Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20150228 : vimarsana.com

And some genius said you may know this story. What is this stuff that comes out of the ground in pennsylvania and they were fined into kerosene and kerosene replaced whale oil but by the 1890s when the lightbulb came along and cities were switching rapidly to electric light the oil industry with saying what are we going to do . They have this waste product that they couldnt use that they were dumping in the river at night to get rid of it because it was useless and they had to find a place to put it. Fortunately the automobile came along just in time and save the oil industry. So they use this waste product and refineries. There are lots of stories. They havent been told as usual. The last natural gas as an industry book was published in 1938. So im just having great fun beginning this work which im sure you will enjoy. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. [applause] Richard Rhodes will be outside at the signing desk. The books are still for sale in the Welcome Center so come and buy a and get it personalized. And we will seal on february 19 with kate alcott and a touch of stardust. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] next on booktv, encore booknotes. From 2001 Sandra Day Oconnor talks about her memoir lazy b cowritten with her brother h. Allen day. The books tells the story of three generations of the day family and of growing up on the lazy b. Ranch in arizona. Justice oconnors grandfather set up the lazy b in 1880 and the rats developed and prospered under the care of her parents. Justice oconnor retired from the Supreme Court in 2006 after 25 years of service. Cspan justice Sandra Day Oconnor, why a book about the lazy b . Guest basically, because my brother and i grew up on the lazy b ranch, and it ended up being sold in the late 1980s and it broke my heart. Something that i thought would always be part of me and part of our family and always there for my children and grandchildren and their children was gone, and there wasnt any other way to preserve it, i guess, except to sit down and see if we can write up some of those memories and make it real. Cspan whenwhen did you start writing it . Guest oh, about three years ago. For a long time, it was so painful that the ranch was gone that i couldnt let myself think about it. It would depress me if i did. I dont know if youre like that, but if theres a place that i really loved and cared about, if its gone, im afraid to go back because it might not look the same or be the same and i want it the way i knew it and remembered it. And maybe this book was the only way i could achieve that. Cspan where is it . Guest where is the ranch . Its on the arizonanew mexico border. The ranch was half in each state, along the gila riverto the south side of the gila river and to the top of the peloncillo mountain range. Its a high desert area. Its rather arid and sparse. There are some oak trees and mesquite trees on the higher elevations. And its high desert; its about 5,000 feet high, even on the flat part. But itsit has a fairly decent climate rarely gets below freezing in the winter; it gets fairly hot in the summer, but not unbearably so. Cspan how long did you live on that ranch . Guest well, i live on it from childhood until i went away to school and eventually got married. My brother, who wrote it with me, lived on it always, until it was sold. And my father ran it until his deathlived on it. And it was started in 1880 by his father. So it had been in the family 113 years by the time it was sold. Cspan how big was it . Guest it was very large. It was close to 300 square miles. Thats a large area. But, of course, you have to realize that grass is very sparse in that area. Its not like having that amount of land that is well watered and that produces a lot of grass. It had very little grass. Cspan how much of thatthe actual land did your family own . Did they own all that . Guest nooh, heavens no. It was primarily public land. When my grandfather started it in 1880, that area was part of the new mexico territory. It was in the area acquired by the United States in the gadsden purchase, just before the civil war, and that hahad belonged to mexico. The Southern Pacific Railroad wanted to put a line through from new orleans all the way to los angeles, and the best route went through that area, south of the gila river. And congress eventually aapproved the gadsden purchase. Mr. Gadsden had been sent down to negotiate it. And so in 1880, the land was basically unoccupied, except for the railroad, and if somebody wanted to acquire livestock and put out there and develop water, then it was possible to homestead a certain amount of land around the water that was developed, and the rest of the land could be basically just used. And arizona became a statewhen . In 1914, Something Like that, and at that point coming into the union, the state was given a certain amount of state land and the same with new mexico. New mexico had a certain amount of state land eventually when it was no longer a territory. The federal government kept a large amount of land in arizona and new mexico, and, of course a great deal of the land is owned by indian tribes. So the land that is actually available, in arizona and new mexico anyway, for private ownership is less than 15 percent of the land overall. And what happened in time was that leases were negotiated for the state land with the state of arizona aand new mexicowith the state of new mexico, and the federal lands were administered by the bureau of Land Management under the department of interior. And an elaborate system of provisions for parceling out that federal land evolved over time, initially with the passage of the taylor grazing act. And that required sorting out who got what. In the days when my grandfather went, anyone could put cattle on, and many people did, so there might be joint use of a lot of the land. And after the passage of the taylor grazing act, the objective was to sort out who should be using what part and not have multiple use, at least grazing rights, going to more than one person for a particular acre of land. Cspan youyou say in the book that one of the things you remember most about the ranch is silence. Guest yes. Cspan explain that. Guest yeah. My earliest recollection is of sound, or the absence of sound. I dont know how many people who live in urban areas today are even aware of how much noise is going on around us all the timeall the time, from vehicular traffic or airplanes or the sounds of heating and cooling systems working or of Computer Systems operating or telephones ringing. I mean, theres just a lot of soundor people talking in urban areas. And at the lazy b, there was none of that. There were nowe didnt have electricity for years, so therethere were no motors running, and there was no vehicular traffic to hear. Now the sounds you did hear were of the cattle perhaps walking or mooing, making sounds that cattle make, or occasionally birds, at night the coyotes or the windmills. We had to get our water from deep underground, and in order to power the withdrawal of the water, we used windmills. And when the wind came up, they would turn and they would creek, and you would hear all the sounds of the machinery of the windmill going. And the wells at the ranch by the house were 800 feet deep and suck rods had to go all the way down the 800 feet, and as they moved up and down, you could hear them, and so i got used to that. But now if the wind wasnt blowing and the cattle werent making any noise, there was no sound. None. And its almost a deafening silence. Cspan when was the last time you were on this ranch . Guest well, just before it was sold. I havent been able to go back since it was. Cspan whats there now . Guest its being ranched and in the last few years, its been acquired by apparently a very fine couple from the state of utah. And they dont live there fulltime, but they have fulltime management, and theyre doing a good job of preserving the structures there, im told. Cspan now this is coauthored by your brother, h. Alan day. Guest yes. Yes. Cspan where is he today . Guest he lives in tucson now. Cspan how long did he live on the ranch . Guest until the kekeys were turned over on the last day when it was sold. And i cant even imagine how hard it must have been for alan to get in his car and to drive out all those miles on that dirt road and know that that was his last journey out. Cspan wh. Guest . As a part owner and as manager. Cspan when you were living there, how many cattle on thediddid your father own . Guest well, you know, brian, thats a little like asking how much money did he have in the bank. You dont ask that of a rancher. Cspan you say that in the book. Guest and ranchers dont answer that question. There were a lot of cattle, and the numbers, of course, were controlled byeventually by the permit system from the federal government because they would evaluate the land and the conditions and determine that you could have no more than x number of cattle on a particular part of the land. Cspan why is it that cattle ranchers dont like to admit how many cattle they have . Guest well, because cattle are sold, of course, by the pound, and you know what kind of cattle they are and you know how many there are and you precisely how much theyre worth, and so thats how much money is available, in effect. Cspan you were born in 1930 in el paso. Guest yes. Cspan why el paso . Guest my parents were living at the ranch. My father had taken over management when his father died in order to try to settle the estate, and he never left. And he ended up meeting and marrying my mother, who had the courage to say, `all right, yes lets go live on the ranch. and it was very primitive in those days for her. And when she had her first child, me, she wanted to go to a hospital. Her parents, by then, were living in el paso, texas, so she chose to go to el paso, some 200plus miles away, for my birth. And we returned to the ranch asas quickly as she was able to travel. Cspan whats your first memory of the ranch . How old were you . Guest ii dont even know. My first memory is sounds, sounds of the windmill probably, coyotes at night, the cattle. Cspan what about the characters . Guest oh, the people at the ranch. Living there was like living on an island, you might say. We were away from everything. We had no neighbors close at hand, and there were my parents and the cowboys who helped run the ranch. And in those days, cowboys tended to be single men. They seldom had a wife or family. And a number of the cowboys at the lazy b spent their entire lives there. They really were part of our family, part of the working team. Cspan what was the story of jim brister . Guest well, jim was one of those cowboys, who spent most of his life at the ranch. He came there when he was about 18 years old. He was from oklahoma originally and he was a huge redhead with massive shoulders, strong fellow, and he had married a little woman, who was not 5 tall, named may, and may said that she wasnt more than 13 years old when they got married and he had worked as ain the wild west show. He learned to ride horses early on, and he was quite aquite a skillful rider and a fantastic roper. He could just handle a rope like nobody else. And he worked in the wild west shows that were going around the country. And he and may would follow the wild west shows, and thats what he did. And i think it must have been when movies started, silent films or something, people stopped going to the wild west shows, and then jim started working on different ranches around the country. And, typically, he would ride thethe wild string of horses thethe tough ones that hadnt been broken, and he would basically come onto a ranch and hed break the horses that needed breaking and get them shaped up, and then he might move on to the next ranch after hed worked on the rough string and he came to the lazy b that way. He was still very young. He and may showed up, and he went to work and he never left. Cspan was it jim brisbrister that you told the story about that he gave himself a root canal . Guest he did. Cspan howd he do this . Guest well, he was the toughest man i have ever seen in my life and probably the most coordinated man ive ever seen. And he could stand pain better than anyone ive seen. During the years at the ranchyou cant ride horses all the time and not end up having some broken bones because the horse will fall or you get thrown or something goes wrong. He had all kinds of injuries but he never let it stop him. I dont think he ever missed a day of work, no matter whether it was his collar bone broken or what. And one day he came in and he said he had this heck of a toothache; he just couldnt stand it anymore, just couldnt stand it. Well, we didnt have dentists within 150 miles of the lazy b. And he got a piece of baling wireyou know, the hay that you feed the horses was tied with bailing wire, some kind of steel wire. And wed take that off the hay balesand my father never threw anything away, so he always had some wraps of baling wire around. Andand he got a pretty clean recent piece of baling wire and heated it up on the stove, till it was red hot, and he jabbed it in his tooth where the root thing was rotten. He just put it in there. My brother was standing right there. And you could smell the burning flesh and theiit was unbelievable. And he never winced, and he solved his problem. I mean, i ji dont know how people can be that tough. I really dont. Cspan who was rastice . Guest rastice was another of the wonderful cowboys that lived his whole life at the lazy b. And he had been born and lived in a little town near silver city, new mexico. I think his father probably was aa miner, but his father died when rastice was very young, about five. His mother remarried. His real name was raphael estrada. His mother remarried, and rastice, as he was called, didnt like his stepfather at all, and he ran away when he was seven. And he went down a mountain from silver city and ended up somehow in lordsburg, new mexico. And he asked around town, asking if anybody could use some help; said hed like to work on a ranch or something. And people in lordsburg said `well, you ought to ask at the lazy b. They can probably give you something to do. and he hitched a ride somehow out to the lazy b ranch, and sure enough, they said `yeah you can do some chores if you want to stay here for a while, and he did. And he never left until he died in his late 70s. Cspan but you tell stories about him leaving the ranch because he got mad at your dad. Guest once. Once. Cspan mad at your dad. Guest mad at my father. Cspan and what did you call your father . Guest da. I guess that started when my sister was born. My brother and sister arrived about nine and 10 years after i did. My sister was little, and she was learning her letters and how to spell, and she learned daddy was spelled daddy. So she started calling da, which was short for the spelling of `daddy, and it stuck. Even the cowboys started calling him da. Cspan what about your mom . She also had a nickname. Guest mo, short for mother. So they were mo and da, until they died. Isnt that the greatest. Cspan and you all called them that . Guest we all did, even their friends. It was funny. Cspan soso da and rasticewhat happened . Guest well, they were out one day on a roundup, and if you dont have corrals, you have to hold the herd of cattle together by having people on horseback surrounding them and keeping them all in and preventing them from running off. And anytime youre working the cattle, youre also sorting out ones that you want to keep and ones that you want to sell and ones that need to go here and ones that need to go there. And they were in the process of trying toto match a cow with a calf, and rastice ran out a particular calf that he said belonged to a cow that had already been put out in a herd to be sent somewhere, and he said that was the match and he ran the calf out. And after a while, my father had a conversation with him and said, `rastice, that calf doesnt belong to that cow. Whyd you run that one out . Thatstheyre not a pair. and rastice said, `well, they are, too. Well, i know that calf, and i know that cow, and of course theyre a pair. and my father insisted that that wasnt the case, and rastice grew so angry that he went home that evening and he packed up and he went to duncan and he said, `im through. Im through. If you cant trust what i say around here, im finished with this outfit. and he didnt come back, and we couldnt believe it; that he was gone. And i think a week went by, and he didnt come back, and another week. And we just couldnt stand it because he was part of the family. So, finally, my father went in to duncan to try to locate rastice, and he asked around town and finally found him and had a conversation with him and persuaded him to come back and give the lazy b another try. But my father never challenged anything rastice said again, i can tell you that. Cspan theres also an interesting story about rastice and your father and a colt that your father ended up killing wheni mean, not a colt, but a ca calf. Guest yes. Cspan andand the problem of getting the mother toi dont know what the. Guest to nurse, to accept the calf. Cspan to nurse, yeah. Guest right. Cspan andand how did thewhat was that all about . Were you involved in that yourself . Guest well, i saw him do it a lot of times. Rastice was amazing in his ability to work with the cattle, and we raised our cattle to look aliketo look exactly alike. Cow buyers wanted uniform appearance. And i tell you, i think rastice knew every cow and every calf on the place, the thousands of them. He just wasnt wrong about them and if a mother cow is nursing a calfthe calf is still dependent on the mothers milkif something happens to the calf, the mother cow wont accept other calves that arent hers, usually, and yet her udder will be badly swollen and in need of milking, and she has enough milk to support another calf, but she wont accept one normally. I mean, its something about the inherent nature of the cow. And so there were several occasions actually, although i think i mentioned only one in the book, when a particular calf would have been killed, probably by a coyote. Coyotes would often take small calves and start eating them from the back end forward and kill them. And it left the mother cow without a calf. And we had some dogie calves at the corral the calves whose mothers had been killed or died for some reason, and wed try to raise the little calves. Youd have to feed them milk with a bottle if you didnt have another cow that would take them. And rastice went out and he took the skin that was left from the dead calf that the coyote had killed, and he tied it around one of the dogie calves tied it on, so that the mother cow would smell the skin of her own dead calf and accept it. Cows have very poor eyes; they have terrible eyesight, and cows dont recognize their calves by appearance. They identify them by smell. And so when rastice succeeded in tying the skin on of the dead calf, then the cow got used to this new calf, and gradually he could take the old, dead skin off and she accepted the new calf. But things like that went on a lot. Cspan rastice call you tanny . Was that the one . Guest he did. I guess when i was very small and learning to speak, i tried to pronounce my own name, and it came out as tanny instead of sandra, and so he called me that. Cspan picture on the cover is how old . Guest oh, youim not sure i suppose i was nine or 10 years old when that picture was taken. Cspan whats the name of that horse . Guest chico. And chico was a wonderful horse he was one that came out of a string of wild horses. There were a lot of mustangs in the southwest in those days, horses that were wild and just roamed around, and chico came out of one of those strings. He was a Perfect Little horse, but very small, and that was ideal for a child. And he ended up being the gentlest, kindest, most wonderful horse ive ever known he just was fabulous. And he lived to be a very old age. He died in his mid30s, i think, which for a horse is pretty old. Cspan correct me if im wrong, but there were horses named swastika. Guest mmhmm. Cspan hysterectomy . Guest yes. Cspan hemorrhoid . Guest i know. Cspan and others. Guest terrible names. Cspan where did they come from . Guest well, just whatever some cowboy would think of. My brother really enjoyed working with young horses, and if he had a horse he liked hehed give the horse a very nice name, like candy or hermosa or something pleasant. But we had another oldtime cowboy, who lived at the ranch all his life, named claude, and claude was a believer that it was very dangerous to give a horse a good name; that something bad would go wrong if you did. And so over thethe years, he persuaded my brother that we ought to give the horses some of these lesspleasantsounding names. Cspan heres a picture of when you were 12. Guest yes. Cspan what was life like for you at that age . Guest well, life at that age meant having to go away to school, and that was a very painful time for me, actually. Its hard for ranch families who have children because when its time for a child to go to school, many ranchers send their wives into town to rent or buy a house and to live with the children during the school year, and that means thethe husband and wife are separated. And my father and mother were really deeply in love with each other, and they didnt want to be separated. They didnt want to do that. And so my mothers parents were living in el paso, and my grandmother wilke in el paso was very young for a grandmother. She had married at age 16 herself. She was very young, had plenty of energy. And she said she would just be delighted to keep me in el paso for school, and so that was the arrangement that was made. And i went away to school. I would come home at christmas and over easter break and in the summers, but other than that, i was staying in el paso. And that was all right, except i was homesick. I really loved the ranch and loved being with my parents, and i didnt want to be away. So i remember those years with considerable pain, actually. Cspan what was it like when you found out that your mother had been married before . Guest well, i was very shocked. Cspan what year was that . Guest oh, i dont remember. I was a student in el paso, and i remember one of the children i knew saying, `i know something about you. `no, you dont. `yes, i do. I know something about you and your mother. `no, you dont. What is it . `well, your mother was married before. She had another husband. and i said, `oh, thats not true. I know youre wrong. and when i went home to my grandmothers that evening, i asked her about it. I said, `now somebody at school told me that mo had been married before. Thats not true. and my grandmother said, `well actually, it is. Sheshe had a brief marriage before she met and married your father. and i guess that was something that, in those days, divorce wasnt encouraged and probably looked down upon a little bit, i dont know. Anyway, it had never been mentioned to me, and i was very shocked. Cspan did you talk to your mom about it . Guest finally, i did. And she couldnt believe that i had heard that, but she said `well, yes, its true. Now thats that. Lets go on. cspan the picture in the book of you when you were 16 years old, if i read it right, you went to stanford that year. Guest i did, yes. Cspan and graduated from law school by the time you werewhat . 20 . Guest i wasno, i was close to 22 when i was. Cspan twentytwo . Guest . Out of law school. Cspan howhow long did it take you to get out of stanford . Guest well, i finished my major in three years, but i needed some additional credits to count for the undergraduate degree. And i applied to the law school for Early Admission at the law school, and to my great surprise, they took me. So my first year of law school counted as credits for my undergraduate degree, and so then i had two additional years of law school. Cspan what were you like when you were 16 . Guest ignorant and naive. Cspan about what . Guest well, about what life for a woman lawyer might be like, for one thing. It never occurred to me that there werent women lawyers out there and that it might be hard to get a job as one. I never thought about that. Cspan you know, i kept thinking when i read the book that your life here at the Supreme Court might bethat your life on the ranch might even be a metaphor for what you have at the Supreme Court because you wereyou and your mother were surrounded by all men. Guest right. Cspan what did you learn by being surrounded by all men . Guest well, i learned that women could do all right and be accepted if they could do the job. I guess thats why i assumed when i went to law school that i wouldnt have any trouble getting a job. Cspan you s. Guest . But i did. Cspan youyou tell us that your mother took the la times at home and she read the new yorker, and you had conversationsand your father read. Guest yes. Cspan . All the time books. Guest and they bought books constantly, kept a library. And when they ran out of space they would sometimes give some books to the local library. And they were both readers. And they loved to subscribe to magazinestime and the saturday evening post and the National Geographic and so on andwe only went to town once a week, and wed get the mail and get the groceries. And when wed came back with the mail, thered be a big battle in the family about who got which magazine first because we were kind of starved for news, and we loved to Read Everything we could put our hands on. So there was a big race for the mail to see who got what first. Cspan when did you have Television First . Guest oh, goodness, it was probably after i was out of college. We got elecwe had an electric generator by the time i was in college, and that ran on some kind of natural gas. And my father could start it up at night and run it for a while at night, and wed have lights in the evening. But then the rea, the Rural Electrification act, had been passed during the Franklin Roosevelt administration, and the whole purpose of that was to try to bring electricity to rural areas that didnt have it and in those days, there were many rural areas in america that didnt have electricity. And while electricity did come then to the duncan valley and to verden and to lordsburg, it did not come out to the ranches. And my father made some arrangement with the local rea that he would build the line put the poles inin to their specifications and string the wire to their specs, if he could get hooked up. And when i was away at stanford, i think, we finally got hooked up with the rea. And that was very helpful because, at that point, it was possible then to eventually put an electric pump down in the wells and get our water pumped out with that electric energy. And my mother could have a refrigerator in the kitchen and run aaa vacuum cleaner and a washing machine and all those things that hadnt been easy to do before. Cspan how much education did your father have . Guest he never went to college. He went to high school in pasadena. His father had found someone to manage the ranch, eventually and the family had moved to pasadena. Cspan pasadenawhat state . Guest california. Cspan california. Guest and my father went through high school in pasadena and he had wanted to go to stanford, and it was at the time of world war i, and two things happened. My father was drafted briefly before the end of world war i, although he never saw military action because it ended. And his father died. And my father was sent out to the ranch to try to keep the lid on things. Cspan how much education. Guest . While the estate was settled. Cspan im sorry. How much education did your mother have . Guest my mother had a degree from the university of arizona and she had taught school, grade school, i think, for a while in el paso. Cspan so when did yougiven that atmosphere at that ranch and all the newspapers and magazines coming out, when did you begin to form your own views, strong views about life and what you believed. Guest oh, not till i went off to stanford, i suppose. I mean, i read a lot of things but i dont think that i had a cohesive philosophy of life at that point. I was basically very uneducated, and i went to high school, as you know, in el paso. And in those days, it wasnt fashionable to get good grades so i did have good grades, but i tried not to have anybody know about it. And i dont think i learned much. And when i went off to stanford, i was really astounded at the depth of knowledge of my classmates, and many of them were, really, remarkably welleducated compared to me. And i just thought i was very deficient, and im sure i was. Cspan if i read it right, this year is the 50th anniversary of your marriage to john oconnor. Guest yes, thats right. Cspan and you tell a story in this book about thatyou know im going to ask you about this story. Guest yes. Cspan you tell a story in this book. Guest oh, i know. Cspan . About the first time that you brought him to the ranch. Guest yes. Cspan what happened . Guest well, itit was funny. John grew up in san francisco. He was a city boy. He knew nothing about ranch life. I mean, that had justhe had never lived in the country. And i was a little concerned about having him get along well with my family, since he knew so little about ranch life. And i didnt know whether hed be accepted by the cowboys either. I didnt know if he could ride a horse well or, you know, anything. So we made a trip out to the ranch and drove out to the ranch and drove up one afternoon. You could see the dust cloud way off. They knew we were coming because you can see the car dust for five miles out. And we got up to the house, and my mother, of course, rushed out of the door to greet us and be so happy to see us and to see john. And i said, `well, wheres da . and she said, `well, he and the men are down in the corral branding some calves. Maybe youd better go down there and tell him hello. so after a while, john and i walked down to the corrals, and there was a lot of activity down there. They were branding that day right at the headquarters and had some cattle in the corrals. And there was a lot of dust and swirling around and bawling of the cattle. And they had a branding fire in the middle of one of the corrals. And i knew that my father knew we were there. He had seen the car coming, and he knew we were there, but he never looked over and acknowledged us. And then, finally, he kind of reached up and touched the brim of his hat. And thats kind of the universal sign out in that part of the country that, `yeah, i know youre there. so, finally, he said `come on over. This must be john. and so he stuck out his hand and, of course, it was the hand of a working man. It was tough. You shook his hand, it was a little like shaking hands with Justice Byron white. You knew youd had a handshake. And it was dirty because hed been branding and probably a lot of blood all over it and no telling what else. And so he said, `glad to meet you, john. and then my father went over to the fence, and he pulled down a piece of baling wire, and he straightened it out and he put two or three strands together and made whatyou know, a skewer about this long. And there was a bucket down near where they were branding the calves, where the cowboys who were castrating the bull calves just threw the testicles. I mean, they just cut them off and threw them in the bucket. And my father reached down in the bucket, and he pulled a couple out, and he took his pocketknife out of his pocket and trimmed them up a little bit. I mean, they were just a bloody, dirty mess down there. And he stuck some on this skewer that hed made, and he put it in the branding fire and cooked the things down in the branding fire for a while. And then after he thought they were done, he pulled a skewer out and held it out to john. `here, john, try these. and i think john was pretty astonished. I would have been. But he was great. He plucked them off the end of this baling wire skewer and popped them in his mouth and chewed them up and sort of swallowed hard and said, `oh very good, mr. Day. cspan now was your father testing him . Guest oh, he diwell, of course. Cspan hashas your husband, john oconnor, had any Mountain Oysters since that day . Guest oh, we used to have more than our share, im afraid that was one of the things that cattlemen sort of thought were a delicacy. And, actually, my mother knew how to prepare them and cook them, and they werent too bad. You know, when i grew up everything was deep fried. You deep fried the steak. You could have a perfectly good tbone steak, and any cowboy worth his salt would want it chicken fried. And you fried the chicken, too and fried the bacon and fried the eggs and fried everything. And so you fried the Mountain Oysters, too, dipped in a little milk and egg and bread crumbs, and they werent too bad served with some cocktail sauce. Cspan now you have had three sons, brian, scott and jay. Guest yes. Cspan how old are they, and where are they . Guest oh, theyre pretty old now. Theyre all in theirthe youngest is about to become 40. And the oldest and the middle son live in the phoenix area scott and brian. And our son, jay, the youngest lives in palo alto. He went to stanford. Cspan what kind of work do they do . Guest well, scott and brian are both in real estaterelated ventures. And jay is in the dotcom world, still hanging on. Cspan now da, your father, and mo, your mother, were here when you were sworn in to this court. Guest they were in the court on the day i was sworn in, in september of 1981. Cspan did they understand it . Did they know what you were about to do . Guest oh, of course they did. Cspan and what did they think about it . Guest well, they were thrilled, as parents, of course, would be. And what it meant for them was that the minute it was announced that i was nominated, everyone they had ever known contacted them to tell them how excited they were and to talk to my parents. And so here are these two, who had lived that life for so many years on that isolated ranchwere in contact with the world. And reporters came out to the ranch and wanted to talk to them and take their photographs, and the world came to their door. And it must have been interesting for them, really, to have all of that communication at that late stage in their lives. I know it was fun for them. And it was a great thrill when they came back here and sat in that courtroom. Cspan how many years did they get to see you in theon the court . Guest well, i went on the court in 1981. My father died, i think, in 86i cantSomething Like that. And my mother lived another five years. Cspan which one are you like the most your mother or your father . Guest oh, hard to say. Probably my father. Cspan because . Guest a curiosity about how things work. His nature was to want to know how everything worked, and he liked people. He liked people, regardless of background or wealth or status high or low. If they were interesting people to talk to, he liked to talk to them. And i think i share some of that, actually. He wanted to go to stanford and never had a chance, and probably thats why that was the only university i wanted to go to. I dont know that thats the case, but were often influenced by things we dont understand. Thats probably the case. Cspan therestheres a quote from him in the book. If you want something done, do it yourself. Guest he was a strong believer in that. He thought he knew how to do things at the lazy b. And if he wanted it done right he would do it himself. Cspan who do you want to read this book . Guest first and foremost, i will be happy that family and friends and people whove known about the life that we lived out there will have a chance to see it, and people who have never experienced life in isolation or in the southwest may be able to read it and have some feeling of how it looks, how it smells, how it sounds, how it feels. I thought my upbringing was perfectly normal at the time but, of course, looking back, i know that it wasnt. And it was a special way of life and a way of life that is largely gone these days. Youyou dont find those old cowboys who spend a lifetime on a ranch anymore. Cspan now how did you and your brother alan go about doing this book . Guest well, first, we had to agree we were going to, and i was worried that i didnt know how wed have the time, how i would have the time. And i had alan sit down and try to put down on paper things that he particularly remembered, and i tried to do the same. And we spent several days together about three years ago in the summer up in a little cabin we have out at prescott arizona, and we just talked about the things that we thought ought to be included. And we agreed that it needed to tell the history of the ranch, it needed to describe it in ways that people could experience it, and we needed to talk about our parents and the cowboys and the cattle and the horses and what goes on, what its like, whats ranch life all about, and probably end up trying to describe what we think the future of public lands ought to be and how it ought to be. Cspan how did you get random house to buy the book . Guest well, i didntwe didnt have an agent, and i had talked to jim and kate lehrer. Jim writes books all the time, and i asked him one time, `how in the world can you be so busy and write those books, one right after another . and he said, `well, i try to write at least two pages every day of my life. and i said, `how can you do that . he said, `well, if im on an airplane, i do it on the airplane. If im at home, i do it there. If im at my office, i do it there. and he said, `you can do that. You cananybody can squeeze out time to do that. and i took that to heart. And then i talked to kate. Kate has also published two or three books. And i said, `well, kate, who have you used as an editor . Whowhowhat do youdo you recommend somebody . and she said, `yes, theres this woman at random house that i think youd like. Why dont you call her . and i did. And it was kate medina. And she came to visit me, and we talked about the possibilities. And, frankly, i wasnt sure that it would work. I wasnt sure that what emerged would be of sufficient quality that i would be proud of it. Ii just didnt know what i was getting into. And kate medina was very kind and very patient, and i didnt want an advance because if i didnt like it, i didnt want anything to do with it. I wanted to see it before i knew that i wanted to go forward with this. I mean, if you put your name on something, you want to think `well, maybe its ok. and i was very concerned about that. But she was lovely to work with and encouraging, and so we just plugged along over a period of time, and wed share things. And we got along perfectly in terms of what we wanted to do and cover. And we had only one area of substantive disagreement, and that was about how we should characterize our father. Alan never left the ranch. I mean, he went to the university of arizona, and when he married, he came back to the ranch and worked there. And i think sometimes its very hard for a father and a son to Work Together in the same business. My father thought that he knew how things ought to be done and that his way was the right way. And my brother, like many young people, sometimes thought he could see a better way and a different way, and that didnt sit well with my father. And so they had clashes over that, sometimes serious ones. My father had spent his whole life trying to get a uniform beautiful bunch of hereford cattle that were pole. That means that theyre born without horns. He didnt like having to dehorn the cattle. And my brother thought that barzona cattle would be better and wanted to make that change. And cant you imagine how hard that would be for the two of them to work out . And it was. And other areas of disagreement, too. So my relations with my father were entirely different. We never clashed over things because i wasnt working for him or trying to run things. Cspan at the end of the acknowledgements, you say, `in a few instances, names have been changed to protect surviving relatives of those mentioned. guest yes. Cspan can you give us an idea where they were changed . Guest well, id rather not. But there are a few descriptions of people that arent very flattering, as you might imagine, and i didnt want to use correct names, in some instances. Cspan how much of a tour are you going to do to promote your book . Guest oh, very little, if any. Cspan and do you intend, at any point, to do an autobiography where you go into mattersi mean, youyou drop us off at the time you get into politics. Guest yes, yes. Cspan . Andand theres nothing more. Do you ever intend to do a second book . Guest well, actually, i am working now on a book, but its a book about substantive things, some ofof the history of this court, a bit about the writing of the constitution and the bill of rights and segments on some of the justices whove served the court in the past and just other substantive areas. Ive been herethis is my 21st year now, and ive had to give a number of speeches through the years. And the best thing for a justice to talk about probably is something historical, and ive tended to do that. And maybe its my naivety again, but i think there may be some things in there that might be of interest. And so im drawing on that wealth of research and material to try to put something together. Cspan on a daytoday basis in this institution, how often do you find yourself doing something because of what you did back there in thein the ranch days . Guest well, i cant put my finger on it. I guess growing up on a ranch gives you a certain amount of selfconfidence in your ability to work things out and not be afraid to tackle something. You learn out there very much how you cant call somebody in to repair anything. Experience was such that would immediately suggest i could. Ive never been a federal court judge. So maybe i leaned a little bit on that experience as a ranch girl. You were a private law practitioner out in phoenix . Yes. You were in the state senate there. Yes. Majority leader at one point. Yes. You were a superior court judge. Yes. And an assistant attorney general at one time. And i was on the trial court bench and thrt o and. Men it is such an interesting job of course,. Top privilege. We are to serve here to have the most interesting legal issues of our time come to this court. To work with a group of colleagues better so dedicated and intelligence and competent and everybody on t