Show the old settler salt lake city august 11 1939 my dear san Jua ners time compels me to write offhand or not at all and I 1 want to I 1 be free to speak without apology I 1 in n the first P person sin singular galar so I 1 can say just what I 1 want most to say in this and similar letters which may follow I 1 want to get completely away from the frigid formality behind which writers hide in order to be regarded as fai ahful observers of a silly old tradition after living more than fifty years in san juan I 1 find myself still occupied with love and con cern for the country and its people in spite of being in quite 0 another country and associated with other communities the reports always grip me and if they are reports of hardship or disaster I 1 begin instinctively to study a wa way y out of it I 1 am fully convinced that in san juan is the sturdy stuff which has become native by its resolute fight of these eventful yeas years and it is the stuff that w will III will win out and make the country what nature intended it to be I 1 have faith that in the time of drouth and winds and s they will remember what the country has been that its weather 4 chanies changes go hi iney yeles cles that the natural change to follow a dry spell is a time of increased rainfall what goes up must come down and it follows that what is down must go up or there would be nothing to come down having watched the wet and the dry seasons follow each other there for more than fifty years and having never seen one season when it was too dry to raise profitable crops on ground that had been properly summer fal lowed the season before I 1 have unfaltering faith in san juan as a place for men to make safe against the wolf unless they have the notion that they must live high or not at all it happens sometimes that bugs or blight gets the good crop on the well fallowed fallowes land but nature has provided that there is one kind of plague for wheat another for corn another for beans alfalfa barley or any of the many things that can be raised with profit for this reason it is a hazardous thing to risk a seasons effort too much in one or in two crops wise men have advised the people of san juan not to risk all their eggs in one basket also if a mans livestock is all of one kind ednd all sheep all cattle all horses swine or poultry he is pitiably at the mercy of whatever murrain may reach out its mischievous hand for the kind of stock in which his sole interest is vested in 1934 the rainfall in the south central part of the county was just about half what it had ever been in the drnest year in the previous fifty years and yet in that year I 1 went in person to examine good crops growing on land that had rested and been kept clean of weeds the summer before I 1 maintain that temporary val continued on page 13 Z the old settler continued from first fir it page u aes ues e 0 of f this temporary earth les dolve 0 ve themselves down in te t tl e final F r ai analysis to that which will sustain life A man can live with mighty little clothing and can find shelter in the dens and caves of the earth but he must have something on which to subsist in th thi f way of food the frugal farmer fth his crops and his livestock 4 1 3 I still go on with e comparative om ive r comfort though the stock market takes a fit and prices shoot upward k or downward clear out of sight I 1 have known some very worthwhile worth while men and women who lived their lives and got a huge kick out of the joys and sorrows it entailed upon them though they scarcely ever saw anything in the way of cash they had plenty to eat and it was usually sweet because it was the product of their own honest labor with the want that already prevails I 1 and the desperate things that threaten the world today a man should be glad of a place where he can dig a subsistence from the ground and when he ff it he e should thank god for suntry where he can eat it in peace a country like san juan protected by magnificent distances from the hotbeds of strikes and commotion that break up homes and send people away destitute to I 1 hunt for shelters and prospects that are not to be f found there as they exist in our beloved san juan to my friends in san juan I 1 would earnestly advise stay there if you have land or other property be patient to learn how to get the best returns from it you run desperate chances in leaving it to join the jostling fighting mob of people everywhere who have pulled up stakes with the hope of finding something better in the majority of cases they have found something much worse of course ask that question im just seer enough to f ore you demanding why with all this faith in the country I 1 left it myself I 1 left with the cherished ji hope of living with my invalid wife who han been compelled for the sake of having a lower climate to be away from me for many months when I 1 came away I 1 had to f form orm other business connections and my affairs have become such that it would be impracticable for me to return to san juan though I 1 love it still yours for the good of san juan county ALBERT R LYMAN |