Loving, New Mexico

Description: Depot track side and end view with baggage carts in fore ground and box car in back ground.

Loving Memories of Cal Taylor

My father was depot agent in Loving from 1928 - about 1950. I have been in that depot a few thousand times. In the photo, to the right of the depot and distance is a building that was a general store, facing east. The building was on a street corner (now 3rd st?). The south side is barely visible in the photo. The building was ?L? shaped, with residence attached at the northwest corner, running north. Cheap construction, but nice floor plan. The building was demolished about 1933-35, and yet may be a vacant lot. So, the photo will predate the demolition of the general store. The boxcars to left of the depot may be awaiting movement to the right, behind the depot, and to the right of the photo. There was platform there upon which cotton bales were gathered in preparation for shipment. There was a huge cotton mill and gin to the left out of the picture, and after the date of this picture there was a second gin built north three or four blocks north of the general store. This depot also processed all the potash shipped from the new US Mine east of the Pecos River. There was a spur to the refinery, about ten miles. The depot entry door at the far left end of the photo was into a waiting room which had another entry on the opposite side, but it seldom was unlocked. The offices were in the center of the depot, and the freight room at the right. In our early years there was cistern a little to the right of the lower right corner of the photo. The AT&SF would bring us good water in a tank car.to fill the cistern. Then, with a bucket, hand over hand, my father would lift the water, fill a 50 gallon barrel he had mounted on a sled, and pulled it behind the car to beside our RR house 200 yards south. Then, one bucket at a time we carried it into the house as we needed it. I had thirds ... on bath water each Saturday night. First was Dad, then Mom, then me. The depot at times had several employees, and several shifts, but in the final days it was down to one, my father the agent. He also was the telegrapher. When he started railroading he was the youngest telegrapher for AT&SF. Some years after he retired the depot was moved to _______.

Memories of Cal Taylor not copyrighted.