Category: Guest Authors

My Guest Author, my dad, said, “both scars and joys were imbedded in my childhood memories.” He often told this story a “stray kid in the early thirties when folks were too poor to nourish lice.”

Father was delivering a load of lumber when he saw a hitchhiker beside the country road.  The hiker was about half grown, but his hands, feet, and nose were fully grown.  His sunburned neck climbed out of a ragged shirt and his Adam’s apple made a small shelf more sunburned that the rest of him.  The young man said that he had left home in Wyoming because his widowed mother didn’t have enough money to feed her family.  For a week he had been hitching across the prairies of eastern Montana.  Then somebody told him he might get a job on one of the mountain ranches west of Melville.  That’s where Father picked him up.

Maybe it was because of the boy’s story.  Maybe it was because his oldest son was confined to bed and needed company.  Maybe it was because Bud Ward was that kind of a man.  Whatever the reason, Father brought the hitchhiker home.  He introduced him as “Jimmy Hicks”.  This wasn’t his real name.  It was a name born out of depression times.  It symbolized a wandering youth in search of a place to stay and a place to work.

That night Alan Storm threw his spare shirt and blue jeans on a bed in the bunkhouse.  He came into the kitchen with the hired men and sat down to a square meal.  His sunburned Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.  For a skinny kid, he sure knew what do with food.

When it came to work the new hired hand wasn’t very experienced.  He chopped into rocks, fastened chains to logs the wrong way, got lost on the mountain and broke his ax handle.  When he carried in an arm load of stove wood, he stumped his toe and scattered sticks all over the floor.

After the first month, Ernest Parker summed up the situation.  “By the Great Horn Spoon,” he said, “that kid will never make a lumberjack.”

Some of the neighbors wondered how long the Hicks kid would keep his job.  But two and three months went by and still Jimmy Hicks stayed on.  His body was filling out, but he continued to dull his ax and get lost.  However, Jimmy had jobs that the neighbors did not know about.  In the evening, after work, he would get on his hands and knees on the lawn and I’d sit astraddle of his back and use him for a bucking horse.  When he was bucked out, even Sister Barbara could ride him without pulling leather.  After supper, Jimmy would sit in the middle room and talk to my brother.  There was about two years difference in their ages.

Brother Jack had lost the use of his legs and paralysis was creeping up his body.  He had received more x-ray treatments in Billings.  His hair had fallen out again, and the doctors said that nothing could be done to stop the growth of the tumor in his brain.  But in the evenings after supper, laughter resounded from the couch in the middle room.

Just like I’d find out in later years, giants and angels come in all sizes, and when you entertained one, you didn’t know what would happen.  There would be good things to remember.  In the next decade there would be sad things too, for a battlefield at Salerno Beach in Italy would cut short any more memories about a stray kid we knew as Jimmy.

by my Guest Author, my dad – the man of the mountains

The people down in Big Timber and Melville thought we were crazy to live that far back in the Crazies in the wintertime. They were almost right. 

Winter was a son of a gun. For four months of the year we put chains on our car at the Olson Field Bridge four miles away.  We carried a snow shovel and even then, sometimes, we walked and left our automobile off the road or in a snow drift.  

Some winters the Cletrac tractor was the only thing that could manage the road between our house and the herd of cattle four miles down country. My father would wrap up snug and lay down on the sled that I pulled down the road and back.  And driving the caterpillar tractor was cold with a capital K. At times I tied twine to the brake rods and walked behind it guiding it with lines like it was a team of horses.    

Anyone who lived that far back in the mountain wilderness got acquainted with the curse of winter. The book writer in the family might say, “Winter is a bitch.” But there were also blessings. Just come with me and find a special place and enjoy our land of snowdrifts. Winter gave us a wonderland for hand sleds, skis and red nosed children. When we came home from school, we’d grab our sleds and head for the sled race tracks on the drifted hillsides.

On one sled race that I especially remember, Sister Barbara run-started her sled, sped down the hill, crossed a swale, and landed on the limbs of a fallen tree. She jumped up with blood flowing from a tree limb gash and shouted. “I won!” 

A part of the winning was having had a warm house to get into.  The west wind could be is driving snow across thehouse roof pouring off the eaves like a waterfall with the snow drift on the front side of the house so deep we had to shovelsnow away  to see out the  window – on days like that it’s nice to be hugged by a warm house. 

 Icicles could hang from eaves to the ground, the thermometer could read twenty degrees below zero, but who cared, if there was  a glowing fire place or a wood heater with red cheeks. 

The uncles had a super large house with a massive rock fireplace accented with a mantel covered with interesting Indian relics and the mounted head and antlers of large bull elk. That fireplace burned lots of wood and sent the heat up the chimney. The fireplace was more show than heat. It would warm the back of your legs if you stood in front of it. One of our home improvements was a stone fireplace that showed the head and antlers of a buck deer. The fireplace also housed a Heatilator that would consume any wood that would burn and throw out lots of heat.  Before that we had a heater stove that was made out of a fifty-gallon barrel. It had a draft vent that was borrowed from a manufactured stove. It might go “Put, put, put.” What it lacked in looks it made up by output. That stove would really put out the heat.  We liked to watch its red cheeks when it got really hot.

REAL WINTER COMFORT

J. Frost rides the wind tonight.
He shakes the window screen.
He whispers through the key hole,
“Let me in.”

The fire’s aglow inside,
The hearth log sends its flame
higher up the chimney,
When it hears Jack Frost’s name.

At every heart grown cold,
And every demon, dread, and doubt,
Light faith’s hearth log yet again
And coldness will flee out.

                                                                             January 15, 2018

Hope you’re feeling good. I’ve been wondering about you.

Hahaha. I think Effie Bowlegs is after you – still after you –  and maybe you’re after him.

One summer he was having a hard time there. Every time he’d go to the bathroom you wanted to go. And one time you told Barbara, “I’ll beat you to the toilet.” And she ran around the old shop and pulled the door open and pulled him off the commode. Hahaha.

And then another time you had me get off there behind the new shop and throw rocks at the toilet when he was headed in. Bang! Bang! It seems like that year he left work early because he had stomach trouble. Hahahaha

You didn’t like the way he drove Nina & Dolly. I didn’t either.  You rode with him and put your foot on the lines so he couldn’t pull them up and swat old Nina to have her keep up to Dolly.

Do you remember the first time you were in jail? Uncle Ed let us sit in the jail cell that Betsy Bowlegs had used when she was his guest. We got to sit in jail early. We thought that was quite a treat.  Betsy Bowlegs had been in jail because it was just her time for that. Betsy Bowlegs was – I don’t know her name except Uncle Ed always called her Betsy Bowlegs. He would get a telephone call on weekends from the Big Timber city police. They would say, “Mr. Brannin, so ‘n’so is down here and we want you to come down and get her because we can’t handle her.” So he would come and she would call him,  “Yes sir,” and “no sir,” and “Mr. Brannin,” and he’d keep her in the jail. Sometimes it was overnight and sometimes two days. One time she got so bad he had to escort her to Warm Springs to the nut house and she stayed awhile. She wasn’t related to Effie Bowlegs. Aunt Dora was related to Effie Bowlegs. I don’t know if Betsy Bowlegs was bowlegged or not. She was the Big Timber extra work for the city police. Sheri asked, “Did she drink?” Oh yes, she drank, I expect she did. Well, she couldn’t have drank because alcohol was – the states were dry – wasn’t allowed to be sold or drank. Her sober spells were kind of special. But the city police couldn’t handle Betsy Bowlegs, whatever her name was, and they would call him and he’d come and lock her – put her in jail – and she had one cell he called Betsy Bowlegs’ cell. He let you and me sit in it. He even closed the door on us.

I hope you’re doing real good.

If one of us lives to be a hundred I hope it’s you and not me.

Much love,

Buck

a real tale by my grandfather, Bee Knapp

The Missouri is a slow river and the ice freezes real deep. My cousin liked to load a sleigh full of folks and go to the UL ranch for a couple of days to dance. He had his horses sharp ice shod. He liked to drive four horses.

In June the water would come out from Three Forks and the Little Rockies. It would cover the ice. That which got under at rapids and waterfalls made a lot of pressure and the ice would blow. Ice jams would be heard 20-25 miles away.

One of the Missouri River ‘steaders was a little Irishman named Shorty Brannan. One time he got caught by a vicious hailstorm. There was a high wind and hail the size of goose egg.  The only shelter he found was a coyote den.  Brannan crawled in headfirst as far as he could go. He saved his life, but couldn’t sit down for some time.

Shorty had a homestead on the south side of the river. He had to boat to or swim to it in the summer. In winter he could cross on the ice.

The Missouri didn’t seem to dampen his spirits or interfere with his instinct to be a gentleman.  Brannan wasn’t sloppy.  He wore a suit, a white canvas suit. He kept it neat. Shorty rode a small, tough horse named Snookums. He kept the horse neat, too.

I was working for one of the Sun Prairie ranchers. That was the bachelor named Gus Tank. He homesteaded north of the river in the Lairb Hills. My father was a fine fiddler. Gus’s mansion was small, only one room, but the neighbors were aching for a party. Two of those pretty, half-breed Reynolds girls came down and said that they were going to have a dance and I was going to be the fiddler. They moved the bed and table outdoors and made a cake. The Sun Prairie people turned out with their jugs, and they danced all night. After breakfast the next morning some of the partiers had to get back to their own homesteads.

One girl, who had a homestead, was a “Blackdutch,” dark haired, single lady. I told her I’d get someone to ride home with her. Then I got Al McNeil aside and told him that Bertha sure needed an escort. The two left on what was the first step toward the hitching post.

Some of the others at the cabin decided they needed to stay around a little longer. They wanted to show off their riding abilities. Bill was a local cowboy who had taken a shine to my sister, Leone. He rode every bronc on the place and was chosen to bust out Gus’ six year old bull.

A couple of hands snubbed the big animal to a post and put a sursingle on him. Bill climbed topside and managed to stay there. The bull sunfished across the meadow but couldn’t get rid of his rider so he headed for the pond. He stopped in the middle of it. Only the bull’s head, hump and rider stuck out of the water. Bill was spurring and waving his hat but to no avail. He had the wettest boots in the country and was hollering for a pickup rider. The bull was in a balk.

Shorty Brannan went to the rescue. He bragged that Snookums could handle any critter on the prairie. Shorty climbed aboard, white canvas suit and all, and urged his horse into the pond. He threw the rope, a perfect shot over the bull’s horns.  Brannan dallied a hitch around the saddle horn. When Snookums pulled out the slack, the bull flipped his head sideways and upset the horse. Shorty came dragging out of there, by golly. His suit was in disarray. He washed his clothes down, got on old Snookums. The last we seen of him he was riding over the hill without saying a word.

Bill sort of tarnished his record as a bull rider. He come out wet and muddy. It was just as well. Later on Leone married Charlie Sherod.

A winter or two later, Shorty Brannan was riding Snookums across the river. They fell through a blow hole on the Missouri ice and washed down the stream under the Ice.  They didn’t find them until the spring thaw.  

by my guest author, Robert B Ward

The senior citizen at the sawmill on the Sweetgrass was named Nina Bea after the Basin Creek School teacher. Her teammate was Dolly Grey. When Dolly died back in 39, the years started catching up on Nina – seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. That’s getting old for a horse, and the last years — well if you were part of a team, you’d know. The last years were lonely. When you’d stabled with your partner on your off side for fifteen years, pulled a wagon  with her on the off side, grazed together, keeping the same formation – then things just aren’t the same. Those younger ones didn’t have the memories, weren’t teammates. 

So it was Nina went into retirement.  

In late fall when the hill pasture was dried up, and the grass was short, the gray mare, now turned white, was put in the small field with better pasture, and then in the hay meadow after the hay was taken off. She gleaned with the milk cows until snow covered the ground, then she had her own rest home in the horse barn with fresh hay every night and a can of ground oats every day. That was the way a horse should retire after long years of service. Bud Ward kept her under special care. She whickered when she saw him and strolled toward the barn door in cold weather. Twenty years plus and heading for more.  

She’d been born black. Her father was a Percheron State Champion and a ton of horseflesh. First picture of Bud Ward’s team of mares shows Dolly brown and broad, and Nina, a rich dapple gray, some two or three hands taller. The dapples faded to white, and the white was whiter. That’s the way with dapple gray work horses.

Spring came, snow melting spring, not grass growing weather. Bud let the old girl in the barn and she ate the can of ground oats, walked out of the barn where she wouldn’t cause any disturbance taking her out, lay down flat and breathed her last. That was the right way to go. Bud Ward pulled the pipe out of his mouth and turned away. He felt like he was getting old, too.

an excerpt from a sermon preached on July 30, 2006

Today, my parents would have celebrated their 76^th Wedding Anniversary. Sixteen years ago, after their return from celebrating their 60^th, Mama came through the back door grinning from ear to ear. That was not my mother’s usual look, but on that particular day she beamed like a smitten teenage girl. She went on and on about what they saw, everything they did, and all their meals. I didn’t recall ever seeing her like that. Little did she know that they had celebrated their last anniversary together. In less than a month, her life was taken prematurely. 

Just a few days after their return from their trip, Daddy filled the pulpit for a pastor friend. His message was entitled “Listening for God.” The following is an excerpt from that message: 

“This week we celebrated our 60^th wedding anniversary by going to Helen, GA.  Here’s a story I picked up about old times from those Georgia Blue Mountains” —

“On those mornings when the old wooden bridge would be covered by heavy frost, the sight of his bare footprints would make us hurt all over. He would cross the bridge first, then we would cross. The cold prints of his bare feet would appear as though they had been burned into the planks of the old wooden bridge. The girl would carefully scrape away all signs of his bare footprints with her shiny, expensive little shoes, as if that would make his feet warmer, but when we got to school his feet would still be blue from the cold. I never knew him to own or wear a pair of shoes.

She was the prettiest girl in the whole valley and her father owned one of the largest and finest farms. His family lived back in the mountains, and his father sold moonshine whisky.  He believed that was the reason he had built the wall between the girls and himself.  It was an invisible wall, and Grandma said that was the hardest kind to get rid of.  It was as if he were doing penance for the wrongs of his father by his own suffering.

The war came on. The boy enlisted, and we never saw him gain.  It was the girl’s mother who told Grandma about them seeing the boy for the last time. They had been in Atlanta and were on Peachtree Street.  Everybody stopped so a company of soldiers could march by. Somebody in the crowd said they were going overseas to fight in the war. At their front was a big strapping first sergeant, who except of his uniform and his fine army shoes looked like the barefoot boy from the mountains.

When they reached the girls and her mother, the first sergeant ordered the soldiers to halt.  There they stood, not 10 feet apart, and when he turned and looked into her eyes, the invisible wall came tumbling down with a roar like thunder that must have been heard way back to the valley.  With all those people looking on and hearing what he said, the mountain boy, who had never spoken one word to the girl in all his life, said the three words she most wanted to hear.

He only had a one-way ticket to the hell of France, and she would never see him again. She came back to the valley.  Grandma told us that you would see her come out of the house in the evenings and walk down the road as far as the old wooden bridge. There she would stand for a while, staring at the worn planks as if she hoped to see those bare frosty footprints, even in the hot summertime.”

Now, both of my parents are gone. When I visit the prairies of my mother’s youth or walk in the mountains of my father’s younger days, even then I look for their footsteps. Though I can no longer see their footprints, I often think I hear their faint voices in the wind.

My Guest Author, my dad, grew up where the magic lives

The sky was covered with storm clouds. The January day was short without the thick clouds blanketing the afternoon light. Snow had been falling for the last two hours. Now, the wind was whipping it across the long open flat. The horses faced into it. The family huddled in the wagon.  The heavy robes, made from Angora goat hides, failed to keep out all the cold.

At times the wagon trail was wiped out. The Thompson hills had disappeared. The mountains behind them were blotted out. The team moved slowly ahead.  They knew the way even when they could not see the ground ten feet ahead. They stopped at a gate in a barbwire fence which stretched from the hills on the left to the drop off in the canyon on the right.  

One of the boys opened the gate and the team plodded through. They had three hours to go. The light was gone. 

More than the light was gone. The woman fought against a quiet despair made worse by the howling blizzard. Her husband was gone. 

The children were not gone – the wagon was full of her children. The older boys, now grown into men, took turns facing the wind while the others covered themselves the best they could.  

That was the way the day was ending. That was the way the week was ending.  If she had any tears left Guadalupe Brannin did not share them at this time. 

Her husband was dead.  He was gone.  

She had a foreboding of that when he left some weeks earlier to get to a town with some medical help.  He had on his corduroy trousers. The crown of his hat was pushed down in Texas style.  He rode old Bob. He’d been invincible, but now, the invincibility was claimed by a grave on the far side of town thirty miles back and across the river.

“Mama,” one of the boys said, “Mama, we’re in no shape to make it home tonight.” 

 The Grossfield cabin was just up ahead.

“We’d better stop.”

The team pulled off to the right where a log cabin huddled against the rolling hills. A dog barked a welcome from his nest in the barn. The door of the cabin opened. Abram Grossfield looked like an angel from heaven, and the family came in out of the storm.

They would remember that night. They would remember that there was a welcome after a storm, that there was hope after a graveyard. 

The fire was warm. The children were fed. Condolences were given. There was talk of the mountains and the news from the settlement. And the house was warm.

The next morning the storm had eased up. The wagon was loaded. The team plodded up the draw and over the hill that broke down to the Sweet Grass. By then the sky had cleared. From the top of the ridge Guadalupe Brannin looked down into the mountain valley. She saw the log house on the far side of the valley, and the root cellar that the boys had dug into the hillside just in time to hold a wagon load of potatoes for the winters supply. 

She’d been there only two years, but this was home, and home is where the magic lives.