Local writer inspired by heritage

For most of us imagining the eastern Plains of New Mexico or the Llano Estacado without fences roads and houses stretches our minds.

Ruth White Burns, of Clovis, has had that imagery in her mind and her filing cabinet all of her life. This last month it all sprang to life in a new book about life before the railroad in eastern New Mexico. It is titled "A Man Was a Real Man in Them Days, Pioneers of the Llano Estacado 1860-1900."

While Ruth is an avid researcher and accomplished writer, she didn't write the book on her own, she had her late mother Rose Powers White as muse and chief researcher. Her mother came to the Portales area in the 1920s and took it on herself to capture the last of the living cowhands, cattlemen and legends in their own words relating what life was like on the open range of eastern New Mexico.

Her work, and the words of the early-day residents of the area help the reader imagine a prairie full of tall grass, buffalo, antelope and rattlesnakes, where, if a man were a real man he might raise a few head of beef cattle.

Raising the cattle in a harsh landscape was the first trick, the second was getting the beef to a distant market by way of a cattle drive in distant Kansas and later Amarillo, Texas. How could they survive it, let alone relish the existence as they did?

People from Portales know Ruth Burns from the days her and her late husband Mike ran Burns Wholesale. Mike served as Portales mayor for a number of years and it's pretty safe to say they got to know a lot of folks in the area.

Folks from a generation or two before mine may have known Ruth's father Eddie White. Eddie's step-father Bob Wood was among the first to come to the Portales area, arriving in 1882 along with the first big herd of cattle. That family connection to the heritage of the area is where Rose and later Ruth drew their inspiration.

Growing up I knew of Mike Burns and Burns Wholesale but I guess I wasn't acquainted with Ruth Burns until I became managing editor of the Portales News-Tribune. We ran her stories from time to time and I got the privilege of editing the work of her and her mother.

To me their writing was the stuff that the Saturday morning Westerns were made of, it didn't feel right reading it without popcorn.

I got to know Ruth a little better on a trip out to Portales Springs with her and her oldest son Mike, Jr. As we walked the old cliffs where Billy the Kid was reputed to have hid out, the stories fowed without effort from her mind. It was a good day for imagining a prairie without fences. From her description of an early-day chuckwagon, what was in it and exactly how it was packed to the arrival in Portales of the Pecos Valley and Northeastern "Peavine" railroad in 1898 to the historic photos and cover art of Portales Springs by local artist Lawanda Calton, the book is chock full of history.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]