By Al Camp
Chronicle staff

     Homer Carter often is referred to as a cowboy's cowboy, but his origins go back to a time of cold, hungry days in Aeneas Valley during the Depression.
     Carter, 87, was born with a sparse name - he has no middle name - on April 10, 1920, in Bethel, Okla.
     "That's probably someplace between the pigpen and the house," said Carter of the small town. "We came to this country when I was a year old in 1921.
     "I was born with nothing and I have most of it left," he said.
     The family arrived to live near the junction of Aeneas Valley Road and Highway 20 at the invitation of his mother's brother, Walter Crysp.
     "We knew where he lived and very little else," said Carter, whose mother was Minnie Ida Crysp and father was George Harvey Carter.
     Carter grew up as the youngest of four boys and four girls. He is the last survivor of his siblings.
     His mother died in 1926, which was three years before the stock market dropped and the country fell into a deep depression.
     "All of a sudden he's (his father) got a family of eight kids to look after, no job and no money," Carter said. "And he had no chance at getting any" money.
     Carter recently began writing his memoirs for his kids (Stanley W. Carter, Christine Marie Carter and Jay D. Carter) after receiving a copy of "To Our Children's Children," by Bob Greene and D.G. Fulford.
     Homer writes that his childhood was quite unique, that he makes the best pancakes in Okanogan County, and that he survived to reach a bit over six foot, which was considered tall at the time.
     "Now at 85 I am overweight and gravity has taken its toll," Carter wrote a couple years ago.
     He wears bifocals (a detached retina in the 1940s doesn't help his vision) and needs to squint at old photos to see who is pictured.
     But his memory remains sharp, and he describes the past it's with well-shaped sentences loaded with wit and humor.
     One of his earliest memories was being 3 years old living on Cayuse Mountain. The family lived in a well-built, two-story log house that was only accessible by walking, horseback or wagon team.
     "Picture yourself at the junction of Aeneas Valley Road and Highway 20, and you're facing north. You look up the hill about two or three miles. That's Cayuse Mountain," said Carter.
     Winters could get pretty cold.
     "This must have been a heartbreaking tragedy for my mother," said Carter of the family's homestead. "Although the house was reasonably comfortable, there was no water. Older kids would ride from there to school on horses and bring back water when they came home in the evening.
     "Imagine cooking and clothing four boys and four girls without water," Carter said. "Eventually dad and the oldest brother dug a well. The water was so alkaline that you couldn't drink it."
     Carter remembers some cold winters, when temperatures once got to 40 below. The cold would flow through rafters and shingles, where holes were big enough for a bird to fly through.
     "Sleeping bags had not yet been invented," he said. "My sister, Sue, saved me from freezing. She came up with two feather ticks from who knows where, and that was my winter bedding."
     The ticks were like big pillows, filled with goose down. Carter recalled he would would sleep on one and cover up with the other.
     "I don't ever remember having a cold in the winter," he said. "The germs were frozen.
     "I don't know how other people classified our standing in the community but I always knew we were poverty stricken," said Carter, who described himself as a "little bitty starve-ass kid."
     "We never really had proper winter clothing until we were old enough to earn our own money," he said. "I did not always have a full belly."
     A fond memory was other children arriving from Aeneas Valley on sleigh to meet a bus to take them to school.
     "I remember while going through school at Sunny Slope, a guy would come in the morning to meet the bus from Aeneas Valley," said Carter of a horse-drawn sleigh with a box on back.
     "There were planks across (the box) for the kids to sit on and all the blankets they could carry to keep warm," he said. "There was white steam coming out of the horses' noses. Those kids had to be tough to go 14 miles on a sleigh. They must have had rocks out of the oven to keep their feet from freezing."
     A motorized bus would take the kids to Tonasket for school. The sleigh was replaced the next winter by "an old clap trap sort of a bus" that was motorized, he said.
     The family moved off the mountain and into the valley in 1926 when his mother died.
     Conditions were tough for others in the area, too. Carter said his family may have taken over an abandoned house or two from those leaving due to harsh conditions.
     He remembers his dad was seldom around and that after his mother died the girls in the family took charge, led by his oldest sister, Sue.
     "She assumed the role of mother until she got married," said Carter. "Thankfully, we were a rawhide tough outfit."
     At one home along Bonaparte Creek downstream of barnyards, he learned to let large pieces in water to settle and use a dipper to gently take a drink.
     Poor times often meant extreme measures.
     "Sometimes we had venison that was strictly illegal," said Carter, remembering how his brother-in-law, Frank Rounds, bagged five deer on Cayuse Mountain. "But it was necessary to a lot of people's survival.
     "Frank was a good hunter," recalled Carter. "He was as tough as they ever got. In a time in history when everyone had to be strong, he was at the top of the list."
     Homer grew close to his brother Jay, who was 18 months older. They would milk cows twice a day and eventually walk to and from school together.
     "What a rodeo twice a day at milking time," said Carter.
     The boys later got paid $20 a month to walk three miles into town for schooling and the three miles home. Often they made the trek twice a day so that a school bus would not need to make the trip.
     "Man, in those days that was like a bonanza," said Carter of the monthly checks. "We always had it spent on clothes. We knew how to walk. We walked everywhere we wanted to go. We did not always have a saddle horse or mechanical means of conveyance."
     Carter eventually moved to Tonasket, living with his sister, Fay, while attending high school.
     In the fall he'd work the apples for Bill Grinnell.
     "I made enough money to buy clothes and from friend, John Yeckle, a bicycle," Carter said. "Finally I was mobile.
     "I wish the bike had an odometer to record the hundreds of miles I put on it."
     As he grew older, Carter said he wondered about meeting or even talking to girls.
     "Here again I find myself always doubtful of my appearance," said Carter. "How do you ask a young lady for a date when the knees are out of your jeans and elbows out of your shirt?"
     As he got older, he also got his first taste of cowboying at a sheep camp east of Republic.
     "That was some of the remotest of the remote," said Carter of the area.
     At the end of a road he went by horseback with pack horses to the camp through "jing jangs," using old freight trails used by the Forest Service. He spent the next three months tending sheep.
     "Jing jangs," explained Carter, is any place where it's very brushy, and "hell" to ride through.
     "It's any place where you can hardly get through on foot or horse," he said.
     The route originally served to connect portions of the Washington Territory with Spokane and Stevens County.
     While at the camp he had his first encounter with a cougar.
     "He was lying on a big rock watching us," said Carter. "I don't know how long. I was inching toward a tree to get a gun when the cougar took off.
     "I was really impressed with how he could move," Carter said. "You could hardly tell he was moving, he was so fluid."
     Carter later said his dad watched the cougar take out a sheep so swiftly and quietly that a nearby sheep didn't move or know what was happening.
     Carter said a Scottish sheepherder, Sam McKee (or McKean, he couldn't quite remember exactly) also was at the camp.
     "He had some of the most weirdest and go awfullest expressions," said Carter.
     One of those, a description of where a trail might go, was "top out down higher." Carter said he never could figure how something could go up and down at the same time.
     "What a wonderful way for kids to get educated in sheep camp," said Carter.
     Lots of immigrants filled the valley, especially Dutch, Irish, English and those from Finland.
     He remembers a Dutch man sending a note to the storekeeper in Molson.
     "Never take a Dutchman for what he says, take him for what he means," Carter learned.
     The note said: "Please vill you send me vun barrel of empty sugar. I vant to make a hen coop for my dog. I look out the window and see chickens walk by vun in a bunch and three by dem selves."
     Carter said the man only wanted an empty sugar barrel for a hen coop for his dog.
     He also remembers eating a lot of chicken on a threshing crew, with wives trying to one-up each other at each meal.
     One man was helping his wife do dishes, and asked, "By geez Ada we got to do something, the chickens are dying faster than these guys can eat them," Carter recalled, figuring the man must have been Dutch.
     Another adventure involved a bear, which sat in a trap to eat a sheep left as bait. The trap snapped, the bear took off and, said Carter, "It must have hurt when he hit the end of his chain."
     Carter was drafted into the Army after high school and served as a signal man (high speed keyboarder sending/receiving Morse code).
     He said he was working in the woods as a logger when a letter arrived "from a board of your friends and neighbors" that congratulated him for being chosen for the armed forces.
     Carter and his brother, Jay, enlisted about the same time and were discharged about the same time. Jay died a few years later in a logging accident.
     Carter landed in Manila in the Philippines for most of his tour of duty - four years, nine months and 27 days.
     He returned to Tonasket and struck up a friendship with Catherine "Kay" Marie Martin.
     "First thing you know we decided to get married," said Carter. "She had nice legs."
     They got married April 16, 1946, shortly after he'd started working for what is now the state Department of Transportation (formerly Department of Highways).
     "My wife was a fine lady, wonderful mother, homemaker, companion and friend," said Carter, who celebrated 60 years of marriage in April 2006.
     Kay Carter died last November.
     After a 30-year career with DOT that ended on a Friday in 1972 (he was given credit toward retirement for time served in the military), Carter began work on Monday for Okanogan County Television Reception District No. 1.
     The early going with the district proved difficult. Carter tried to upgrade equipment and repair power lines to Omak Mountain.
     The first winter the power line went down and did not come back. People were calling the house wanting their television, remembers his son, Stan Carter.
     Every other day that winter Homer Carter took a Snow Cat loaded with propane cylinders up the mountain to keep a generator running.
     "It's a good thing he spent a lot of his 30 years (in DOT) plowing snow, because he literally risked his life to keep people's television on all damn winter," recalled Stan Carter. "Not many know that, fewer appreciated it."
     His sister, Chris, would some times tag along so she could ski back down.
     Stan Carter said there never was an inkling in the family of his dad's urge to be a cowboy.
     "It's a curious thing about that cowboy business," said Stan Carter, who with his family (including sister Chris) moved to the Omak-Okanogan area after Stan finished the eighth grade (around 1961).
     "Dad was active in the community, he had a circle of close friends with whom he hunted and fished, and they accepted me," said Stan Carter. "Kids went along with their parents with whatever activity they were doing. Never, ever was a horse in the picture.
     "I had not a clue that Dad had an interest in horses or cattle, even a little bit, until we moved to Omak and had a place on Pogue Road with a little place for pasture," he recalled. "Next thing I know, Dad bought a horse for us kids, and for himself.
     "I think he was hoping my sister and I would learn to ride with her," said Stan Carter of the pony. "I never did get comfortable riding. My sister did much better."
     One horse expanded to two, then a couple mares that led to some colts.
     "He had some awful good horses," Stan Carter remembered.
     Homer Carter left the TV district to ride and work cows for Buck Haeberle. Haeberle then sold the herd to Cass Gebbers.
     "He sold me along with them," said Carter.
     "I started helping with the (Haeberle) cattle ranch," said Carter. "I had saddle horses, trailer and a pickup. And I wanted to be a cowboy, so he was kind enough to let me.
     "I enjoyed the work, being out in the jing jangs, you know," he said. "I enjoyed going to the ranch and working the cows and calves and stuff."
     The interest also landed him a position with the sheriff's posse, where he would go on high country pack trips. He also helped with horse activities at the fairgrounds.
     "I've been accused of being a cowboy, but that's about as far as it went," said Carter. "I used to work all those years with Stampede, so that was kind of cowboy related."
     Carter spent many years bringing his "can-do" attitude and calm demeanor to the Omak Stampede Board, where he served as vice president with president "Cactus" Jack Miller.
     "He (Miller) was a great fiend of mine," said Carter, who is in the Omak Stampede Hall of Fame.