UNCLE CHICK, ME And THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Looking back at Charles Orme’s ranch school, where students are still taught to this day.

- JEB J. ROSE BROOK

The aging Chevrolet Carryall van turned off the Old Black Canyon Highway at Poland Junction between Mayer and Humboldt, Arizona, and began to follow the narrow, winding, muddy road up to the snowy Bradshaw Mountains.

Charles Henry Orme, a powerfully built man, nearing 53, was driving. A small passenger bounced along in the front seat beside him. The year was 1945, and I was 10 years old. It was the first Christmas I had ever been away from my family. The man I would always know as "Uncle Chick" was taking me with him on a very special trip-to bring back a Christmas tree.

I was an asthmatic and had been sent West on doctor's orders with my mother from our family home outside of Stamford, Connecticut. Late at night, as the Santa Fe Chief pulled into the Ash Fork rail station, my mother and I saw the silhouette of a tall man wearing a cowboy hat. He was "Mr. Orme" to me that night and later Uncle Chick.

With his wife "Aunt Minna,” he founded the Quarter Circle V-Bar Ranch School in 1929. A small group of boys and girls came not only to attend the school but to share in the responsibilities of the working ranch as well. When I first arrived that February, fresh from the fourth grade, there were 10 of us. We were taught by one teacher in an adobe schoolhouse.