Clang! Clang! Pop pop! Sluuuuurp whistle! The sounds came from the pan on top of the stove. Wisps of steam lifted and disappeared into the air. My granddaughter came through the door. “I love to hear that sound.” She walked over to the stove and peered into the pan. “Making muscadine jelly?”
It’s funny how smells or sounds trigger deep buried memories. Mama and my grandmother canned produce from the garden. Tomatoes, beans, jellies and jams, soup mix, pickles from cucumbers, peaches and beets, and even meat were canned for the winter months or for a quick meal for unexpected company. When I was a kid, canning day started with a trip to the garden or a visit to one of the local farmers or roadside stands. Sometimes we sat on the porch and rocked while snapping beans or shelling peas. Mama filled her apron with beans and had them snapped and cleaned in no time at all. My hands didn’t work quite as fast. I didn’t mind shelling butter peas, but butter beans made my thumbs sore.
My process for canning hasn’t changed much from when I was a kid. That scene still plays in my mind. Jars turned upside down in a pan of shallow water made a slurpy whistle sound as water sucked up in the jars and they jangled, clanked and clanged. Once the jars were filled with produce, some were placed in a hot water bath. Others had to go in the pressure canner. With the lid was secure, the petcock was set on the valve. Pressure was regulated by a gauge or the number of jiggles. Pssssst, psssssst, hissss, spit, spit, sputter, pssssssssst. The timer started. When the jars were removed from the canner, the popping noises started as the jars sealed. That sound made me smile.
Those sounds bring back many memories, not just of canning but of family, home, satisfaction and contentment. That’s what I want to instill in my grandchildren.
The Montana winter snows that covered the countryside could not cool the spirits of my great aunt and uncle as they rolled into my grandmother’s yard in Big Timber, Montana that mid-March day of 1951. They had their own unbelievable wild tale to tell. How could bushes and flowers of every color imaginable be blooming and flourishing in the south? Nevertheless, they said it was true and that settled it, they were selling out and moving to Georgia.
They found the perfect place to raise cattle and the perfect place to build their home. Driving up the rise to their house, you would think they lived on the Montana prairie. Only a few trees near the house offered a bit of shade. The rest were cleared from much of the land. One could stand of the brim of the hill and see for miles. Like my mom, I think my aunt did not like to be penned in and surrounded by trees. Those prairie girls liked to be able to see wide open country.
one of my favorite pictures of Kenneth next to my mom
Down the hill and within view of the house on the hill was the home of their son Kenneth, one of my mom’s favorite cousins, and his wife. He exhibited some of the same family characteristics as his mom’s family – a big booming voice. When the family gathered, their resonant voices echoed in the great outdoors just as well as within four walls of a room. There was great comfort in being around those folks. Along with their loud voices was deep laughter that gurgled all the way up from the tips of their toes. My, how they loved to laugh! That family characteristic has passed down to some of the other generations of cousins as well.
Cousin Kenneth and his mom, my great aunt
A few years after my aunt and uncle arrived in the south, my parents followed suit. That is where they got me. I think they figured they needed as much help as possible and since Godparents were a custom in our family, I needed some as well. Mama chose her special cousin, Kenneth, and his wife as my Godparents. Through the years our families gathered together on various occasions, for reunions, or just to visit. They always stayed in contact with one another and kept up with the happenings of the family.
me with my Godparents
I recently received word that Cousin Kenneth left on another journey to meet up with family members who have been enjoying the scenery for some time now. He will be greatly missed. He joined the ranks of those who lived before us a life of honor and integrity. May we honor his memory by following suit and continuing to share our rich family heritage. There must be quite a reunion going on with stories and deep resonating laughter unleashed and flowing freely. Oh, the scene that must be! I wonder, who got the first slice of watermelon?
My Guest author today is my Granddad as he recounts tales of life on the Montana prairie. I can still see his face as he told tales of sheepherders. A shadow passed over him as he told of the old sheepherder losing his life, but his whole face lit up when he told about the Cotter brothers.
the storyteller
Charlie Leap was a sheepherder up along the Missouri River in Montana. He hadn’t started out that way, he got in some sort of a jackpot back east and joined the cavalry. They put his outfit out west protecting the builders of the Great Northern Railroad. After the rail line was built, Leap became a cowboy. He had cursed up and down about the people who were bringing sheep into the country. But when he got so crippled up he couldn’t ride anymore, he got a job herding sheep. The sheep in the northern plains came in by the thousands. The Veseth outfit was big into sheep. Some of the cowhands, who used to run their horses through the sheep scattering them every which way, ended up as Veseth’s herders. They didn’t know that the coming of the sheep would be all that would give them a job when they got too stove up to ride.
The Phillips outfit must have had 30-40,000 sheep. Jim Cotter had only four bands. His partner, Marvin Jones, was with him in the business. When the bad winter hit, their herd was almost wiped out. One night they were following the sheep. The wind was blowing snow. They couldn’t see anything. The partner stopped Cotter. “Don’t go any further,” he said. In the dark they knew something was wrong. The whole band had gone over a bluff. By the time the winter was over most of the sheep were gone.
That was the “bad winter.” There were several bad winters. I believe the worse one was ’87. It changed the livestock industry in the Northern Plains. Until then some cattle and sheep herds were wintered without hay. After that the livestock men started making hay while it was summer. The livestock killing winter would long be remembered.
A herder stays with his flock. Sometimes the sheep will leave the bedground on a stormy night. One herder followed his sheep on a blizzardy night. They came to a drift fence. The herder held out one arm and let it ride against the top wire. The arm was freezing and without feeling. He’d raise it up at each post. They found him the next day, frozen to death, his arm sawed deeply from barb wire.
sheep wagon
Jimmy Cotter came over from Ireland. He knew about sheep. He didn’t have any money, so he got a job herding sheep on shares. After a few years the share was doing so good that the boss said, “You ought to be paying me. You’re doing as good as I am. Maybe you better get off on your own.” So Jimmy got a partner and went off on his own. His brother, Mickey, came over from the old country and helped Jimmy.
When Jimmy married the Indian girl that was doing the cooking, Mick moved out of the house. But he still kept working for his brother. One winter, after several weeks being snowed in and running short on supplies, Jimmy sent Mickey to town. That was Malta, forty miles away. When Mick didn’t show up at the end of ten days, I went after him. When I found him, he was having a good time in one of the saloons and saying, “Me brother James will foot the bill.” I think that may have been the same time that Mickey failed to get the groceries. “Me brother, James, gave me sixty dollars for grocery money,” he said, “and I spent eighty of it for whiskey.”
Mickey was quite a herder. He stuck with his sheep during a storm and froze his feet. He lost his toes and the balls of his feet and stumped around on the end of his legs. He managed to get out in public and took in a dance, but he wouldn’t get on the dance floor. A lady by the name of Stella said, “I’ll get old Mickey out on the floor.” She went over to coax him to dance.
He declined the favor. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I’ve lost me balls you know.”
Stella spread the news of why Mick couldn’t dance.
Some of my favorite stories are those my granddad told of his batchin’ days. He and his batchin’ partner, John, traveled the Montana prairies from place to place as they followed the harvest and worked with threshing crews all the way into Canada. Sometimes his brother, my Uncle Buster, was his sidekick. My granddad had a homestead in Phillips County near his uncles.
His tales took us from Sun Prairie Flats to Malta, the Missouri River Breaks, Landusky, Zortman, the Long X Ranch, to Calgary and many places in between. We heard names such as Kid Curry, Pike Landusky, Granville Stuart and Charlie Russell.
Uncle Buster on his homestead
When he first came to Montana, he landed a job with the B D Phillips outfit north of the Missouri River. Phillips had several bands of sheep. My granddad said, “I got on as Camp Tender. Phillips had several ranches that I worked out of. One was the Black Ranch. It was near the Little Rockies up by the towns of Zortman and Landusky.” Landusky was a wild west town just like its namesake, Pike Landusky, who was killed by Kid Curry in Jew Jake’s Saloon. (That was before my granddad was in that part of the country.) My grandfather said, “Kid Curry came in and slapped Pike on the back and floored him with a punch to the jaw. Landusky raised up and drew his pistol but Kid outdrew him. I don’t know if this was the first time anyone outdrew Landusky, but it was the last time. They carried his corpse to boot hill. It is told that Kid Curry left for Missouri where he joined Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.”
He continued his story, “One old timer I knew had been the corral tender for the Curry outfit. He was the chore boy. He saddled their horses and had them ready for the outfit to ride. One day he said to me, ‘Slim, I want to show you something.’”
“The fellow took me to the barn at the Black place and pointed to a saddle. ‘My saddle,’ the old man explained. ‘I just want you to look at the back of it.’ I looked. By golly it had a bullet hole as neat as a pin. ‘Ever hear of getting your pants shot off?’ the old fellow asked. ‘Part of my job was to drive a team and wagon from one sheep camp to the next. B. D. Phillips had some Swede sheepherders. They were good men who had to have rutabagas.’”
These stories and other tales make Montana history come to life for me. From the time of the arrival of my family into Montana Territory, they have rubbed elbows with those who helped shape the state and have become part of history itself.
One connection was Uncle Buster who worked for a time at Circle C Ranch near Zortman. Circle C was owned by Robert Coburn and his sons, purchased from Granville Stuart, aka “Mr. Montana.” One of the boys was Wallace Coburn. He was a rancher, an actor and author.
Sarah Furnish Redding, mother of Mary Balsorah Redding Logan
Wallace Coburn also had a friendship with Major William Logan who married a cousin of mine, Mary Balsorah Redding, on my father’s side of my family. In 1902, he was appointed supervisor of the Agency of Belknap Indian Reservation on Milk River. The same year, he was given the job of superintendent in charge of road construction in Glacier National Park. The next year, he was appointed the first superintendent and chief ranger for the newly formed Glacier National Park. I imagine some of my family know nothing about this familial connection with one of the greatest National Parks in our country.
Will Logan photo on file at Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming
There is another twist of historical note that may well be controversial, disapproved and pretty much disregarded. It is interesting, none-the-less. A small book, The Battle of Little Bighorn, written by Wallace David Coburn as told by Major Will Logan, gives a different view of this battle event in history.
Each of these relationships, no matter how seemingly insignificant, gives an overwhelming sense of the community of kinship that connects us all.
I ran down the long dark hall as fast as I could to my parent’s bedroom. Somehow it seemed further away in the darkest part of the night. I went to the side of the bed where Daddy was sleeping soundly, that is until I shook him.
“Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Hurry! There’s a giant spider in the sink.”
I had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the restroom. After turning on the light, something caught my eye. There was a monstrous gigantic hideous ugly spider in the sink. Its hairy legs wiggled, and its beady eyes turned around like a revolving dome as it looked at me. The fat body moved up and down in rhythm and I knew it would pounce on me at any moment. The only thing, and the best thing I knew was to get Daddy. He would take care of everything and send the monster to its watery grave.
When Daddy got to the bathroom, there was the spider just as I said. Big hairy varmint! Ha! Daddy took care of him!
When he returned to his bedroom Mama asked, “What was that all about?” Daddy said, “Oh, there was just a little spider in the bathroom sink.”
My Guest Author today is my Dad as he shares memories of his Freshmen year at Sweet Grass High School. Go Sheepherders!
My 1925 beginning was in a mountain wilderness twenty miles from a country store, a post office or a telephone. Electric lights were something magic which they had in town forty miles away. My older brother died when I was six years old. I had two sisters, and there were two girl cousins who lived two miles down the road, but the nearest boy my age lived nine miles away. Sometimes, I knew what lonely was.
After seven years and eight grades of education in a log cabin school with a top enrollment of six, I was sent forty miles away to a mind-bending 150 student high school in Big Timber, Montana.
In those days they initiated the freshmen class by marching us down Main Street. The boys were dressed in dresses and the girls in boys clothes. I won the honor as being the best dressed freshman boy in the Initiation Parade. I wore one of sister Barbara’s dresses.
The next day the freshmen were herded up the airport hill to repaint the school logo. “SGHS”. That done we were officially accepted as the Big Timber Sheepherders – except for the “pantsing”, an informal part of high school initiation where Sophomore boys stripped the Freshmen of their pants and hosed them down with that cold Big Timber water. A few favored freshmen had to run down main street to retrieve their britches. I boarded at the far edge of town and missed the pantsing, but the next day the Sophomores caught up to me at the high school and hung me up by my belt on a coat hanger in the hall. A teacher came along and set me free before my first class.
