In November of 1932, Milton and Juanita Robbs loaded all of their worldly belongings in a covered wagon and with their friend from Texas, Adolphus (Dummy) Grubbs, twenty-three head of cattle and fourteen horses, they left Branson, Colorado, heading south. They went through a tollgate as they left Colorado and paid $1.85 to enter New Mexico.

     The trip was rough and at one time the chuck box fell off the wagon spilling all of their food supply. The vanilla bottle was cracked anyway, so Milt and Dummy drank the vanilla. At one point in the trip, the dirt and wind was blowing so hard that Milt and Dummy built a camp fire and cooked pancakes and passed them up through the wagon cover to Juanita and the children. The pancakes were gritty with sand but they tasted good to the children.

     Toots learned to walk on the open prairie and everyone said that was the reason she was bowlegged. One day Marie fell down and skinned her wrist. It became inflamed so they burned the stickers off a cactus, peeled it and put it on her wrist and soon it was well again.

     At one point in the trip, the family was especially weary and tired and were looking for a place to camp for the night. They found a good place with a stream running through it, fresh water for their tired and thirsty livestock. As soon as they had stopped next to the stream, a man came riding up on his horse. They knew he was probably going to insist that they move along. Milt (always the diplomat) said to the man, “That fellar back down the way, he was your cousin or something, he said that you were a mighty fine man and that you wouldn’t mind if we camped here tonight”. The man replied, “That must have been my brother, Jim. Well, you folks just make yourself at home”.

     The family journeyed on to Nara Visa and there they moved into an old adobe house. At Nara Visa, Floyd started first grade in school. He was only able to attend two and a half months at that school and wasn’t able to attend school for the rest of that year. Floyd started the first grade again at the beginning of the following school year. This put him in the same grade as Marie, and he was not happy about being in the same grade as his younger sister.

     In Nara Visa, some Mexicans stole all of the horses and cattle, leaving Milt and Juanita destitute. They packed up their children and remaining possessions in the covered wagon and, pulled by their only remaining team of horses, they headed south again.

     The family arrived in Hereford, Texas, after eighteen weary days. Stoke and Ellen Robbs lived at Hereford and took the family in for awhile. Stoke was Milt's second cousin (son of J. T., or James Taylor Robbs who had raised Milton after he was six years old) so Milton grew up with Stoke. From Hereford, the family moved on to Sterley, Texas and they lived in an old house about two miles west of Sterley.

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