The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty Read Free Page B

honing the entrepreneurial skills that would serve him so well for the rest of his life. An adventurous, high-spirited lad, he also undertook on his own such productive ventures as going into the produce business, first by cultivating a piece of his father’s land and then by planting and later selling vegetables door-to-door. Though he could barely peer over the counter at Gus’s store, he was there almost every day after school; this was where he would first learn the value of hard work and tough negotiation.
    It was during this time that the Hiltons suffered their first real sorrow, the death of two-year-old Julian, their fifth child and third son. After the loss, the family was inconsolable; for the first time, there were no baby noises in the home. However, joy returned in 1898 when baby Rosemary arrived. With the cradle once again filled, the house now felt like a home. Two more children would be added to the brood when Gus Jr.—called “Boy”—was born in 1901 and Helen, their fourth daughter, in 1906. As the family expanded, so did their home, with Gus adding a room onto the original structure for each of his eight children upon their arrival. There would be no sharing of rooms for his kids; each would have his or her own space, which was practically unheard of during the pioneering days of the expanding frontier. That’s not to say, however, that the accommodations were lavish. Pictures of the homestead show a dilapidated structure that looked as if it might collapse at any moment. “We’re talking cowboy country here,” observed one of Hilton’s relatives from the family’s third generation. “Cowboy hats, horses, stagecoaches, dirt roads, moonshine, saloons… the works.”
    Conrad seemed content attending the one-room schoolhouse to which he rode to and from on his little pony, Chiquita. Though he excelled in English and learned Spanish from his Native American and Mexican friends, Mary came to believe that Conrad was, by about the age of twelve, receiving a substandard education. Therefore she packed him off to Goss Military Institute in Roswell (later renamed the New Mexico Military Institute), which was quite a blow for the home-loving youngster. He didn’t want to go, but he also didn’t have much choice. There he would continue his education and be required to wear the uncomfortable gray flannel, black braid–trimmed uniform of a cadet. Beyond arithmetic, he was not a good student, repeatedly being caught off school property after hours, often at music halls in which youngsters were not allowed—just one of the many ways he rebelled against the rigid strictures of military school. When the school burned to the ground, his celebration of a certain return to his home in San Antonio was short-lived; Colonel Goss simply rented another building and continued operating the institute. However, this time fearful that the school was not providing her son with the proper attention to nonsecular matters, Mary pulled the boy out of it and enrolled him at St. Michael’s in Santa Fe, a parochial institution that suited her on two counts: It was Catholic and it was strict.
    Conrad’s summer vacations were spent back in San Antonio, working for five dollars a month at A. H. Hilton, an ever-growing business that now housed the post office, the telegraph office, the Studebaker dealership, a livery stable, and a lumber/building materials operation. Gus Hilton was nothing if not entrepreneurial. Not only was he managing the store, but he also bartered with prospectors, giving them provisions, clothing, food, and money in return for a percentage of their profits. On some days he would take off into the wilderness to sell tobacco and food to beaver trappers, sometimes trading his goods for theirs. Gus was busy all of the time, tough and unyielding not only in business but at home as well; he expected a lot of his children, but mostly from Conrad. Actually, he saw something of himself in Connie, and wanted nothing