My Guest Author is my granddad. He was a kind gentleman. He never met a stranger and never turned his nose down on anyone regardless of color, status, or even smell. Meet “Old Stink” who was one of the many characters my granddad met along his prairie wanderings.
Old Stink earned his name. He lived in a cave in the Little Rockies not far from the mining town of Zortman. He didn’t speak good English. He was probably a French Canadian Half Breed. Rumor had it he had got in some trouble with the law in Wyoming, maybe killed a fellow or robbed a bank or Post Office, who knows, but he seems to have had some money when the mail carrier came by to visit with him. Old Stink had worked for the Flying L and when the old foreman was in charge, he furnished him with staples. Stink had a hide tent in front of his cave, used it in the summer and always slept outside for fear that someone would surround his cave while he was asleep. Never did, he was too old, and you couldn’t get that close to him for the smell. I know. One time I stopped by and saw Old Stink.
One day, after hearing rumors about the old man’s diet, the sheriff came by and asked Stink what he lived on. He pointed to some of the neighbor’s cattle running on the open range. When asked what he did with the hides, he led the sheriff to the edge of a cut bank above the Missouri and pointed to the river. He lived off of antelope, too. The folks didn’t mind his eating their beef. Someone had to keep the old rascal.
One day a rider came by and didn’t see him sitting in the fresh air. He told some of the folks that the old man was missing. They came out and found him in the cave about half dead. They talked over what they should do with him. He couldn’t live 24 hours like he was, but if they got him to town he might last 36. The sheriff came out and got him and put him in a little house behind the jail. The old fellow got so he liked it and he lived on a while. They said he was 101 when he died.
He was an old man, Indian and Frenchman. Strong! Strong smelling feller!
My Guest Author is my Granddad. You’ve heard, and maybe even said, “I’m hungry enough to eat a horse.” That takes on new meaning with this tale.
My brother, Buster, worked for a fellow named Loomis. He had the job of keeping his place one winter while Loomis went back east. The deal was to keep things going until, “You run out of meat.”
Buster moved in and found the flour, salt, sugar, and coffee. The meat was in the meat house. He went down to cut a piece for supper. The carcass was skilled out and hanging high. The hind legs still had the critter’s feet on it, feet with fetlocks and horse hooves! Buster hesitated until his stomach growled. Then he whetted the butcher knife and started cutting steak. His job lasted until the meat was gone. When Loomis came back, he saw me in town and told me, “I’d not do what Buster done this winter. I’m going to give him more than he expected.”
My Guest author today is my Granddad as he recounts tales of life on the Montana prairie. I can still see his face as he told tales of sheepherders. A shadow passed over him as he told of the old sheepherder losing his life, but his whole face lit up when he told about the Cotter brothers.
the storyteller
Charlie Leap was a sheepherder up along the Missouri River in Montana. He hadn’t started out that way, he got in some sort of a jackpot back east and joined the cavalry. They put his outfit out west protecting the builders of the Great Northern Railroad. After the rail line was built, Leap became a cowboy. He had cursed up and down about the people who were bringing sheep into the country. But when he got so crippled up he couldn’t ride anymore, he got a job herding sheep. The sheep in the northern plains came in by the thousands. The Veseth outfit was big into sheep. Some of the cowhands, who used to run their horses through the sheep scattering them every which way, ended up as Veseth’s herders. They didn’t know that the coming of the sheep would be all that would give them a job when they got too stove up to ride.
The Phillips outfit must have had 30-40,000 sheep. Jim Cotter had only four bands. His partner, Marvin Jones, was with him in the business. When the bad winter hit, their herd was almost wiped out. One night they were following the sheep. The wind was blowing snow. They couldn’t see anything. The partner stopped Cotter. “Don’t go any further,” he said. In the dark they knew something was wrong. The whole band had gone over a bluff. By the time the winter was over most of the sheep were gone.
That was the “bad winter.” There were several bad winters. I believe the worse one was ’87. It changed the livestock industry in the Northern Plains. Until then some cattle and sheep herds were wintered without hay. After that the livestock men started making hay while it was summer. The livestock killing winter would long be remembered.
A herder stays with his flock. Sometimes the sheep will leave the bedground on a stormy night. One herder followed his sheep on a blizzardy night. They came to a drift fence. The herder held out one arm and let it ride against the top wire. The arm was freezing and without feeling. He’d raise it up at each post. They found him the next day, frozen to death, his arm sawed deeply from barb wire.
sheep wagon
Jimmy Cotter came over from Ireland. He knew about sheep. He didn’t have any money, so he got a job herding sheep on shares. After a few years the share was doing so good that the boss said, “You ought to be paying me. You’re doing as good as I am. Maybe you better get off on your own.” So Jimmy got a partner and went off on his own. His brother, Mickey, came over from the old country and helped Jimmy.
When Jimmy married the Indian girl that was doing the cooking, Mick moved out of the house. But he still kept working for his brother. One winter, after several weeks being snowed in and running short on supplies, Jimmy sent Mickey to town. That was Malta, forty miles away. When Mick didn’t show up at the end of ten days, I went after him. When I found him, he was having a good time in one of the saloons and saying, “Me brother James will foot the bill.” I think that may have been the same time that Mickey failed to get the groceries. “Me brother, James, gave me sixty dollars for grocery money,” he said, “and I spent eighty of it for whiskey.”
Mickey was quite a herder. He stuck with his sheep during a storm and froze his feet. He lost his toes and the balls of his feet and stumped around on the end of his legs. He managed to get out in public and took in a dance, but he wouldn’t get on the dance floor. A lady by the name of Stella said, “I’ll get old Mickey out on the floor.” She went over to coax him to dance.
He declined the favor. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I’ve lost me balls you know.”
Stella spread the news of why Mick couldn’t dance.
My Guest Author today is my Dad as he shares memories of his Freshmen year at Sweet Grass High School. Go Sheepherders!
My 1925 beginning was in a mountain wilderness twenty miles from a country store, a post office or a telephone. Electric lights were something magic which they had in town forty miles away. My older brother died when I was six years old. I had two sisters, and there were two girl cousins who lived two miles down the road, but the nearest boy my age lived nine miles away. Sometimes, I knew what lonely was.
After seven years and eight grades of education in a log cabin school with a top enrollment of six, I was sent forty miles away to a mind-bending 150 student high school in Big Timber, Montana.
In those days they initiated the freshmen class by marching us down Main Street. The boys were dressed in dresses and the girls in boys clothes. I won the honor as being the best dressed freshman boy in the Initiation Parade. I wore one of sister Barbara’s dresses.
The next day the freshmen were herded up the airport hill to repaint the school logo. “SGHS”. That done we were officially accepted as the Big Timber Sheepherders – except for the “pantsing”, an informal part of high school initiation where Sophomore boys stripped the Freshmen of their pants and hosed them down with that cold Big Timber water. A few favored freshmen had to run down main street to retrieve their britches. I boarded at the far edge of town and missed the pantsing, but the next day the Sophomores caught up to me at the high school and hung me up by my belt on a coat hanger in the hall. A teacher came along and set me free before my first class.
My Guest Author today is my Grandfather, as he recounted his tales to my Dad. He lived on the prairies in homestead days. He was born in Nebraska, lived in Oklahoma for a period of time, then the family traveled by covered wagons to the prairies of Montana. He told many a tale of his prairie wanderings, including stories from when he worked at the Long X situated along the Montana Hi-Line.
The Long X outfit moved up from Texas with a big herd of cattle. They ran cattle all over the country and had a number of cowhands working for them. Buster worked for the Long X. Every year there would be a celebration on the Second of May. It was a May Day celebration with people coming one afternoon and not leaving until the next day. Some of them stayed in the new ranch and some stayed a few miles away in the old log ranch buildings. That was where they had their dance. All the young bachelors were supposed to get a gal to bring to the dance. Reynolds Jones didn’t find one. Fred Shoemaker knew someone across the Missouri on the mouth of the Musselshell and swam his horse across. Maybe used a boat to get her back and left her horse on the lower side and had a Long X horse stationed on the other side for her to ride on to the dance.
Buster decided to take a young schoolteacher to the dance. He had to ride 35 miles to get her and escort her back. He had a horse called Skookie Sturgeon because of the way he acted in the water. He sank to the bottom most of the time.
It took the better part of the week to get the school marm to the two-day celebration and back to the ranch. The weather was cloudy. It began to rain, and the rain was mixed with snow. Most of the crowd hung around a couple of days longer so it was a three or four day affair at the best.
One of the party goers was One Eyed Stuart (Young Granville) whose sister issued him an allowance on a monthly basis to keep him from blowing it all at one time. One Eye wore a patch where a horse had kicked his eye out. He had a college education but was a real roper and cowhand who always caught branding calves by two hind feet at the same time. He liked to drink and gamble. At the celebration Buster counted his losses, but One Eye lost two hundred dollars at the poker part of the party.
Buster was due to lose more ‑ after the celebration. He had to leave early. The teacher just had to get back. Buster hesitated when the snow was flying, but decided it was getting safe weather to travel. He tied his new suit on behind his saddle and started back with the teacher. When they got to Telegraph Creek, it was running high and wide.
Buster put the teacher on the best horse and slapped his saddle on Skookie Sturgeon. The teacher crossed fine, but the Sturgeon got halfway and went to the bottom. Buster ended up swimming. The horse drowned and floated down the creek. The new suit and saddle were later retrieved from an island where the horse washed ashore.
A replacement horse rammed something in his foot and the teacher and Buster had to finish their journey riding double and towing a lame horse.
The teacher said, “Buster, you’re not safe to go out with,” and she didn’t go with him again.
The celebration was sort of a washout. Buster said he lost a week’s work, his horse, a new suit of clothes, and one of the best girls he had dated.
A bit of history from the writings of my Guest Author, my Dad
“The good are always merry, Save by evil chance, And the merry love to frolic, And the merry love to dance.”
The earliest Melville I knew had a store, an old hotel, a tin barn, saloon, blacksmith shop and some 6-8 dwellings. The tin barn served as a dance hall and service center. Its basement was used for the dance supper. I remember it only faintly. When Stanley Hansen’s tin shed saloon burned down, he built a regular dance hall. It was a log building in the Northeast corner of town, just north of where the hotel had stood. A Delco light plant furnished the power for the lights in the saloon and dance hall. A gasoline explosion beside the Delco burned this building to the ground. Sometime, before this, two different Melville stores had burned down. One was next to the Allman home. It had a sizeable basement and Victor Allman bought the burned building. He used the basement to hold the trucking equipment for his hauling business. Then he built a dance hall on the upper part of the burned-out building.
This photo of Melville had the date of 1910 written on it
The Melville dances I remember were held in the Allman Hall. Admission was a dollar. In my first high school years, music was furnished by George Tronrud, Sr. on a fiddle; his daughter Bernice, on the piano; young George or Morris on the drums; and sometimes young Adolph with a clarinet. Later Beans Tronrud (Morris, Jr.) took over the Tronrud orchestra. Beans was a great pianist and could have done well in the music profession.
the last Melville dance hallthe dance hall is no longer standing
Melville dances were promoted by the Melville dude ranchers – especially the Harts, Van Cleves, and Donalds. The dude ranchers shared in dance promotion but not the clean up after a dance. When Janice Allman got tired of fixing dance suppers and listening to the noise of the dances, Vic Allman closed the dance hall. Then, Bob Hart held some dances on the Hart Ranch. At one of them, the youngest son of the United States Secretary of Army swam the length of the Hart swimming pool with his “go to dance” clothes on.
My father called the dances “Melville Hops.” Sometimes he hopped too much, and Mother drove home. One time Jimmy Hicks celebrated too much and sang, “Kimono, Kimono, the wind is blowing round my knees. Kimono, Kimono, if you don’t find me soon, I’ll freeze.” (This was an adoption of a song entitled, “Ramona.”) When he said, “Kiss me Virginia,” to my cousin it was time to go home. He opened the pole gate above Rein’s house, fell down, and lost the change in his pocket. The next day Mama found 57 cents and kept it for driving him home.
When I reached high school age, a Melville Hop on Saturday in the Dude season was a good social endeavor. I learned to dance “Put your Little Foot” – not as good as my uncle and aunt – Ed Brannin and Julia Cannon – but passable for a Melville Hop. I also liked Schottisches, Square Dances, Circle Two Steps, and Tags.
Some of the dancers built reputations that led to unofficial nick-names. One was “The Galloping Swede.” He was a speedy dancer that galloped his partner around the perimeter of the dance floor. He pumped out the rhythm with his left arm like he was manning a pump for a fire brigade. My wife, Jean, was one of his favorite dancing partners.
Dancing the Schottische in the kitchen
Another, a younger fellow of barely High School age, was “Backing Up McClure.” He danced all over the floor, backing up and bumping into people. He liked to navigate with my little sister, Mary Jane. Maybe he danced with his eyes closed.
World War II took me away from the Melville Hops. Shortly after that the American Legion built a Hall in Big Timber which is still a social center for community activities. None-the-less, the Melville Hops might still be going on if Bob Hart had not lost his life. After that people went to Big Timber, Harlowton, the Wild Rose School House, and the Legion Hall.
(P. S. I don’t know how wild Rose was, but I heard that her school house was a good place for Saturday night’s fist fights.)
My Guest Author today is my Dad in his recounting of the Logger’s Cabin
Ours was the last place on the Sweet Grass, and then a logger’s cabin was built on the Forest Section about three-quarters of a mile west of Gommie’s Lake and maybe a quarter of a mile beyond Ward and Parkers’ boundary fence. The cabin was located down under the hill below the road. It was put up in the fall or late summer and was right next to the steep bank that led up to the road. Billy Briner and two Reynolds boys from Melville were the first residents. They had a log contract for two dollars a thousand feet. That would give them more than a dollar a day for each one, which was a dollar more than they could make any place else in those depression days.
There hadn’t been much rain or snow for two years, but after they moved in snow started falling. The wind blasted out of the northwest, and the snow blowing out of the trees made it so a person couldn’t see more than fifty yards. The temperature dropped below zero and the Reynolds brothers got homesick for downtown Melville and home cooking, and besides, they knew that when October came, they could get some really bad weather. They moved back to town and Riley Doore became their replacement.
Riley was a good worker, a good storyteller, and a passable cook. He had anti-freeze in his veins and wasn’t afraid of bad weather. Besides that, he needed a job. The round-roofed cabin was well protected from the wind, and it faced the south. This suited the needs of Briner and Doore as they reduced forest service trees to ten, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen-foot logs. They were allowed to scatter the tree limbs, but the top of the tree stumps had to be no more that fourteen inches from the ground. This caused trouble because the snow lay about two feet deep. But like Mother asked, “What can you expect if you work all winter back in the wilderness?”
Riley Doore and Billy Briner batched all winter in the cabin. Sometimes they hiked the mile and a half down to the sawmill or the next two miles to the Brannin Ranch where Anna Doore hung out. They seemed to enjoy a woman cooked meal.
Winter wore the lumberjacks down, but, worse luck, that year spring came. The water in the Sweet Grass rose, and a fresh water spring creek sprung up beside the bank. The hole, which was dug under the cabin floor for potato storage, became filled with water. They had to wade to get to the cabins’ front door. And it was worse on the outside. The cabin had to be moved to higher ground about thirty feet away.
Another set-back, when the snow melted those fourteen inch stumps were two or three feet high and had to be cut off again. It was like sawing the trees down twice. You couldn’t blame Riley for deciding that Van Cleve’s Lazy K Bar offered a better way to make a living.
That summer the Forest Ranger marked more trees. Another logging crew was needed. Two young Swedes came down from Canada. They were tree cutting dynamos who thought that the severest winter was like a Canadian spring.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the available log cutters went into the army – all but one. He became known as Bunyon. He worked alone with a Swede bow saw. Suspicion had it that he was dodging the draft. Some time, in the warring forties, he left for parts unknown. Barney Brannin built a cabin for Bunyon. It is the one between Brannins and our place.
A bald-headed man took up a homestead in Northern Montana west of where the Musselshell and the Missouri meet. The man called himself “Beetlehead”. When the year 1920 rolled around, he was getting up in years – about fifty. He had never had a hair on his head, and he had never married. Other men might ride fifteen miles horseback to go to a dance at a country schoolhouse and meet young ladies. Beetlehead went for other reasons. He’d rather fight than court.
“Ain’t nobody can whip Old Beetle,” he boasted. “When I get a challenge, I just duck my head in between my shoulders and plunge in headfirst.”
But one day Beetlehead met his match! A woman! He got married.
“How did a thing like that happen?” Bee Knapp, a neighboring homesteader and bachelor asked.
“It’s on account of Blood Pudding,” Beetlehead replied. “Old man Johnson comes by every time a fellow butchers and gets a bucket of blood. He takes it home and his wife cooks up a batch of pudding.”
Knapp nodded.
“Well, I went home and tried that blood pudding. Made me feel ten years younger. Felt so young I proposed to his daughter and she accepted.”
Bee Bell Knapp went back to his homestead shack and thought things over. Whether you live in the mountains or on the prairies, marriage is one of those things that’s catching. The marriage virus was going around. Bee Knapp had escaped it for thirty years, but in 1926 it caught with him. Twenty years later, I caught the marriage virus. Mr. Bee Bell Knapp became my father-in-law. A person never can tell where the virus will strike next.
My Guest Author today is Aunt Ellen via a manuscript written by my Daddy in which this poem was featured.
note written by my Daddy: Here is a note from Ellen in January of 1944. The flu bug was going around in the Crazy Mountains. Here’s a piece of her poetry: I have left the punctuation and spelling the same.
The first time Pa got the flue T’Was January the Twelth Up to that time He enjoyed perfect health He would work and he would cus And he would wallow the snow And travel the ridges Where the south wind does blow.
Oh he is tough And he is wiry Always on the go Up in the hills In the ice and snow With four kids and a wife And an axe and a saw That cussing old fellow My lumberjack Pa
Two weeks have gone by But dear father is not dead He coughs and he sputters And has pains in his head His bones almost rattle His eyes almost glaze As he suffers around in a kind of a daze
The next time I see him Will be early spring He’ll be pulling the saw Making an axe ring The logs will be rolling The river up high The hole outfit busy And the flue long gone by.
written by Sister Ellen
Poppy & Sister Ellen
The Influenza Epidemic of the Winter of 1943-44 in the United States: A Preliminary Summary Public Health Report, September 1, 1944, Dorothy F. Holland & Selwyn D. Collins
The influenza that hit the mountains of Montana was part of the influenza epidemic in the winter of 1943-44. “An outbreak of a mild type of influenza started in Minnesota and the Great Lakes region about the middle of November 1943.” “The epidemic spread eastward to New England, the Middle Atlantic States, and Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland, outbreaks being reported subsequently in the Mountain and Pacific States, the Southeast (Central and Atlantic) and, finally, in the West South Central States.” “ The disease in the epidemic “were the sudden onset, moderate prostration, ever and general pains, followed by marked weakness. The duration has been variously reported as between 3 and 5 days. As a result of the characteristic short duration of the illness, the term “lightning” influence was used in newspaper reports of the epidemic in England.” “The excess mortality associated with the epidemic resulted from the high incidence of cases rather than a high case fatality rate.”
My Guest Author today is my youngest granddaughter. She is almost five years old.
This looks like. a house that Wolf might like to blow down. Be careful Goldilocks!
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Goldilocks. She was always soooo embarrassed but she always wanted to have friends. And she met one.
His name was Wolfie and he started to be her friend. So whenever she went to play with him, he was out of sight.
And when she came back he was here — (with a swish of her arm) but he wasn’t here the other days. But when he was here, he sat up and then….(said in a whisper)he had magic in his ears — magic in his hands –and his cheeks are red and blue…(said in a whisper)and gray.
And I forgot he was … (said in a whisper)red and blue and gray — (fingers curled like claws)Wolf Monster! And she screamed really loud and she had a powerful scream that throwed him away and he would be dead… and then —– SURPRISE!
