How did I learn to telegraph? A lot harder and longer than I like to admit. You can drive a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Dad and "Auz" Rogers between them literally pounded it into my head. They both were convinced that being a Morse telegrapher was the only worthwhile and honorable craft a man could aspire to.
From about the beginning of my 13th year to near the end of my 14th those two rode my back. Dad in winter; Auz in summer when I went to Gato (Pagosa Junction) and did chores for Auz and his wife, Helen, around the small hotel/eating house they operated there. Whichever, whereever each day they saw to it I spent a couple hours sending and another couple copying them or a machine Morse telegraph they bought for me. Sending was from the D&RGW Book of Rules and the stock section of the paper Book of Rules for words; stock page for numbers. It took 30-45 days to go thru the rule book. Once completed I started again at the beginning: Result- years later I was to be credited with being an authority on it.
Dad and "Auz" Rogers had made me into an employable Morse Lightning Slinger by the time I was 14 years old (1929) anywhere except the Relay Department offices (Alamosa, Pueblo, Grand Junction, Salt Lake City and of course the main one at Denver). In 1930 the Big Depression was in full flower. Railroads were cutting men off instead of hiring. On the Alamosa Division it was so bad my Dad could only hold the Extra Board. In 1930 he got only enough relief work to earn $600; I made about half this much from the sale of furs trapped on a 15 mile trapline and a couple hundred more poisoning, trapping and shooting coyotes for the New Mexico Wool Association.
My two mentors insisted times would get better and I'd get a job. Things did not get better. Plus all my life had been on one railroad or another and I despised anything connected with them. I had it out with them in words they objected to strenuously, "I would rather get a tin bill and peck shit on a manure pile than be a railroader." So I went on the bum. At that age I was full grown, strong in the back and foolish in the head. Fortunately my voice had changed a few years earlier and I had a noticeable beard. Most of all I was a convincing liar; I claimed I was 20-21 years old and experienced in whatever was necessary to get a few days or weeks of employment. Frequently on a job I got caught in my lies but I was a quick learner so by the times I took a Civil Service examination for work with the Bureau of Reclamation I scored high enough to get an appointment as Field Geologist. I actually worked all the jobs Heimburger shows on the dust jackets of my four hardcover books plus a few more.