One thing my Mother taught through word and deed was that no matter what comes your way, you must go on. She faced many trials, made ends meet with meager supplies, managed a tribe of kids, wore many hats, and encouraged our individualism. She also taught us the principle of priorities. Each day I am reminded that life is short.
This is a true story, written in verse, of an event in her young life that spoke of staunch survivalism on the open prairies of Montana. I believe that God called her name that day and gave her the determination to survive the storm. “You must go on!” – and she did time and again….
My Aunt & my Mother
Bundled against the wind, they sent her on her way. She headed off to school on that blustery day.
Braced against the onslaught, wind whipped the blinding snow. No longer did she see her way – her distance she did not know.
Icy fingers beckoned her, drawing her from the path. She heard voices in the wind, but ‘twas only the blizzard’s wrath.
She wanted to turn aside, tired from the storm. Yet she knew that just over the hill she would find a fire warm.
Guided by an unseen hand, urged by a rising voice, “You must not stop, you must go on.” There was no other choice.
Pressed to the wind she turned to see the one who spoke her name. It was her father’s face she sought – she thought the storm he’d tame.
“I was not with you child,” he said as he heard her tale. He took her in his arms and stroked her face, so pale.
“A miracle from heaven,” is all that I can say for it was her father’s voice that led her on that day.
Guided by an unseen hand, urged by a rising voice, “You must not stop, you must go on.” Let that be your choice.
sa 2012
Urged by her father’s voice that she heard on the wind, she made it to the neighbor’s house. It was there he found her warm and safe from the storm.
taken from “Listening for God” by my Guest Author, my Daddy
Sometimes we hear but we do not really pay attention. We lack discernment.
That was discernment that my daddy had. We lived way back in the mountains of Montana and didn’t go to town often. When we did it was always an adventure.
We could be coming home, I’d say, “Stop, Daddy, stop! There’s a mama pig and her babies.” Daddy didn’t stop.
Sister Barbara would say, “Stop, there’s a pinto pony.” Daddy drove on.
Then sister Ellen would whisper, “I gotta frow up” The car would come to a screeching halt.
It was the early thirties and the log business was booming. Fire started in the canyon and swept down the mountainside. The livelihood of the sawmiller’s family was at stake. Could he salvage enough from the burned timber to provide for his family? The Forest Service land that adjoined the family’s property suffered damage, too. The fire kill trees needed to be cleaned up. The Forest Service made an offer to Ward & Parker Sawmill to harvest the dead trees on Forest Service soil. They sawed the trees on three sides and sold them as house logs. The thing is, the fire did not compromise the worth of the timber. In fact, the fire cured timber wouldn’t twist or bow. The heat caused the sap to harden and actually strengthened the trees and made them more valuable. Logs were sold for ranch houses, bunk houses, and other ranch buildings. Hope grew from the ashes of devastation.
Sawmill
Fires of adversity, sickness and uncertainty consume us and yet, they make us stronger. Hope rises from the ashes of fear. God’s light shines through the firestorm as neighbor reaches out to neighbor and strangers work together to help one another. It may be someone simply taking food to a widow or a health care provider placing themselves in harm’s way to care for another. Hope often comes in the most unlikely of places and in the hardest of times. Bloom where you are planted.
1918. My grandfather was overseas engaged in World War I. There was another world war raging – H1N1 virus – influenza – Spanish Flu. *“With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.” An estimated 500 million people were infected with the virus, about 50 million succumbed to death, 675,000 of those in the US.
one of the family homesteads
My grandfather lived near the McNeil uncles’ homesteads in Phillips County, Montana. There was another homesteader that lived nearby – Bertha Meyer. There was something to be said for a single lady proving a homestead in that rough country. My grandfather had great admiration for Bertha, called the “Black Dutch,” a title given because of her dark complexion and German descent . To hear my grandfather tell the tale, some of the people looked down on her because she was different. He saw her as a perfect wife for Uncle Al. The matchmaking scheme worked. Al and Bertha had only been married a short time when the country was invaded by Spanish Flu. Even in those rural areas of the plains, there was no place to escape the virus that reached into the darkest recesses of the world.
This is my grandfather’s account, “I was away in the army when the 1918 flu epidemic struck. Al and Bertha hadn’t been married long. Lee was staying with them. Both Al and Lee came down with the flu. A few miles away their brother, Uncle Claude, was coming down with pneumonia. All three died and were buried in Sun Prairie when the ground thawed enough to dig the graves. In the meantime, Bertha moved down to the folk’s place to nurse Ma and Leone, through the epidemic. Later Bertha had Al’s body brought to the church cemetery in Malta.” When my grandfather recounted the story, he also added that some of the family didn’t quite approve of Bertha. She rose to the challenge and became priceless to the family and community. Their opinion of Bertha changed drastically after the flu passed. Three of the McNeil boys died, including Bertha’s husband. They all lost much and their lives were never the same.
My Great Grandmother with her brothers, three of which died in the epidemic
We now find ourselves being attacked by another enemy – Coronavirus. The past few weeks, mankind has become one people – not in the manner that they are all in agreement – but in the manner that disease is no respecter of persons. The playing field has become level. Old, young, rich, poor, white, black, social standing or not, clean, dirty, famous, unknown – all stand on level ground beside the other, though the older seem the most fragile.
I personally know some people who are sick with high fever, cough, and other symptoms that are shared by thousands of people across the world. I know of a young couple in our corner of the world who have been hospitalized with the same symptoms. None of these have come in known contact with anyone who has recently traveled to a foreign country.
And I think, as mankind, do we learn anything from this? We usually don’t understand the gravity of a situation until we are directly affected. Be diligent. Be wise. Check on your neighbor. Be proactive. Learn from history. Handle with prayer. Handle with care. Don’t think it can’t happen to you or yours.
You might just be that “Bertha” to someone! Priceless.
Bertha, the “Black Dutch”, to the far right
Can you imaginehow devastating it would have been had they had the mode of transportation we have today? My ancestors traveled mostly by horseback or wagon.
I am happy to introduce (again) one of my favorite Guest Authors – my Daddy. The telephone was one of the topics I gave him with the “assignment” to write a “Book of Firsts.” He shares memories of the first phone in the heart of the mountains.
Telephones were around a long time before I was. But there wasn’t any such thing in Sweet Grass Canyon. The nearest one was thirteen miles away. The telephone there was a party line connected to neighbors on down the creek toward Melville and Big Timber. When someone got a call, all the phones on the line would ring; however, each family had a different ring. Uncle Ed’s was a long and four shorts.
The telephones mounted on a box equipped with two bright colored telephone bells at the top front of the box, a speaker sticking out the middle front, and an ear phone receiver on the left side. There was a ringer mechanism somewhere on the inside of the phone box. The ringer was controlled by a crank handle that stuck out to the right. A person cranked the handle about half a turn for a short ring and a couple of times for the long ring. The far end of the telephone line was connected to the central station in Big Timber. A person cranked out a real looong ring to get the operator. She would answer, “Number please.” Then you would give her the telephone number of the person you wanted to talk to.
If you were desperate you could also give the Big Timber operator the name of a person or place. Jimmy Anderson’s mama knew everybody in town, and she would connect you.
When we went to town, we watched the lines on the telephone poles. There was just one telephone line until after you passed Melville. Then there was a wire attached to each side of the telephone pole. When you got to Big Timber Creek there were two more lines coming in and the poles had cross arms.
Some folks in town had a private line instead of a party line. In town itself there would be telephone poles, cross arms, and wires all up and down the streets.
Here’s some happenings that led to a phone line into the mountains:
The ladies west of Melville had a community project – finding Loyd Rein a wife. By the early thirties, Red Mac and Buddy Brannin were married, but Loyd Rein was as elusive as a trap wise coyote. And then, in the late thirties Ruth Anderson got asking age, and they married. Then Loyd and Ruth moved to Rein’s upper place on the Sweet Grass just five miles away. They had a telephone line installed.
It wasn’t until after Gary was born that the telephone was extended the rest of the way into the mountains. We cut the telephone poles off the forest reserve on the American Fork. Uncle Gus used Adolph Tronrud’s post hole digger, and we set up telephone poles from Reins to Brannins and to Ward and Parkers. We paid Haas in Big Timber for the wire and the wiring work, and Sweet Grass Canyon had telephones.
Jean and I had a connection line to Gommy’s house. Messages such as, “Are Lynn and David over there?” became more familiar than Alexander Graham Bell’s words to his assistant, “Mr. Watson, come here, I need You.”
Although the first telephones were in existence long before I was, there was no such thing as the transmission of pictures over telephone lines or even over radio waves. Our sixth-grade teacher told us, that this was something that would never happen. Even teachers make mistakes. That ridiculous thing has invaded all our homes! Now we even have cell phones like Dick Tracy had!
I stood on my tiptoes and tried to peek into my Great Grandmother’s casket, but I was too short to see inside. I tugged on Daddy’s suit jacket and told him I wanted to see her. Mama was nearby and gave Daddy a look that said, “Don’t do it. She’ll be warped for life.” He picked me up. I looked inside and that satisfied me.
my Great Grandmother with her brothers
Though I don’t remember a lot about Great Grandma, I do have faint glimpses that float across my mind on occasion. She was oldest person I knew at my young age. She was born in 1874. At the age of fifteen, along with her mother, grandmother and brothers, she took part in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. At that time her mother claimed to be widowed but in actuality her husband had deserted the family – twice. My Great Grandmother’s grandmother was a Civil War widow who had a “visit” from her husband at the moment he was killed in the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863. I have no trouble envisioning these two “widowed” women along with their children as they raced their loaded wagons into the Great Plains when the shot signaled the start of the rush.
my Great Grandmother’s grandmother
my Great Grandmother’s mother
The stories of my ancestors have not all been lost to younger generations. I have been fortunate to be in a family of storytellers. They must have understood the importance of passing on their priceless family heritage and spiritual heritage. As a child and an adult, I have never tired of stories of my ancestors. In fact, those stories serve as fuel to keep my love of family history burning.
Since I knew my great grandmother, touching her life is like reaching back to 1874. That is 146 years to date. In my lifetime, I have touched six living generations in my direct line thus far. I’m amazed when I look back at the people who have shaped my life. I can follow the footsteps of those who went before me; footsteps that led me to where I am today; footsteps that have influenced physical and spiritual attributes; DNA fingerprints that determine looks and various characteristics. I leave footprints of my own as my children and grandchildren follow behind looking into the next generation.
I stand in the present with arms outstretched and span the years. To one side, I reach into the past. I can reach back even further through documents and stories that have passed on from one generation to the next. To the other side, I reach into the future. I can reach even further into the future by assuring that family stories and the history of my ancestors are archived for those who follow our footsteps.
Grandfather
Mother
If only one person in my direct line wasn’t in place, I wouldn’t be here. What if my grandfather had not lied about his age and gone to war leaving behind several of his family members who died in the flu epidemic back home? What if my parents had not moved south when they did? What if? If any of various factors happened along the way, I wouldn’t be telling my story.
Don’t let your family story and spiritual heritage be lost. Tell your story. Pass the torch. Span the years.
Today my Daddy is my Guest Author again. I had given him the assignment to write about “firsts.” This story is about getting electricity for the first time in the heart of the mountains miles from town.
In the beginning of creation, the LORD GOD said, “Let there be light and there was light.” But not all the time.
On cloudy winter nights (the adults couldn’t see this) an angel gathered up ALL of the left-over patches of light and stored them in a black bucket until the next morning. The mountains were especially dark and spooky. They were filled with creatures that sneaked through the trees at night. Outside there was no emptiness because the darkness filled up everything. It opened enough to let you walk through it like the Children of Israel walking through the Red Sea.
Indoors, it could be nearly as bad. When we were adding a parlor and a bedroom for Mama and Daddy, the new addition encircled an area of darkness which brought a haunt into our house. That was in the daytime. At night THERE WERE TWO HAUNTS.
Sister Ellen braved the darkness to run back into the new addition. She screamed in fright and came back crying. Poor Sister. She didn’t learn things right away. The next night she would try her excursion again!
The big room that served as kitchen, dining room, and sitting room was lighted by a gas burning Coleman lamp which had flimsy mantles that moths liked to battle. The lamp hung from the ceiling. In other parts of the house we used candles or kerosene lamps that had wicks and smoky chimneys which had to be washed regularly. Luckily for children, at nighttime, we had a candle-lighted indoor toilet which was a bucket we pulled out from under the bed.
AND THEN! Along about 1929 the uncles built a new lodge and furnished it with electric lights! Their lights only worked when the gas-powered power plant was started and running. However, advances were coming to the Crazy Mountains! Thanks to motivation from the uncles and thanks to Thomas Edison and several decades of development. Our family, living in a log house in the mountains forty miles from a paved road, experienced a first: ELECTRIC LIGHTS! LIGHTS ALL OVER THE HOUSE. And in the shop. At the sawmill. And on both sides of the barn – one set of lights for the milk cows and one for the horses. Before that, in the dark of winter nights, chores were done, and the cows were milked by the light of a hand carried gas lantern.
Our electric lights came by way of a Delco Remy charger and sixteen glass storage batteries. We didn’t even have to start the Delco generator to get our lights.
The uncles had electricity and running water in their house. We had electric lights in all our immediate buildings except one. Loretta and Victor had a building like that. She kept a note on its wall:
This little shack is all I’ve got, I try to keep it neat. So please be kind with your behind, And don’t shoot on the seat.
Ours had a Sears Catalogue and no poetry on the wall. But we had a back-up. In the cold of a winter night we had an enameled bucket under the bed.
Outhouse 1975
Outhouse 1996
The Delco generator house is on the right
Thanks to the beginning of rural electrification, a secondhand power plant had been advertised in the MONTANA FARMER MAGAZINE. Victor Allman hauled it down from Whitehall, Montana – quite a ways across the state. Lowell Galbreath was working for us, and he knew all about wiring houses, cow barns and sawmills. He soldered eight-gauge electric lines with silver solder. And on a magic day – we had lights controlled by pull strings that were too high for a child to reach. The gasoline powered Coleman lamp was put away and the moths went back to sulking in the clothes closet.
This was written by my grandfather, Poppy, after a Sweet Grass Canyon winter. He recorded that it took “45 gallons of gasoline in 42 miles of driving to feed cattle.” Poppy made a trip to Two Dot in December, 1916. He arrived home on Christmas Eve. The road couldn’t be traveled by wagon again until May, 1917. In March of that year, there was a home delivery. Jack was born and Poppy was the mid-wife.
You may talk about your winters, And rave about your snow. But for the world’s worst winter, Up Sweet Grass Canyon go.
standing on the roof of the house in the winter of 1917
For endless drifts and blizzards, And everlasting snow, Don’t go to Nome, Alaska, But up Sweet Grass Canyon go.
The South Pole and Antarctica Are just a hothouse plant Compared to Sweet Grass Canyon When the weather is on the rant.
For one hundred days successively You never see the sun. And when you think it shines at last, Winter has just begun.
Twenty miles to mail a letter, Forty miles to go to town. Ten miles out is the nearest road, With grades straight up and down.
No telephone, no snowplow – You’re really on your own. When you start up Sweet Grass Canyon, The place that you call home.
Two Dot is a cow town in Montana. It got its name from “Two Dot Wilson.” His given name was George R. Wilson. He was called “Two Dot” because his brand was two dots, placed side by side on each hip of his cattle. He donated the land for the town which was founded in 1900 as a station on the Jawbone Railway. It was part of the Milwaukee Railroad system that pulled up tracks in central Montana in the late 1970’s. The little town is somewhat of a Western legend and even made its way into the Country Music world through Hank Williams’ song Twodot Montana. In 1915 it was the site of one of the substations of the railroad’s electrification project. Ranchers drove their cattle to the railway station and loaded them on cattle cars to be shipped to other parts of the country. At its prime, the bustling town had two grain elevators, a lumber yard, a ball team, a hotel, a bank and other businesses. The hotel was always busy as passengers and railroad workers came through. The town is much different now, but that Western charm lingers.
Though the streets of Two Dot are relatively quiet now, whispers of the past echo from the hills and the old buildings. Tumbleweeds were not all that once blew onto the dusty streets of Two Dot. In 1915, a cowboy by the name of Mel Jowell blew into town. He was described as a handsome cowboy of eloquent speech, but he was not exactly as he appeared, especially to the fairer sex. Beneath his politely mannered façade was a conniving scoundrel. He was a horse thief, a cattle rustler and along with a cousin, killed an ex-Sheriff in 1901 in Arizona. According to a newspaper article of April 1901, Jowell was suspected to be part of a gang of cattle rustlers and murderers who “cut a wide criminal swath through Southern Utah and Apache County” Arizona in 1899.
Jowell rustled Two Dot Wilson’s cattle and altered the brands. Rustlers used a running iron to forge brands. A few lines or curves could be made to turn someone else’s cattle as their own. It was bad news to be caught with such an iron. Jowell was eventually convicted of his crime and sent up to the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. After serving four years, Jowell was paroled. Seven months later he was arrested again when he broke parole and stole cattle again. He returned to Montana State Prison but only served about one year before he was released again.
Two Dot Wilson’s branding iron on display at the Montana Historical Society Museum
That wasn’t the end of the story. It was at Deer Lodge that Jowell (alias Rex Roberts and Dalton I Sparks) met George Ricketts, and Harvey Whitton (alias James Hall, James B O’Neal and Jim Ross), both convicted of murder. That alliance meant death for Deputy Sheriff Joseph Brannin. Ricketts assisted Jowell in the murder of the Deputy Sheriff on November 16, 1911. A few months later when Jowell escaped from a moving train after testifying at the trial of Ricketts, he was aided by Whitton who was using the alias of Jim Ross.
There is much more to that tale, but I wonder, “What if Two Dot Wilson’s brand had not been two dots that could be relatively easy to alter with a running iron? If Jowell had not formed an alliance with the other men in prison, would he have followed a path that brought the death of “Uncle Joe?” I guess we will never know.
So, the next time you’re in Two Dot, remember that Two Dot is more than just another Western cow town.
My Guest Author today is my Daddy. One morning, I gave him an assignment to write a story about harvesting ice from the beaver ponds and storing the huge ice cubes in the icehouse that lasted into summer. His assignments were to provide more detail on life in the mountains and served as therapy to keep his mind active as well as his writing skills. Here is his story:
Almost every ranch had an icehouse. Ours was a frame building which leaned against the meat house. It was covered with inch boards, both on the inside of the studding and on the outside. The space between the boards was insulated with sawdust. Inside the building more sawdust surrounded the stack of ice blocks. Folks on the prairie used straw for insulation. If they were near a sawmill, they used sawdust, which looked better floating on the top of a glass of iced tea.
Getting ice was a neighborhood affair. February or March was a good time to put up ice. By then Dad could drive the International truck onto the Brannin beaver ponds. The ice there was thick and clean. It was sawed into blocks about sixteen inches wide and twice as long. Two husky men used a pair of ice tongs to pull the ice out of the water. The blocks were then dragged up a plank onto Brannin’s horse drawn sled or Ward and Parker’s truck to be hauled to the appropriate ice houses. There it would be buried until ice using time in July or August.
The ice kept well. A fellow down by Big Timber named, Lester Mack, had his icehouse burn to the ground. The mound of sawdust and ice blocks survived the fire and the Mack family dug out ice all summer.
We had missed the midwinter birthday party (for Sonny Tronrud), but we got to watch the men put up ice. This time they did it on a Saturday. On weekdays we had seen the men put the ice blocks into the icehouse. However, we had never seen them saw the blocks on the pond. We were anxious to see this. When our lumberjacks sawed down trees and cut them into logs, one worker would get on each end of the saw. They’d pull it back and forth while it ate into the wood. It always took two men.
We wondered about the ice sawing operation. We knew that one person would stand on top of the ice. We couldn’t imagine where his sawing partner would stand. “Maybe it’s under the ice!” Sister Ellen was hoping that the bowlegged hired man would be the fellow operating the bottom end of the saw!
Effie Bowlegs had the Winter Mopes. Not only was he cross, but he had also been doing things which brought no reward – like bossing Sister Ellen. Besides this he overate. No doubt a symptom of the Mopes. He had been reaching across the dinner table to get a third helping of navy beans before the rest of us could get seconds. He never even asked for them – just reached across the table without so much as a “Please pass,” “Thank you,” or anything. Sister was hoping he’d have to stand in water over his head and pull one end of the saw. When we got to the pond, they didn’t have a two man saw. Instead they had a saw with only one handle. There was no one down in the lower regions.
Effie Bowlegs, standing
Barney Brannin marked off the ice in rectangles. He was showing off for the schoolteacher. Her smile lifted him out of his winter doldrums. Uncle Gus had to work his off. He chopped a hole in the ice and started sawing. Soon the center of the pond looked like a big checkerboard with ice blocks floating on it. The next task was to get the ice out of the water.
One piece of ice had missed being cut in two. It was a monster block which floated among the other chunks. Father motioned to Billy Briner and Jimmy Hicks, who were the teenagers in the squad of workers. “Hook the ice tongs in it and pull the bloody thing out,” he said. “It will hold down our load.”
Ice tongs have two long steel legs which are fastened together like a giant salad server. The handle ends have large loops for handholds. The other end has sharpened points which are forced into the ice. The boys hooked the tongs into the block and pulled it part way out of the water. Mr. Bowlegs watched critically. Not only did he eat all the beans, he was also standing around with his teeth in his mouth telling others what to do, which goes along with severe cases of Mopes.
“You’ve got to submerge it first,” Mr. Bowlegs said. “Huh?” “Submerge it. Don’t you know what submerge means? Push the block of ice under the water. You’ve been watching us all day. And, when it bobs up, jerk it onto the top of the ice.”
The day was cold. Snow was sifting over the top of the pond. The teenagers pushed down, one on each end of the tongs. The block dipped into the water. They yanked as it bobbed to the top. The ice made it about halfway up and slid back. The boys held the tongs ready to give another try. “I can do it by myself.” Their self-appointed boss pushed the youngsters aside and grasped a tong handle in each hand. “Just shove her down,” he said as he ducked the block at the edge of the water coated ice. “Then yank her out like this.”
The supervisor braced his feet and gave a big tug. The block bounced up and the block sunk down again. Mr. Bowlegs’ feet slipped. The down pull did the rest. There were wild gyrations followed by a royal splash as Bowlegs demonstrated the finer points of submersion. When he surfaced, Father said, “Hook the blooming tongs in him and flop him out of the water.”
Winter at the Brannin Ranch
Before Billy could oblige, someone grabbed the swimmer’s sleeve and landed him. He hobbled back to the ranch house half a mile away! By the time he got there his clothes were frozen and he was clanking like a knight in armor. His teeth chattered until supper time and he didn’t eat but two helpings of beans. He even said, “Please pass,” for those.
People will tell you, Winter Mopes is a drastic malady. Drastic maladies are cured by drastic measures. Even clergy burn out might be cured by a mid-winter baptism in an ice pond.
As Uncle Dick says, “It’s a bad cure that don’t do no good.”
