refused to share details about her childhood with me. Her feelings were so strong that she made sure I really never got a chance to spend any time with her dad and get to know him.

Mom also didn’t like city life. She preferred the country and absolutely loved the summers she spent at an aunt and uncle’s farm in Iowa. She took to farm life, it was second nature for her. She and her brother Earle cared for the livestock, fed the cows, pigs, horses and chickens, and helped harvest the crops in the field. They were both accomplished horse riders, a passion they carried with them throughout their adult life.

But it was the cowboy life, not the farm life, that captivated her. She was enamored with the west and everything about it. In her teens, she read about Fred Harvey and the Harvey Houses he’d built along the Santa Fe Railroad, from Los Angeles to Chicago, and dreamt of being a Harvey Girl. Harvey Girls was the name given to the waitresses who worked in these fancy restaurants serving elegant meals to the trains’ passengers. At 18 years old, longing to leave Chicago and experience the West, she applied for the prestigious position, knowing she could be assigned anywhere between home and California. It was this assignment that took her to Williams, Arizona, a small town west of Flagstaff sitting on the historic old Route 66. In fact, it was the last town to bypass the legendary cross-country route.

Before she applied to be a Harvey Girl, my mother dated my father, Frank Sr. However when she moved, her world broadened. It was 1938, Mom found herself embroiled in the cowboy way of life. It was everything she ever imagined. Williams was a small mountain town surrounded by rea