Christmas Memories

by my Grandmother, aka, Gommie, early 1900’s

Later on that year, Luella and Anna, another niece of mine who was a year older than me, stopped at the ranch.  The Coopers had gone to the World Fair in St. Louis and then on to Mississippi to visit Jack’s sister.  Luella brought Mamma some pretty salt and pepper shakers from the World Fair.

That winter, Mamma, Joe who was about 21, Bessie, Tooie and I went over to Fergus County for Christmas.  Luella was living at Whiskey Gulch near Gilt Edge.  I don’t remember how we got to Harlowton – perhaps on the stage from Melville, but I do remember that we rode on the “Jawbone” railroad from Harlowton to Lewiston.  This was the railroad built by Richard Harlow without adequate backing of money – just talk, thus the name “Jawbone.”  (He had to mortgage the line with James Hill the Great Northern magnate; however, in order to the lines available, Milwaukee Railroad paid off Harlow’s mortgage in 1910.)

From Lewistown we took a stage to Gilt Edge which was a mile or so from the mining camp up Whiskey Gulch.  Jack met us and took us to their small log cabin where we stayed for a couple of weeks. Don’t ask me to explain how all of us managed – I suppose that Jack and Joe slept at the boarding house or someplace else.  Jack was working in the Big Six mine.  (In 1957, Anna Cooper Doore and her daughter Kathryn and I went back to the old place, and we found remains of the old cabin where they lived.  The camp is mostly gone and only a few places could be recognized.)

The big social event while we were there was a masquerade at Gilt Edge.  I was so taken with the grocery boy, Dick Blake, who was dressed as a woman with a blue dress trimmed with popcorn, I don’t remember anyone else.  Luella was masked, but I don’t remember what she wore. We had Christmas at the boarding house which Mrs. Mershon operated.  Mrs. Mershon had a son, Joab, who was about 10 or twelve, and a little girl named Sarah Rebecca.  A woman named Mrs. Limbaugh gave each one of us girls a silver thimble.  I still have mine.  Tooie lost hers.  A little girl that lived up the hill gave me a tin doll head.  Later Bessie made a body for it out of a rag and stuffed it with goat hair.