I put on my special glasses and went outside to join the others. We looked like we had all shopped at the same place. The solar eclipse was certainly not a disappointment though we were just south of the path of totality. I was glad so many people stopped, even if just for a few minutes, to witness such an amazing event, and to most, a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 was dubbed the “Great American Eclipse” because the totality was visible within a band that stretched across the contiguous United States from the Pacific to Atlantic coasts. No solar eclipse had been seen from coast to coast since 1918. In January of 1880, a total solar eclipse occurred exclusively over the continental US.
To me, it was no ordinary happening. In the middle of it all, I had various thoughts to process. One was the brevity of life. Another was that we often let our priorities get overshadowed by things that really don’t matter. I also thought of those bumps in the road – those events that pop into our lives and darken our world for a time. We have all faced dark seasons of life, yet we go forward and once again step into the light.
Though the eclipse prompted my thoughts that day, it was not the main reason I reflected on those darker times in life. There was another memory that stood foremost on that day. It was the anniversary of my mother’s death. It seemed unreal that she had been gone for 11 years. There were times, and still are, when I thought, “I’ll go ask Mama.” My memories of her were just a small tribute to the woman who sacrificed much to move across the country to a completely different climate and culture, divided her time with husband and 6 kids, managed a household, made our clothes, canned our food, baked our bread, dealt with church folks, took in sewing, opened her home to 30 foster babies in a 6 year time period (give or take a few), moved various times and the list goes on….
Yes, there was a time of darkness at her death and yes, we moved back into the light – the light of thankfulness that is full of memories of who she was to all of us.
I walked into the room and a little voice said, “Hi, Maga.” She got up from the chair, turned and looked at me. Immediately I noticed a red place on her cheek. “What happened? Did you fall?” She said, “Yes. Mama said you had something here for my face.”
When I questioned her about her little accident, her voice got quieter. She wrung her hands together and was quite distracted with the tv and the others in the room looking her way. Every square inch of her wiggled every which direction just like a can of worms as she tried to tell her story. I took her hand and we walked into another room. As I sat down to be on her level, I pulled her close and finally got the story of her misadventure.
She was trying to jump on a little chair that sits by the piano (which she knows not to do). When she fell, she bumped the arm of the chair with her face and then hit the piano bench just barely missing her eye. I think there will be a bruise left behind to go with the swelling and the squinty eye.
When she finished her story, I hugged her tight and said, “What did your mom say I had for your eye?” She couldn’t remember what her mom said, so I said, “Go ask her.” The little girl ran off and was soon back. “Well, what was it?” “Mama said you would have some sympathy for my eye.”
Well, her mom was right. I had no trouble giving her some sympathy for her eye even before I knew I had such a magic potion. A dose of sympathy sure goes a long way!
After another big hug and a mug of hot chocolate with two big marshmallows, she was off again.
Family history is not just a tree with tangled limbs of names, relationships, and dates. Though those facts are interesting and important, my favorite part is the stories, many of which are hard to come by. My granddad never disappointed when he spun his yarns. His stories sometimes seemed a bit farfetched, but they were true, and ripe with history of Western expansion and the rugged life of those early pioneers. Our family history does not belong solely to us but is laced with stories of other colorful characters who have their own tales to tell. In finding their stories, it somehow makes our family history even richer.
My handsome granddad
My granddad was a tall lean drink of water who wore a twinkle in his baby blues, laughter on his lips, and a square jaw, all topped off with a cowboy hat. His stories of life in the wilds of Montana were larger-than-life and many of the people included in his tales became legends. In those days, a neighbor could be within a hundred miles or more. Though neighbors weren’t necessarily close in distance, they would set aside their own work to help one another. As my granddad recalled those days, his memories reached into the recesses and gullies of the rugged Montana hills and found Joseph (Joe) Doney (Doaney), a neighbor we met in the previously story, “Doctor Bee.” Doney was in the cattle business at the mouth of Duvall Coulee, near the Missouri River.
Joseph Doney was no ordinary man. He was wise in the ways of the western frontier. His father, by the same name, was Chippewa, and his mother was of French descent. A newspaper article published in 1936 after his death gives the account of just a small portion of his life.
The journalist recorded an interview given by Doney that reached back to his childhood that was spent in the vicinity of Totten, North Dakota, “except when on long treks to get buffalo and beaver,”which could be for 10 to 12 months at a time. The story continued and told of his time as a young man when he freighted and was employed as an Army Scout from 1863-1870 with a company of soldiers out of Totten. He rode Pony Express through hostile Indian country but in snowy months, he made his mail deliveries by dog team. When I read his tales about driving the dog team through deadly blizzards that blew across the Dakota Territory prairies, it sent chills to the bone. On one of his excursions several soldiers who traveled with him and his partner froze to death.
Here are a few excerpts from experiences within his ninety years: “The coming of the first steamboat in the spring was an interesting sight. The coming of any steamboat, for that matter, always sent a thrill through me. I became acquainted with many of the steamboat Captains and pilots. The tenderfeet coming from the east amused me as much as I, with my buckskin garb, did them.”Doney told of standing on the banks of the Missouri River waving and calling out, “bon voyage,” when the boats headed north. In his mind, he imaged them loaded with merchandise as the boat made its way to Ft. Benton, just as they had done in the older days.
Joe Doney saw many changes in his years. The journalist who wrote his account sums it up pretty well, “Whistling locomotives had taken the place of popping bull whips, cattle had replaced the buffalo. Towns sprang up, stores and merchandise were sold for cash instead of bartered for furs. It came so quickly he was made a foreigner in his own country. He was bewildered, he knew not how to make a living. He wanted to get away from it all, but there was no place to go. Yes, there was: The Missouri River, where many just like Joe had found seclusion to enjoy life as he had known it away from the whistling locomotives, the sound of saws and hammers with rushing foreign people in their race for gold. This is where he went, located in a wide blue joint bottom which he was engaged in the only occupation he was fitted for; the raising of cattle. Where he lived, seldom leaving the river.”
Joseph Doney was a man whose story bridged the gap of history. A few tattered pieces of the unfinished puzzle of his story are laid out on the table of life. Most of the pieces have been lost, scattered across the windswept prairies, buried in the deep winter snows, or floating on the rivers and creeks that wind through the Dakotas and Montana wilderness.
My grandfather always spoke of the Missouri River Breaks with respect and admiration. The wild country was hard but rewarding. I am so thankful that Joe Doney, a half-breed, and his wife were counted among the friends of my grandfather. Somehow, it makes my heart sing a song of respect for those western pioneers who braved the harsh country, lived off the land, and went above and beyond to help their neighbor.
Sources: Doctor Bee, as told by my grandfather Census records : 1850, 1900, 1920, 1930 Military record as found at FOLD Newspaper article: Great Falls Tribune, July 5, 1936, p 30, 31 Various family tree sites and entries Family Search Ancestry BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Montana search of documents
My granddad was one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Here is one of his tales. I considered all of his life stories as truth – well, truth with a bit of embellishment.
Just before I left for the war the neighbors started calling me ‘Doc’. This is how it came about.
I was up there working for Gus Tank. There was a big canyon which came down out of the hills three or four hundred yards from old Gus’s corral. There was a saddle horse trail there which was used in the summer. It wasn’t a winter trail.
About the last of March most of the snow was gone. However, the canyon was still drifted with snow and wasn’t passable yet. A little lady from up around the flatland had been riding across the hills. She and her husband, Bud, would come down that way to pick up the mail that the stage left. It was mail day.
Gus Tank’s cabin was halfway place between Leedy and Content. The stage driver would stop there, leave off the mail for the neighborhood, feed his horses, eat something and pick up any mail that was going to Leedy. Four or five people had been by that day to eat dinner and pick up their mail. Then here came the old lady down to get hers. She lived three or four miles back up there on the hill. And she was pretty well loaded with that old black and white that they used to get out of Canada. She was used to alcohol and so was Bud.
When she got to the canyon she rode right across the drift. The melting water had ran under the drift, which had settled and caked over. It was hollowed out underneath and would not hold a horse. The horse fell through. Well, he got out all right, but she got stuck and could not get any footing to get out.
Well, I’d been out riding the bluff along Alkali Creek. Three or four head of cows were down there and I’d pulled one out of the bog. The day was getting a little late – close to sundown. I rode up to the corral. The horse kept looking toward the canyon trail. Pretty soon old Jug stiffened up. I was just ready to pull the saddle off him. I looked up and saw the lady’s horse come up over the bank. He was nasty and all wet.
I had a thirty foot rope for pulling cows out of the bog. I jumped on and rode to the mouth of the canyon and there was the old lady stuck in the snow. I got that rope around her shoulders. I couldn’t pull her out by hand, so I tied her on to the saddle horn and backed out of there. That pulled her out, and I got her up to the barn. I threw some feed and turned the horses in the corral. Then I got her on my back and carried her up to the cabin.
Old Gus had a bunk seven or eight feet wide. He slept on one side and I slept on the other. So I rolled her out there on my side and on my tarp and started the fire good. I put on some coffee and warmed up a pot of soup which I’d put out there for the mail day crowd.
She was just about numb and coughing. I rubbed her feet and I asked her, “Now can you get out of these wet clothes?”
She shook her head. No, she couldn’t get out of those clothes.
“Well.” I said, “You’ve got to get out of these wet clothes or you’re going to catch pneumonia and you’ll die right here.”
She wouldn’t do anything. So I said, “All right”, and rolled her over on her back and unbuttoned her clothes from top to bottom – sheepskin, a couple of shirts, long handles and everything else. Then I turned her over on her stomach and got hold of her clothes and just stripped her, by gosh. I had a big old wool blanket on my bed. It was about a quarter of an inch thick. I just rolled her up in that and told her, “Now you’re going to have to stay right in there because I’m going to go get Mrs. Doaney.”
So I got her all fixed, stoked the fire good and got back on the Jug and went down to Doaney’s as quick as I could get there.
They seen me coming and Mrs. Doaney said, “I knew that there was something the matter somehow and told Joe to get the horse ready.”
I told her I had Mrs. Elkhart up there and she was about froze to death. She’d jumped off her horse and sunk in the snowdrift. Mrs. Doaney was right ready and had a little bag fixed up and piled on her horse and away we went.
We got back up there. She went over and felt of the old lady’s face. She was still pretty blue. I had rubbed her feet, lower legs and her hands and wrists and rolled her up in that blanket and left her. Mrs. Doaney looked down in there and saw she didn’t have any clothes on and she says, “Did you do this?”
And I said, “Yes, I had to. she was freezing to death.” I said, “I just unbuttoned her and pulled that thing up over her shoulders and rolled her over on her stomach, took a hold of the collar, turned everything wrong side out, skinned her alive and rolled her up in that blanket. That’s all that saved her life, I guess.”
So we got the old lady kind of comfortable. She was sober by then. And I took a couple of blankets and went down to the barn and went to bed.
The next morning, well, Mrs. Doaney got breakfast and the old lady got up. She didn’t even catch a cold. She went home, and the next day or two she and Bud came down and asked me how much my doctor bill was.
The neighbors heard about it. When the first ones came by they’d say, “How are you Doc.” Pretty soon everybody in the country was calling me Doc. This lasted all summer.
Come fall I quit and went up to Great Falls to sign up for the army. I never came back or saw any of them again until the war was over. Then I saw her and old Bud in town. He was still grateful to me for saving her life out there on the snowbank.
My little granddaughter is full of life. She has her own back yard adventures. Not long ago, she learned to ride a bike, and she has mastered it. There are stickers all over the bike and clips of some sort on the wheels. The basket on the front of the Pepto Bismol pink bike holds treasures. Along with dolls and other trinkets, she has a new addition – a Motown magic karaoke microphone. If you see a flash of pink wearing boots, and hear the classic Motown tunes in the wind, it might just be my two-wheeling, hair-bobbing, Motown singing granddaughter. I imagine to this little girl (as well as her grandmother), she sounds like the real thing.
If dancers or gymnasts are performing on TV, it’s not long before a little girl is twirling and sliding across the floor, doing cartwheels, or attempting flips in front of us as she imagines herself gracefully performing on the grandest stage of the world. I feel a twinge inside of me wanting to join in her dance with no cares or inhibitions.
Just the other day I watched in awe as skaters at the Skating National Championships glided gracefully over the ice. They twirled and did flips, loops, and other jumps as they were judged on their skills and artistic interpretations. As I watched the skaters, I almost imagined myself moving effortlessly across the ice, every motion fluid and elegant. Little girls are not the only ones with dreams.
As I watch my granddaughter I wonder, does she see herself as the most graceful dancer, a mirror image of what she has seen performed? Does she hear herself as the best singer as she belts out the sounds of Diana Ross, The Temptations or Smokey Robinson? Does she feel the cool air from the surface of the ice rink as she glides on her skates like Michelle Kwan? Maybe so, and I hope she never stops dreaming.
Have you ever watched a child try to walk in the footprints of their father or mother? I was one of those kids.
Whenever I went hiking or backpacking with my dad, I usually followed right behind him trying to place my foot exactly where he stepped. When climbing rocky mountain trails, he seemed to sense which stones would give the steadiest foothold. He even blazed trails through mountain streams, knowing which places in the streams to avoid. Following in his footsteps, I knew we were headed in the right direction and on the best path. Only later did I realize some of his many paths were actually longer and not necessarily the intended trail, but the rewards were well worth it. There were a few questionable moments as to his decisions, though they always brought valuable lessons.
When my first four siblings lived in the heart of the mountains, they relied on the footsteps of my father, too. Many a snowy day, which were more days than less, he was the first one out the door to cut a path to the outhouse, barn, or the folks’ home beyond. After the trail was forged, then the kids emerged bundled up, so they walked like Frankenstein. With gloves, hats, and boots secured tightly, they walked in the footsteps prepared just for them. Wherever the boot prints were embedded in the snow, the kids followed, knowing their father was just ahead and would come to their rescue if they needed him. Of course, they attempted their own trails as well.
In my memory, I cannot recount all the times I walked behind my dad. The time came when I walked beside him, and then the time came when I could walk in front of him, sure of the path. If I came to a fork in the trail and questioned myself, all I had to do was pause until I could ask him. And then the time came when he relied solely on my footsteps. The roles reversed.
That’s the way life is. We are followers. Then we are leaders. Then we are followers once again. One of the most profound lessons of this principle is found in nature. I’m sure you have seen a noisy flock of geese overhead. When I hear honking geese, immediately I look up in the sky searching for the geese. One goose leads while others follow in V formation. When the goose in front tires, another comes along side and takes the lead, the “leader” falling back into formation.
Though we have followed the footprints laid before us, there comes a time when we take the lead for a season before passing it on to someone else. Even then, we find ourselves as leader occasionally, even if it’s just in the small things like a kind word of encouragement, a nugget of wisdom, or a truth from the archives of family history.
Cut a trail, take your turn to lead, be willing to fall back so others learn the way, and continue to do your part to make the journey a success.
I have seen worn out blankets, teddy bears without eyes, bald headed dolls, limbless stuffed animals, and other items that are loved beyond belief. Those treasures held by others are of little significance to anyone else. In fact, if I feel sick or tossed by waves of nostalgia or sentimentality, I still cover up with my quilt made by my grandmother and my old, patched teddy bear with a floppy neck made by my mother. Somehow, those riches bring me comfort.
It was common to find miniature pillowcases or tricot scraps laying around our house. All the kids in the extended family received the coveted pillowcases made by their grandmother. For my kids, it was more than a cover for a miniature pillow, it was a security blanket. The cases were rarely on a pillow at all. Rather, they were usually crumpled up in a little fist and dragged through the house or across the dirt in the yard.
One day, there was an emergency – not the kind when you call 9-1-1. It was more serious than that. All the pillowcases and remnants of tricot were dirty. I washed them and hung them on the line to dry. My little boy was a bit agitated and almost in a state of withdrawals. I tried to divert his attention by sending him outside to play. Every few minutes I peeked out the window to check on him. When he disappeared from view, I went out and looked for him. At the side of the house, there under the clothesline, was a little boy. His hand was lifted up holding on to a corner of a long narrow strip of unsewn tricot, thumb in mouth. He gripped the wadded up cloth tightly as if holding on for dear life. Had I not known better, I would have thought I stepped into a Charlie Brown comic strip with Linus clinging to his security blanket.
It wasn’t just my son who was attached to his tattered worn pillowcases. My daughter suffered from the same addiction, and yes, it also served as a pacifier. One day the kids and I went shopping with a friend and her little boy. I pushed the stroller with an irritable little girl in it as we went from store to store. Her whine turned into a cry. There was one way to put a stop to that.
I unsnapped the diaper bag and reached in to get her pillowcase. Uh-oh! It wasn’t there. That was trouble! A crying child can disturb the whole community with their wailing. I happened to be wearing a skirt that day, so I stepped behind a rack of clothing, jerked off my half-slip, and handed it to the crying toddler. Immediately her little hand clutched a corner of the case, and in a matter of seconds, she was content and sucking her thumb. We averted disaster that day!
The grown-ups of the family were about as testy as the kids about a missing pillowcase, full size, of course. Some of my siblings, myself included, still use those wondrous, cool, soft pillowcases made from tricot. Recently while rummaging through some of my mother’s fabric scraps, I found some of the coveted fabric, several pieces bigger than scraps. Those remnants were divided amongst us in hopes of having pillowcases for many years to come.
Now I wouldn’t say I might get a bit testy, but I will say, “Don’t touch my pillowcase!”
