My granddad always had a tale and a laugh, but when he pulled out his fiddle and tucked it near his armpit, something special happened. His fingers danced on the strings as he drew the bow and sent old tunes rising to the ceiling. Those same songs had moved the dancing feet of prairie farmers and ranchers years before.
In his “batchin’” days, my granddad roamed the northern prairies and worked the harvest from Montana to Canada. The harvest’s end meant a celebration. It didn’t take long for news to spread throughout the prairies. If there was going to be a dance, that meant they needed a fiddler. When my granddad got the word, it was nothing for my him to pack his fiddle on the back of his saddle and take a one or two day’s horseback ride to visit with neighbors and play for the dance. The house emptied of furniture became the dance floor. Well into the next morning, the dance continued. As neighhbors returned to their homes, the furniture was taken back in the house and it was business as usual.
My granddad slid into his saddle, bedroll and fiddle tied on the back, with memories stowed away and a few extra dollars tucked in his pocket. He rode off across the prairie with a smile. Another harvest awaited.
How I would have loved to have seen one of those harvest dances!
by my guest author, my dad, with a story from the mountains
Sister Ellen was born on the Fourth of July. This gave her an identity with American History. In her imagination she took part in such things as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Boston Tea Party. Oft times she said, “Let’s play the Revolutionary War.” Being born on the Fourth of July also gave Sister an heritage of independence and revolution. Like the signers of the Declaration of Independence, she fought against the British, and a British person lived at our house.
The Britisher was Grandfather Ward. He carried a lot of fire in his youth, but they let him stay in Great Britain until he was nearly sixty years old. When he was retired, but not burned out, he came to the States to reclaim them for the British Empire. He didn’t make a success of this which made him touchy. This touched off Sister Ellen.
Grandfather and Ellen had a communication problem. My seven-year-old sister didn’t know that “heather” was a bush. When Grandfather said, “Sookie, do you see the birds flitting in the heather?” Sister stared at him with her mouth open. Other words caused similar problems. She thought that “fetch” was a dog’s name. When Grandfather said, “Sookie, fetch me that magazine,” she looked at him and growled. If they were on a collision course through the house, he declared right of way. “Mind the way, Sookie, mind the way.” ometimes he looked at her like she was jolly well daft and said, “Mind what you’re doing, Sookie. Mind what you’re doing.” Sookie found it difficult to mind her mother, let alone to mind her way or mind her chores.
Grandfather had been a prize fighter back in the days when the art was called fisticuffs and the fighters used bare fists and poised for Currier and Ives pictures. Grandfather used to soak his hands in salt brine to make them tough for the art of fisticuffs. In his younger days boxing matches lasted many rounds and a round didn’t end until it had a knockdown. There was none of this nonsense of ringing a bell before someone was hearing bells. Grandfather wanted to bare‑fist‑box even though he had reformed and moved to the States. And then he fell down and broke his leg. Now he was laid up in the bedroom under the attic.
One afternoon, before Mother left for the garden to pick peas, she gave some last minute instructions. “Robert,” she told me, “I expect you to mind your sister.” Then she turned to my sister. “Ellen,” she said, “don’t wake Barbara from her nap, and don’t you children bother your grandfather.” “Oh, we won’t,” Ellen promised. This meant that she wouldn’t bother Barbara because our younger sister acted like a cat with his tail caught in the door when she first woke up. Furthermore, Ellen would be cautious about Grandfather. However, she had a Fourth of July Spirit that kept her looking for British soldiers to battle.
The attic was strategically located above Grandfather’s bedroom. The attic floor had large cracks in it. The largest ones were over the bed. There was a huge knothole in the floor straight above Grandfather’s snoring nose. The elder Ward complained. He complained because we ate hot bread (biscuits). He griped about children knocking dirt down through cracks in the ceiling over his bed ‑ especially when he was laid up with a broken leg. He complained that he didn’t get the respect an elder was due ‑ although he had a box of apples beside the bed because someone wanted him to recover.
When Mother was in the house we couldn’t play in the attic. She didn’t want us to knock dust down on Grandfather. Mother didn’t like to hear Grandfather scold. But now she was outside and Sister said, “Let’s go play like the attic is Bunker Hill.”
“We better not,” I suggested. “We’ll knock dust on Grandfather.” “He’s asleep,” Ellen replied. “We’ll get caught.” “Mother is down in the garden picking peas and changing the water. And besides, Mama said you were supposed to mind me. Now climb the ladder into the attic.”
We walked across the attic floor. Suddenly a voice growled from the lower regions. “Hey, you tots, what are you doing up there?” “Nothing,” came Ellen’s sweet reply. “Nothing,” I added. “Just playing.” “Your mother wont let you do that. You’re knocking trash down on my covers.” “Let’s have a parade,” Sister suggested. We paraded. “I say, you tykes, quit that bloody tramping.” “We’re marching.” “I’ll pitch you down the stairs. Do you want me to throw you down?” Sister Ellen whispered. “He can’t get up here. He has a broken leg.” “Watch me jump,” I said.
Then we saw the knothole. We peeked through the knothole. A Britisher eyed the little eyes peering from the ceiling. Ellen remembered what the New Englanders did at Bunker Hill. She scooped up a handful of torn paper bits and dust and handed it to me. “Don’t fire until you see the whites of his eyes,” she said. I saw the whites of his eyes.
The Britisher’s eyes closed. He blew puffs of paper off the end of his nose. “Hey, you scamps!” he threatened, “I’ll tell your mother, and she’ll bloody well smack your bottoms.” He sounded serious and his face was red ‑ a serious color with Grandfather. Ellen looked at me. Would a Britisher tell on someone who was born on the Fourth of July? I nodded my head. I thought he would tell. I looked at Ellen. Would our mother make an appropriate response? “That’s the kind of woman she is,” Sister sighed.
With an ally like that, a Britisher would surely win the Second Battle of Bunker Hill. We crawled out of the attic and made a peace treaty. When Mother came home we were playing on the front porch. Grandfather was laying in bed with a smile on his face. He had fought another round and won the bout.
It was an exciting weekend. Buck drove his sister back to school from their home in the mountains. The trip to town meant that Buck would see Jeannie, the girl from the prairie who made his eyes light up and his heart flutter. He had been nervous about asking her out on a date. That was understandable considering that he had been warned the girl from the prairie would kick in his radio or knock in his slats if he misbehaved. He finally got the nerve to ask, and she agreed to go on a date with him, and this was the day!
Buck and his chaperoneBuck and Jeannie
The date with Jeannie promised to be better than the one he had with another of his sister’s friends. For that date, he saved money for a month just to take the girl to the picture show and afterwards a coke at Flasted’s Drug Store. In those days, they had to have escorts. Not only did Buck have to pay for his date, but also the chaperone, his sister. There were a couple more tag-a-long chaperones as well, the girl’s twin brothers. The twins sat with Buck, with his sister and date behind them. He even got to treat all of them for cokes or shakes at the drug store just down the street from the Grand Hotel.
Buck could hardly contain himself as he picked Jean up at Carnegie Library. They went to a movie. She didn’t have twin brothers, so the couple got to sit with each other. Afterwards, they shared a milkshake at Cole’s Drug. Buck was careful to behave. He sure didn’t want her to kick in the radio especially since he had borrowed Ernest’s car.
The first date was successful, and by their fourth date, he managed to steal a kiss. He didn’t even get his slats knocked in.
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.
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.
“Thumbs Up” usually means everything is A-OK. But if a thumb gets smashed with a hammer or gets stabbed by a splinter, a “thumbs up” quickly brings a mom on the run to kiss the booboo or extract the annoyingly small sliver, especially if the thumb is accompanied by a tear-streaked face.
On one occasion, two little “thumbs up” carried a more serious meaning. Such was the day two little boys had an unexpected adventure.
The evening was pleasant as we sat and chatted after a meal with friends. Two little boys had gone off on their own to play as they usually did. Without warning, the night was split open with the shrill cries – no, wails – of two little boys in unison. We all jumped up at the same time and ran toward the screams. Something was terribly wrong! As we turned the corner, we saw half of the problem. One boy stood outside our car with his thumb slammed in the car door.
We still heard slightly muted howls from the other little fella, but where was he? Someone opened the car door, and there on the inside of the car was the rest of the equation – a sobbing tear-stained boy. As the door opened, he slowly pulled his hand back, thumb lifted high while the little guy on the outside lifted his offensive thumb. Like a mirror image, both boys had somehow managed to slam their respective digits in the car door. The sniffling boys held up their throbbing red thumbs, rosy cheeks smeared with drying salty tear drops.
The comedy of the unbelievable predicament was overshadowed until we knew the result of the small appendages. Once we realized the boys would live – and would keep their thumbs – we laughed and laughed. I don’t think anyone could have recreated the incident even they tried.
So, if you see someone lift up their thumb, especially if tears are involved, it may not necessarily mean “Thumbs Up!”
Talk about luck. My friend, Mike, got to stay at Brannins all year. The Brannins – Grannie and the four bachelor uncles – lived two miles below us. The reason Mike got to live there was because the Uncles were going to make a Dude Ranch! A Dude Ranch was a place where Easterners paid money to work in a hay field, get thrown from a horse and do things that westerners would pay money to keep from doing.
The Brannins were building a guest lodge. It was a new house as big as two barns. Half a dozen log cabins strung out beside the lodge like chicken biddies beside the mother hen. A community rest room with HIS and HERS sides and shower facilities sat in the midst of the cabins. Running water was piped in from a spring on the side of the mountain. All of this construction required an imported work crew.
Two brothers-in-law, Bill Briner and Dad Schraeder, were a part of the work force. Briner brought Cousin Billy. Dump Woods came also. Minnie, Buster and Mike came with him. Buster went to school with Jack and Billy. Mike was like me – too young for school. He wouldn’t have been a good influence on the teacher anyhow. He pretend-drove the Model-T truck smuggling beer across the Canadian border. I helped him. Besides this, Mike ate dirt.
Minnie told her youngest son not to eat dirt. She said that it wasn’t good for him. But, as Uncle Dick would say, “Telling kids that something isn’t good for them don’t make no difference.” Leastwise it didn’t with Mike.
The men were laying a pipeline to the guest lodge. My friend motioned for me to follow him. We slid down into the trench and walked to where a streak of clay cut through the diggings. Mike took a handful of dirt, inspected it for wildlife, took off a bite for himself and passed part of it to me. “Try this,” he said.
I touched it with my tongue.
Mike ate his handful and reached for more. “Eat it,” he commanded. “It will make you mean.”
When you are five years old and live in a wilderness surrounded by bears, badgers and a vivid imagination you need all the help you can get. I swallowed my mouthful of dirt.
Before I could feel the meanness taking hold, Dump Woods came along with a length of pipe. He laid the pipe down and picked up Mike. “By golly darn,” he crooned. “Here’s Daddy’s Little Darling.”
Daddy’s Little Darling fooled that old man, but he didn’t fool me. On the way back to the house we walked across the field. Mike picked up a handful of dirt from a molehill. “This is the real stuff,” he said. But he didn’t offer me any. Not that it mattered. The Lord helps those who help themselves. Or as Uncle Dick said, “If you want to get good at something, you gotta practice it.”
This little guy never got very mean. I guess he didn’t eat enough dirt.
A soldier (my dad) writes to his daughter of his remembrances of December 7, 1941
For Sheri
On Monday, December 8, 1941, the President of the United States addressed Congress:
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which shall live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the empire of Japan…….
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Manila. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island….
…I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.(GREAT SPEECHES, Edited by John Grafton, Dover Publications.)
It took Congress 33 minutes to pass the resolution declaring war. The vote was 88 -0 in the Senate and 388 – 1 in the House. The one vote against was by Jeannette Rankin, Representative from Montana.
December 7, 1941, was one of the most memorable days in my youth. I was a 16-year-old Senior in High School and was at home in the mountains on one of the last weekends before Christmas.
Snow was drifted high in front of the east windows. Thick icicles hung from the eaves. It was about ten o’clock. Soon we would be heading back to Big Timber where we boarded to go to school.
The front door opened, the hired man stomped snow off his overshoes and said, “The Japs are bombing Pearl Harbor and we are in the middle of a war.”
I turned 18 on June 20, 1943. September 10th I was inducted into the army. I did Basic Training in Fort Benning, Georgia, had a few weeks schooling at Purdue University in Indiana, and then went to Camp Swift, Texas, near Austin. I was assigned to the Company E, 407th Infantry Regiment in the 102nd Infantry Division. We were transferred to Fort Dix, New Jersey. We shipped overseas in September, 1944. and were transported to the border of Holland and Germany where we became part of the Ninth Army under General William Simpson. I served as Platoon Messenger. On December 2nd I was wounded at the town of Flossdorf in Germany.
I was hospitalized in England and then was returned to France where I was attached to the 791 Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion guarding air strips in France on the German border. We were part of the Ninth Air Force.
By the middle of April there were more German prisoners than there were German airplanes and we were sent to guard a prisoner of war compound near Rennes, France. We were there when Germany surrendered. Our next move was to a P.W. compound near Cherbourg. We were there when Japan surrendered. Our next move was to Camp Herbert Tarreyton where I managed billeting for army officers being returned home. In March of 1946 I returned to the States and received my discharge.
When a four-year-old lived in Sweet Grass Canyon in the Crazy Mountains he couldn’t tell what would happen. For instance one time a mad bull escaped from a China Shop and crept into Ward and Parker’s bunkhouse.
It was early spring. The roads were muddy and there were no teamsters to put up over night. One night I stayed in the bunkhouse with the logging crew. About midnight I heard a monster bull prowling around, sniffing, and bellowing. Suddenly I realized that bulls could pull a latch string and open a bunkhouse door. The bellow soon became a roar that shook the inside of the bunkhouse. I lay in the bed beside Ernest Parker and listened. The sniffing and bellowing sounded like it came from Ernest’s bed.
“SSSRRRGHRrr. Huff. Puff. ZZRRRrghr, pant sss.”
Nothing sounds worse to boy raised in the mountains than a mad bull at midnight, unless it is a mad bull bedding down with him.
I eased out of bed. I could see Ernest laying on his back. The moonlight reflected from his bald head. His nose pointed straight in the air. I didn’t wake him because I could hear the bull right there, and I needed the biggest help I could find.
“AAARRRGHRR. Snap. Gasp.”
I hightailed it to the main house like a kitten with a dog chasing it. By the time I reached the door I was bawling to high heaven. “DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!”
My father raised out of bed. He rubbed the sleepers out of his eyes and lit the kerosene lamp.
“Daddy. The bull’s out!”
“Having a nightmare,” Mother mumbled.
“Daddy, there’s a bull in the bunkhouse!”
“Why didn’t you call Ernest?”
“The bull got him!”
Father took the lantern and disappeared into the danger of no man’s land. In a few minutes he was back.
My daddy was a brave man! He sat on the bed and laughed.
“Be quiet, Bud, you’ll wake up all the children,” Mother said as she tucked me into bed.
The next morning, when we sat down to the breakfast table, the hired man gave me some advice. “If the bull gets out again, just punch Ernest in the ribs and tell him to roll over.”
Ernest glared at the stack of hotcakes sitting on the table. “Lay back your ears,” he said, “and go after it.”
Sometimes people need all the help they can get. We all have a Father we can call on.