Kay Keating Show Segment

A look at the mountains.

Kay Keating, Owner of the KK Ranch and Carriage Museum in Beulah, Colorado.

A: My name is Kay Keating.

Q: And where are we?

A: We're in Beulah, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about your, how did you get involved in refurbishing carriages and this sort of thing?

A: Well, when I was a youngster growing up around here, we still used horses and buggies and teams in the fields and I learned to drive a team when I was a youngster and I always thought that was the most power you could ever have in the world, so when I retired and came back to Beulah to live, I decided I had to have a horse and carriage but I couldn't find any carriages that weren't basket cases cause everybody had stowed them in the tops of their barns and they sat up there and rotted away and thought that "Well if I'm going to have one, I'm going to have to refurbish it." So, it turned out to be a pretty extraordinarily large job but I had a sixteen volume set of "How To" and that's where I found most of my information.

Q: Which was the first carriage that you refurbished?

A: The first one that I refurbished was the one pretty much like this one only this one's a little bit newer and it was quite an extraordinary job because I had to feed the wood with lint seed or oil in order to get it back into shape so you could take a spoke shave and scrape of all the crud from 100 years and also you had to make sure that the wood was sound and then there were a lot of metal parts that I had to get all the rust out of and I certainly was having a difficult time of that because all I was using was a little wire brush on the end of a drill and so somebody came along and says, "Well you dummy why don't you take all those parts and put them on a piece of cardboard and take them down and let them sandblast them at the roofing place." So I did but I carefully numbered them all and of course, the blasting took all the numbers off. So then I didn't know where the parts went but fortunately I had a 1902 Sears Roebuck catalogue that had old pictures and all the names so I was able to put it back together again.

Q: After that, can you tell us a little bit about each of the things that you have acquired including your sleds.

A: Well, I began acquiring them because once I got mine and got on the road and started driving with it, well people got very interested and so I thought, "Well, we ought to form a club or something." So then I started looking around for some others and there was one local news station who picked up on it and did a little four minute trailer on the news one night about it and all of a sudden I had all kinds of people who were coming out and even had one old man say he'd come and help me do the restoration if I could keep him. I sort of declined but anyway, I had no trouble finding people who were interested and pretty soon we began having driving programs for, we'd take an afternoon and a picnic and everybody would get in their carriages and their horses and we'd drive somewhere and then we started having some competitions and things like that, and then once I got a hold of a really nice, large surrey with a front and a back seat, then I started doing weddings because I had a beautiful team of white, very matched horses. And before the horses gave out, I did 102 weddings and we hauled them everywhere because an ordinary carriage, even a two seater, can be placed in the back of a standard pickup truck and then you just put your horses in a trailer behind so you can go wherever the wedding is and I did them all around these parts. Within 100 miles I think I did weddings and I used teenage boys for my Footmen who could help the bride and groom in the carriage and also ride as a shotgun or safety man in case we got into trouble. And I myself would put on a black derby and a black mustache and old granny glasses and look like a hack driver. Most people were surprised when they found out that it was a woman driving it.

Q: What about the Wells Fargo Wagon.

A: Well I bought that at an, I saw it advertised in an auction that was coming up in California so I flew out to California and went up to Plasserville where it was, the auction was being held and they had several different vehicles there that day but I decided I wanted the open Wells Fargo Stage and fortunately when I ended up being the one who bid the highest and got it, the minute it was sold, this gentleman stepped out of the crowd and introduced himself as the Wells Fargo Historian and he said, "I'm prepared to provide you with all the history of this vehicle so give me your name and your address because we like to keep track of where our vehicles are." And so, he said, "But we do want to know how you're going to use it." And I said, "Well, you know, I run a bed and breakfast in Colorado and a lot of times I like to take my guests for a ride." And so I said, "I'm going to drive it." Well everybody looked at all the snow on my roof and they said, "Aaaahhh." Like that and the Historian said, "Don't laugh." He said, "The driver who does 100 shows a year for us ever since 1947 is a woman by the name of Virginia Fellingham." And he says, "She's still doing shows for us." I never had the chance to meet her but I sure would like to.

Q: Now we went on a ride today, where did we go?

A: We took you up into the Pueblo Mountain Park and this is beautiful valley that's just like a tea cup. There's only three roads that come in here and you're just sitting right down and the mountains completely encircle you. So it's a really lovely place and we just put two of my favorite mules on it. If we were going any higher or on steeper roads, we'd have to put the other two mules on there. I do have four mules and but we spared you all that extra harnessing and I hope you enjoyed your ride.

Q: Oh yes. How about the sleighs? You have winter time riding too.

A: Oh yes and I'm right next to the Mountain Park and, of course, they try to save the snow for recreation so they don't plow the park out, they drag it and so I can go right out my gate and sleigh all over that park and sometimes we have as many as five sleighs on the road at a time and the thing about driving a horse with a sleigh, if your horse is well trained, anybody can drive him. You just, cause the sleigh is so easy to maneuver and you aren't liable to turn it over like you are a buggy. If you turn too sharp in the buggy you can tip it over right now. So you have to have a little finesse for that but anybody can drive a sleigh and so I just put a good gentle horse on the sleigh and hand you the reins and there you go.

Q: What about this group of buildings we have over here?

A: Well, this all came about like topsy. It just grew. When I bought this place it was an old homestead founded in 1870's but I only had that barn where the hay is stored and so I had been living in another place before I bought this and so I had to have a carriage house right away because I had three or four vehicles so I built this barn and this is built with logs in the front so it looks like a log barn but the sides are kind of fake. But another lady and I built this barn and I'll tell you what made it a success. When we decided we were going up on the mountain and cut the logs for it and build it, her husband said, "There's no way." BINGO, we did it.

Q: So you have your barn here but now over here we see things like the Broom Closet.

A: Well, what we did there, that was an overflow. First I build this one, the carriage house and then I had to have a blacksmith shop so I built that one over there and then that was turning out more than this building would hold so I had to build an overflow and all of a sudden I had four barns facing each other and I thought, "Well why don't we make a town." So we just built a bunch of false fronts on there and most of those doors don't go through. Just the ones on the end. But inside we've got a large space with a very good cement floor so we can store things in there or we can have parties there and we have a lot of square dances in there and wedding receptions and all kinds of things and we just called it Tumbleweed Town.

Q: As a carriage museum you must get a lot of calls for use of your carriages.

A: Oh we really do. Any time a historic event comes along, for example, when Westcliffe celebrated their 100th anniversary, we took a stagecoach and a couple of carriages up there and then the townspeople who were on the committee were dressed in vintage clothing and it was, made it a real nice parade. We do a lot of things for the state fair and course the art center likes to get a couple of sleighs at winter time. For Christmas they fill them with toys or whatever and make displays. And just any kind of event.

Q: I understand you've been working, your carriages also appear in movies.

A: Yes. The movie companies seem to follow wherever any vehicle is sold and moves, they know where it's gone and they'll call up and say, "We're over here at Moffitt and we're trying to make a movie about, and we need an open stage and we understand you have one." That happened to me and I'd only had it home two days. So I said to him, "How do you know I have this carriage, or this stage?" And the guy says, "We follow all the auctions and we know who has what, where, so we don't have to look for it." So, because of that, I've been involved in making five different movies and it's been very interesting.

Q: Now you're retired.

A: Yes, I spent 30 years in the Navy and I retired and came back to my roots. I came from these parts but not this particular ranch and I decided that if I was going to turn into an antique I'd surround myself with them.

Q: But you run a B and B by yourself.

A: That's right.

Q: And you get a lot of customers?

A: I get a lot of customers and a lot of repeats too. But the main thing that I do it for is because when you live alone, you don't get much conversation out of your dogs and cats and donkeys and mules and so you thirst for conversation. So if you run a Bed and Breakfast you at least visit with the people in the evenings and sit at the breakfast table and tell sea stories in the daytime and it's wonderful.

Q: And you're going to be in Denver this week.

A: Yes.

Q: What are you promoting there again?

A: Well I'm work, I work for the Women In Military Service Memorial Foundation having spent 30 years in the Navy and so it's a project pretty close to my heart. So anyplace that there's a convention that there's liable to be a lot of women, I go and set up a booth and hawk our project to the public and it also helps us raise funds. But our biggest problem is that there's 1.8 women veterans out there and we've only managed to find and register about 125 thousand of them and that's a drop in the bucket. We're looking for every single one because we all have a story to tell.

Q: So when you're not busy here, you're busy out there but it must be great to come back to, this is like a Garden of Eden.

A: It is. It's like you wake up in the morning and you think, "Gee, did I die and I'm already in Heaven?"

Q: Do you have any recommendations for our viewers out there about what they should be doing now that they're in their 70's?

A: What they should be doing is whatever suits them and no matter what you think, you're never too old and I might get killed in one of these things but boy I'll go out smiling. Doing what I wanted to do.

Q: Thank you.

A: Thank you.

The welcoming sign.