Hoist a Root Beer for Family of Yucca Cutters

Milton Blair uses a chainsaw to cut a yucca tree on Mojave Desert leased land. Watching are two of his daughters, five sons. (Ben Olender / Los Angeles Times)

By CHARLES HILLINGER
Los Angeles Times

HACKBERRY MOUNTAIN, Calif. -- Next time you have a root beer, think of Milton Blair and 10 of his 14 kids.

The Blairs harvest 14 tons of yucca trees each week on land leased from the Southern Pacific Railroad on the Mojave Desert in eastern San Bernardino County. Root beer foam comes from the sap of the thorny desert tree.

"Harvesting Spanish daggers (yucca trees) is dirty, hard, nasty work," said Blair, 50, as he revved up a chain saw to cut a yucca.
Blair is blind in his left eye. Four years ago a yucca spine punctured his eye.

Blair and his oldest son, Milton Jr., 26, cut the trees and strip the trunks of the dangerous spikes. The rest of the family hoists the heavy yucca sections into a truck.

"This is the best time of the year to cut daggers," said Melissa Blair, 17, her mouth bulging with a plug of chewing tobacco.

Occupational Nuisances

"In summer we're wringing wet with sweat from sunup to sundown. Ants crawl up our bodies and bite. We get stuck with daggers and cactus. We gulp gallons of ice water," she said.

The Blairs sell the yucca to Ritter International, a Los Angeles firm, where it is processed for scores of uses including foam for root beer, an additive to carbonated beverages, shampoos, cosmetics and industrial deodorants. Yucca foam has been used for snow scenes in television and motion pictures. It was used by the Navy during World War II to smother fires.

Don Emery, botanist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, noted: "The yucca is a renewable resource just as a tree in a forest, providing it is properly harvested as the Blairs are doing." Even though the Blairs are harvesting the desert trees on private railroad land they are still required to have government permits and must cut the yucca in a prescribed manner.

The family divides its time harvesting yucca and running 200 head of cattle on their Lazy Daisy Ranch 450,000 acres of dry desert terrain leased from the railroad, the federal and state governments.

They live 14 miles by miserable dirt road from their nearest neighbor in a home without electricity, phone, or television. Kerosene lamps furnish their light.

"My wife is secretary and bookkeeper of the outfit. I ain't worth a damn at that," Blair said.

There are 10 boys and 4 girls in the family: Milton Jr., 26. Joe, 24, Mary, 22, Susie, 21. Eddie, 19, Melissa, 17. Luke, 16, Dan, 14, Annie, 12, Austin, 9, Mark, 8, Johnny, 6, Mike 4, and Matt, 2. The Blairs have a three-bedroom home and bunkhouse. They use the work stove for cooking and warmth.

"The real chore is keeping track of our cows. They're scattered all over hell and gone," said Joe Blair. "We lost 25 head last year to spot-lighters." Members of "varmint clubs" drive out to the desert in pickup trucks and armed with high-powered rifles. "They use spotlights on their pickups to look for coyotes, bobcat and fox. They see an eye and WHAM! They shoot. Twenty-five pairs of those eyes last year belonged to our cows," Joe Blair said.

The biggest excitement of the week for the Blairs is the 40-mile drive into town (Needles) every Saturday. "My wife and two of the girls spend a couple hours at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and a couple hours shopping. The rest of us wait for them at the Hungry Bear Cafe," Blair said. "We sit and drink coffee waiting for the women. Then we hop back into the pickup and head for the ranch."

'Desert Padre' Author Putnam Dies at Trona

January 6, 1950

The Ridgecrest Herald
Ridgecrest CA

Amelia Earhart and George Putnam made an unusual husband-and-wife team.





Major George Palmer Putnam, author, lecturer, explorer and a veteran of World Wars I and II, died at Trona hospital Wednesday at 6:05 a.m.

A resident of Lone Pine since 1939, Major Putnam had been owner and operator of Stove Pipe Well hotel in Death Valley.

He was 63 years of age.

Although direct cause of death was not revealed, it is known that Major Putnam had been suffering internal hemorrhages since Sunday, Nov. 27, when he was taken to the hospital at Trona. Late last week uremic poinsoning set in, it was reported Tuesday, after announcement had been made Monday evening that it was doubtful he would survive the night.

He had been in a coma since before noon on Monday.

His widow, Mrs. Margaret Haviland Putnam, told a Chalfant Press representative Tuesday that just last week Major Putnam had dressed himself and had gone for a short automobile ride. The relapse occurred this Monday.

Two sons, David Binney Putnam and George Palmer Putnam, III, residents of Fort Pierce, Fla., had been advised Monday of the turn for the worse, but failed to arrive before their father’s death. They were due at Metropolitan airport in Los Angeles Wednesday evening.

As a former member of the New York publishing house, George Palmer Putnam and Sons, Major Putnam negotiated with Charles A. Lindberg for publishing rights to the famous aviator’s book “We.” Above his desk at Stove Pipe Wells hotel is displayed a cancelled check to Lindberg in the
amount of $100,000 for the book.

A colorful figure, with a career of exploring and backing history-making aviation events, especially those of his wife, the celebrated Amelia Earhart–Putnam was born in Rye, N. Y. and educated at private schools in New York state, at Harvard and the University of California.

He married Miss Earhart, his second wife, in February, 1931 – backed her many flying accomplishments and guided her to world fame that reached a tragic climax when she was lost in 1937 in a flight from Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island.

For many years Putnam held faith that his wife would be found alive, but she was declared legally dead in January, 1939.

As an explorer, Putnam had several notable Arctic expeditions to his credit and was associated with such exploits as Adm. Byrd’s North and South Pole expeditions, Sir Hubert Wilkins flights and the exploration and publishing activities of Roy Chapman Andrews, William Beebe, Rockwell
Kent, etc.

He was born into the century-old publishing house of G. P. Putnam’s Sons and once headed the concern, giving up its direction in 1931.

In 1939 he was kidnapped from his North Hollywood home and found bound and gagged some hours later in an uncompleted Bakersfield home.

He told police two men had tried to make him disclose the author of a book, “The Man Who Killed Hitler,” which he was publishing at the time. He was unhurt.

A prolific writer, as well as a publisher, he was the author of “Smiting the Rock,” “In the Oregon Country,” “The Southland of North America,” “Andree, the Record on a Tragic Adventure,” “Soaring Wings, the Biography of Amelia Earhart,” “Wide Margins,” and autobiography, “Duration,” a World
War II book of life in Washington; “Death Valley and its Country,: and numerous other volumes. His latest book, “Hickory Shirt” was a novel of Death Valley in 1849.

Putnam served in both wars, as a lieutenant of field artillery in World War I and as a major of intelligence with a Superfortress outfit in World War II. He saw considerable service in the China theatre.

After coming to the Owens Valley he purchased the stone cabin at the Whitney Portal owned by the late Father John Crowley, beloved padre of the desert. For years he wrote a column of observations for Chalfant Press newspapers entitle “Shangri-Putnam by GPP.”

He had several other books ready for publication, one of which deals with Owens Valley and its struggle for water.

His first wife was Dorothy Binney Putnam. They were married in 1911 and divorced in 1928. Both his sons were born of this union. Putnam was married twice after Miss Earhart was declared dead. In 1939 he married Jean-Marie Consigny, author of “Gardening for Fun,” “Who’s Who in the
Garden,” and other books.