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By Georgie Wood ggannwood@yahoo.com
Because I have often been asked how I got involved in writing my short “Georgie Digs” articles, I will try to explain how and why in this article.
To begin with, I had done lots of research into family history and history of Aravaipa Creek where I had lived most of my life, and I had obtained lots of stories from my husband Clifford Wood who had become a rancher in the Aravaipa country after having arrived there as a young boy.
Consequently, in 1995 I started my manuscript “A Creekside Story” of which I am working on its last rendition – hopefully, its last!
When Rita Hazzard was the Editor of the Copper Country News, the weekly newspaper out of Globe that is still distributed to numerous areas, and after Ted Lake, who was then a reporter for that paper, had written an article in June of 2009 about Crystal Cave that was located southeast of Winkelman, I let Ted Lake know what my husband Cliff had remembered about Cliff’s exploration of Crystal Cave in the 1930’s.
Although Ted Lake and I had corresponded, I never had the pleasure of meeting the one who arranged for the Copper Country News to publish a few of my stories about when my husband’s Wood family had lived circa 1919 at El Capitan on the east side of the Pinal Mountains in Gila County before finally settling along Aravaipa Creek.
Ted Lake has been a Staff Writer for Globe’s weekly Arizona Silver Belt newspaper for quite a while.
The “Georgie Digs” title of my articles came about from a caricature of me that I had obtained during a visit to Disneyland or Knotts Berry Farm in California. I don’t remember which, but I must have told the artist who had drawn the caricature that I liked to do something with rocks, because the caricature portrayed me using a trowel on top of a pile of rocks.
I have made some pretty good rock walls – when I was younger! To a person with a crazy imagination like I have, it could portray Georgie “digging up” information (or dirt?) for my short articles.
Since May 5, 2010, Editor in Chief Jennifer Carnes has published my articles in the weekly Copper Basin News whose Publisher is James Carnes and General Manager is Michael Carnes.
It is just one of the publications the Carnes family has, and a very interesting story written by Rosalind Padilla was published on January 6, 2010 , and it was about the Carnes and their long-time family history in the publishing business.
Besides buying the newspaper, I am a subscriber to their website (CopperArea.com) for the modest monthly cost of $2.00, which is a good way for people to stay in touch with what is going on in what is referred to as the Copper Corridor which starts at Superior and proceeds south through Kearny, Hayden, Winkelman, Dudleyville, Aravaipa, Mammoth, San Manuel, Oracle, and ends at Oracle Junction.
There is lots of history in each of those areas, and I really wish that the other “old timers” who are still with us will come forward with stories of what they remember.
Did you notice I said “other old timers”? There is a saying I can relate to – in every old person there is a younger person wanting to know what happened.
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