His·to·ri·og·ra·phy: the study of historical writing
When Nancy Lester, a 22-year-old graduate of Middlebury College, Vermont, accepted a teaching job at Carbondale Union High School (CUHS) in 1950, she didn’t intend to put her experiences into print. But Lester, who grew up in New Jersey, found Carbondale’s mid-20th-century agricultural community so foreign and fascinating that she soon turned the pages of her personal journal into a book, “Stranger in Angel Town,” published in 1952.
Though she changed the name of the town and its inhabitants, she admitted in later interviews that her book was a factual account of her time in Carbondale.
Reading Lester’s book today, a local can easily recognize some of the places she describes, if not the characters, most of whom have passed on in the 73 years since its publication. For instance, in describing Mt. Sopris, she captured not only the image, but the feeling this special landmark evokes in all who live here:
“The whole valley is ringed around with mountains, but one looms out because of its greater height and closer position. It stands over the town like a watchdog. Some mountains are majestic, grand, craggy, forbidding, and terrible, but this one is benevolent. It practically glows in the morning sun, smiling indulgently down on the rear side of the town’s false fronts. Plainly the mountain and the town have a mutual admiration pact.”
And though its population and character have greatly changed, Missouri Heights is identifiable:
“Scattered up on the Mesa are 8 or 10 ranches. This thin outpost of humanity is not dignified by the name of town or village, but is simply known as the folks on the Mesa [and] a certain air of the Old West hangs about them. When Angel Town goes up there for a dance at the one-room school, it sheds fifty years of propriety and reverts to type. As Jim puts it, ‘Oh, them dances on the Mesa are something!’”
Thanks to the Missouri Heights Community League, the old schoolhouse building has been preserved, and community events are still held there.
Speaking of community events, no description of life in Carbondale would be complete without Potato Day, which Lester called “Rodeo Day.” Though it’s moved locations several times, and no longer features a rodeo, many of the long-cherished traditions carry on.
“Crowds of people were pouring into town, coming up from the river bottom, down from the mesas and canyons, and even in from other towns… These unexpected hordes laid into the BBQ, pronounced it fine, and ate it all up, together with bits of burlap, gallons of coffee, and pecks of red dust.”
Lester described the CUHS building (now Bridges High School), where she taught Spanish and English literature in the junior-high and high-school classrooms located around the perimeter of the second floor. She occasionally taught elementary-school classes in the first-floor perimeter rooms. In the center of the building, open to both floors, was the gym, where basketball games and dances took place.
Both that building and the education system have changed a lot since then. Lester describes a boy who was popular, and a leader, but had difficulty reading, long before dyslexia was diagnosed as a learning disorder. Lester attributed it to his rural upbringing, but everyone, even the boy himself, just accepted that he was “dumb.”
Some of her students, particularly in the lower grades, were quite mischievous, frequently requiring a trip to the principal’s office for disciplinary action.
Carbondale-born Auggie Natal, now 88, was in the eighth grade at CUHS in 1950. He didn’t have Lester as a teacher, but he remembers her. And being one of the rowdy boys, he also remembers the method of punishment used by then-Principal Reynolds. “He’d tell you to bend over his desk, then he’d take a wooden yardstick and WHACK!”
Surprisingly, corporal punishment at school didn’t faze the parents, but when one of the boys was expelled for repeated offenses, the town folk became enraged and almost fired the principal for denying the child an education.
Lester and fellow teacher “Stacy,” who was also a stranger in Angel Town, puzzled over this on a hike up the west mesa overlooking the town and surrounding ranches, comprising the entire population of 497.
“‘Did you ever see such a hick town?’ asked Stacy, I said no. ‘It’s amazing how interested they get in education,’ she said. ‘Looking at it from up here, it’s hard to see why they’d bother with the school at all.’”
Throughout the book, Lester questions her students’ need for higher education, as she believed the boys would all become ranchers, and the girls ranchers’ wives.
Though she left after two years, Nancy Lester’s legacy remains a part of Carbondale history. Her picture appears alongside the other teachers and faculty in the 1950 CUHS Yearbook, which also features photos of the 13 seniors she taught.
Despite Lester’s pessimism, a few of the graduates did go on to college and professional careers. Others stayed here or came back from college and worked on ranches, in the mines or for local businesses, married and had children. Their descendants walk among us today.
Sue Gray is a volunteer archivist, researcher, lecturer and writer of Carbondale history. She invites anyone interested in helping to preserve local history to contact the Carbondale Historical Society at info@carbondalehistory.org