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Stone Deaf

taken from Listening for God by my Guest Author, my Daddy

The County Surveyor lived in Big Timber. He liked the sturdy log houses and wrote a letter asking Father to meet him in town to discuss ordering some logs. The meeting would take place in a back room of the Big Timber Cafe. Here the men could discuss the building project without any interruptions. On the appointed day Father loaded us in the Whippet touring car and we went to Big Timber. At six o’clock we were escorted into the reserved meeting room at the Big Timber Café. The children were told not to make any noise that would distract the men as they did their business.

We were just finishing up our soup ‑ a dish that was served with every meal except breakfast ‑ when a neat little man walked in. The waitress came and took his order. My sisters and I became silent so as not to disturb a potential customer. Slowly we realized that we could have made all the noise we wanted.  We could even slurp our soup, and Mr. Bussey wouldn’t hear us. “He is stone deaf,” someone explained to us.

When he finished his meal, Mr. Bussey came over and sat at the end of our table.  “I want a set of logs,” he said.  He spoke loudly.  “Can you get some dry ones like they used in John Moss’s house.” “Won’t have any trouble with that,” Daddy said.  Mr. Bussey didn’t hear Father’s reply and thought that Father had not heard him. He spoke louder. “Can you get me some logs like you got for Moss?” Father answered. “We can start working on it in two weeks” Bussey looked rather alarmed.  “They don’t look weak to me.” “No they will be good logs.  Just let me know what you need.”

Again, Bussey didn’t hear Father’s answer and wondered if Bud Ward had heard him.  He raised his voice.  “Need? I need logs, house logs, and some rafters, and joists, and window framing.” “We can do it.” “That’s what I’m going to do.” His voice shook the room.  A waitress pushed open the swinging door and looked at us questioningly.

Bussey shoved a paper across to Father, and mumbled. “He can’t hear a word I say.” Then he shouted at the top of his voice. “I’ll get Blufford Blye to do it. I just want you to get the timber.” Father studied the paper and shouted back, “We’ll get it by the end of the month.” “LOGS, HOUSE LOGS!”  Bussey leaned over, cupped his hand around Father’s ear and shouted louder. “CAN YOU GET ME THOSE HOUSE LOGS?” My father’s face quivered. His eyes opened wide. Then he nodded his head, wrote down some pricing figures and handed to his potential customer. The deal was made. Bussey smiled and turned to Mother. “Better take him to a doctor,” he said, “I think his hearing has gone bad.”

  • at Ward & Parker Sawmill
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Mowing Maga’s (Huge) Yard

By: Ol’ Viv, Guest Author

I bet that whoever is reading this now does not have a front (or back) yard that is bigger than my Maga’s. 11 acres of thick, green grass with lots of trees (some stolen from national forests…shhh), and more flowers than I can even imagine. A huge front and back porch, looking over a hilly yard. Looks like it’s straight out of “The Sound of Music” starring Julie Andrews. But, it all has to be kept in pristine condition to look as awesome as it always does, and since it’s getting warmer and Puppa is still out of commission, it’s my turn to take care of it. Me, Viv, the girl who screams and runs at the sight of any flying bug because of a past incident (another story for later ;)). Me, Viv, who can get sunburnt in JANUARY (like what the heck). Me, Viv, the girl who doesn’t always pay attention to where she is going, so she runs into a tree, all while savoring Maga’s famous homemade bread. So, naturally, I thought, “I’ve got this” and proceeded to mount the zero-turn lawnmower. 

  • Maud’s Julie Andrews impersonation

I actually got the hang of it pretty quick, but at the same time, I was mowing the grass of FLAT ground. As I slowly mowed, section by section, of Maga’s yard (over the course of several days), I finally got to… the front yard. Although this lawn and its inhabitants are absolutely gorgeous, it looks pretty terrifying on a 750 pound vehicle that I just learned how to operate 2 days earlier. 

Puppa had said before, “If there’s mud, don’t go any farther.” Well, this man takes such good care of his grass and yard that YOU CAN’T SEE THE MUD THROUGH THE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, GREEN GRASS (do I seem bitter to you?). But I proceeded bravely into the unknown, armed with basically a pair of motorized scissors and my headphones (along with A LOT of sunscreen), I set off. Terrified. But excited because I knew that I was going to do this and do it like a total boss. The first few ups and downs on the hill were okay. Then, out of nowhere, on my way back up the substantially sized hill, my motor turned off. I looked around, eyes big, and I felt my breathing quicken. With the wheels slowly creaking backwards, I pushed the handles. Nothing. So, I did what any brave and superb lawn caretaker does…

I called my mom. 

But, she didn’t answer, so I called my dad. And started to cry because I knew I didn’t have enough money to pay for the supposed damages I caused to the automated pair of scissors. Pretty soon, here comes my mom running really fast, like a graceful gazelle with a tattoo on its shoulder. And my dad too. He comes running like… um… another animal that I can’t think of at the moment. With tattoos too. 

Anyways, they come up to me, breathing hard, looking at my wet eyes and runny nose, and while my mom said, “I thought you had flipped over!”, my dad said, “I actually ran over here and you aren’t even hurt.” Then he proceeded to get me out of the chair and turn the mower on with a turn of the key. We had a good laugh about that, but I was kinda embarrassed. 

After that, I proceeded with EXTREME caution. I wasn’t about to have the gazelle and… mystery animal (aka my dad), come running to turn on the lawn mower…again. I finished my job, however. But not without some troubles. The grass was wet, so the wheels on lawnmower went round and round, tossing mud and grass into the air (I should write songs :)). And, finally, I had to mow the hill… sideways. Which is what I didn’t feel comfortable with, but Puppa told me to, so I did it. He is the master lawn keeper, after all. It wasn’t bad, but Maga and Puppa now have a few tire marks in their yard (whoops). 

Well… At least I can say that I did it. 

And it was actually pretty fun…kinda scary…but mostly fun 😉

Love,

Viv (practice social distancing!:))

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The Telephone

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!  

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All Dollars Are Not Created Equal

My Guest Author today is my sister who is just two years older than me. She shares her memories and some of mine. You might recognize her from the blog “Cross Country” and might learn more about her as our journey continues in other stories.

A dollar is a dollar is a dollar – you might say.

I beg to differ.

Some people start a new business and tape or frame the first dollar they earn on the wall for all to see. I’ve had several businesses but I always had to spend my first dollar! They never got put up on a wall!

But the first dollar I remember having was a gift from my Montana grandmother. Gommie, who was separated from us because of Daddy’s long move to Georgia to get his education and then to serve in the ministry, would give the grandkids a special gift when we visited. She would give us a silver dollar.

I had in my collection 2 or 3 which I saved in an old tin and nested in an old Bull Durham tobacco bag I had saved from my Grandfather (Daddy Bee). We used to hate his old tobacco smoking habit, but we loved his Prince Albert cans and Bull Durham bags. When I was six we moved and my mom, who had been keeping my treasures in her underwear drawer, apparently forgot about the silver dollars. They got moved but they didn’t get returned to me! This was totally unlike my mom who seemed to remember EVERYTHING! When I asked for them she didn’t remember having them. I was crushed. At the time, it wasn’t the value of the dollar that crushed me. Or even the value of the silver. It was the value of the memory that was attached. My Montana Gommie had given ME those dollars and I was far, far way from her! Those dollars were a connection to her!!

Living in Georgia just down the road from us was my other set of grandparents. Grandma and Daddy Bee. It was such a delight to have them close by. Grandma B was a good cook. I could eat a whole pumpkin pie at one sitting! (She never let me). She would freeze peaches sprinkled with sugar. Sometimes she’d get them out of the freezer and we’d get to eat them. There’s really nothing as good as a real Georgia peach with a few ice crystals and sugar on them! But her cooking is a story for another time.

Daddy B had a barn we loved to play in. He would carry his calves to the barn and weigh them to check on their growth. When we can weigh 100 pounds, he told us, he would give us a dollar!

I asked what would happen if I lost some weight and then made it to 100 pounds again. Daddy Bee laughed and said it was a one time deal! So I didn’t bother passing up Grand B’s cooking.

I spent that dollar but I never forgot it. It was a symbol of growing up, attaining maturity. Looking big in my granddaddy’s eyes. 

Wow. Now that’s worth working towards! We would get on the old barn scales and get weighed. Seventy-five pounds. Eighty pounds. Ninety-five pounds. I was wondering if Grandma B would let me eat a whole pie and help me get to my goal! Finally I got to 100 pounds and I got my dollar. That was a happy day. A milestone.

When sister Sheri was going through Daddy’s and Mama’s things, she found the old tin and the old Bull Durham bag. I have two silver dollars again that I keep separate from some of the ones I have purchased over the years. Why are they separate? I don’t have Gommie here on the planet anymore. But I still have a connection called memories, love, and a dollar.

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Electric Lights

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. 

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Sweet Grass Canyon Winter

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.

  • a typical winter scene in Sweet Grass Canyon

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Ice Harvest

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.”

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Poppy

My Guest Author today is my sister. She is older than me so she has memories that I don’t have. My grandfather, Poppy, died just a month before I was born. I rely on my sister’s memories, photos and family stories to know him.
(I would have been his favorite!)

Sister Margaret texted me recently to ask what I remembered about Poppy. (I was 8 and she was 3 months when we left Montana and living next to Gommy and Poppy.) From an 8 year old’s perspective, and some things I’ve thought about since, here’s Poppy.

Times at Gommy and Poppy’s were always special. There was a cheerful, calm hum to the log house.

Poppy and Ernest (his ranching/sawmill partner of Ward and Parker) would come in from evening chores, hang their coats and hats on the hat tree by the front door (stomping the snow off their boots if it was cold outside), and put another log on the fire. The stone fireplace was one they’d built from round stones from the Sweet Grass River that ran through the ranch. On either side of the living room, there were big picture windows where Poppy had red geraniums blooming year-round.

They’d turn on the radio that sat on its own special shelf in the kitchen, next to the doorway to the music room – where Poppy had his desk and Gommy had her piano and china. They always listened to the news evenings, and at lunch they’d listen to the farm report and stock market.

Then we’d have supper (cooked on the green and cream-colored wood range), sitting on benches around the long oak table with everyone’s brands carved in the corners. (Each person had registered their own brand for cows and horses, whether they had any yet or not.) Supper might be roast beef (from our own cattle), potatoes and gravy, homemade bread, fresh churned butter, jams, pickles, a vegetable, dessert, and hot tea. As an Englishman, Poppy liked his tea.  But he didn’t understand why someone would add lemon to make it sour and sugar to make it sweet. He thought almost every meal should have meat and potatoes. 

After supper, Poppy and Ernest would go sit by the fireplace in big oak rockers on either side of the warm fire. Poppy had a ritual of putting on his slippers, taking his pipe out of his pocket, cleaning it out with his pocketknife, nocking the loose tobacco out by banging it upside down on one of the rocks sticking out from the fireplace. He’d fill his pipe with tobacco, tapping it out from his red Prince Albert tin. He’d light it, puff a couple of times to get it going, and then lean back in his big rocker and relax. Ernest might light a cigarette (he smoked Camels) and read one of his National Geographics. There was a shelf, or two, or more on the yellow National Geos on Ernest’s side of the fireplace. Poppy might read. I imagine Gommy read when we kids weren’t around, setting down on the brown wicker sofa in front of the fire. The fireplace was lit year-round, too.  It gets cool even in summers back in the mountains at a mile above sea level.

Sometimes Poppy would sit and bounce kids on his knee, especially the boys. He’d sing, “Bozo, Bozo, you’re no good. I’m going to chop you up for wood.” And they’d laugh and laugh.

  • Guest Author on the right

Poppy was a medium-sized man. He liked to stand with his feet spread apart and his thumbs tucked in his belt. (Brother Bee stands that way.) He liked to look good when he went to town. He’d wear a good jacket, shirt and tie, nice slacks, and his hat. (His rancher’s white forehead showed when he took his hat off.) I thought he was very good looking. One of the earliest pictures of him shows a young man very fashionably dressed in a 3-piece suit shortly after he left England and went to Canada. He was a dandy, full of youthful confidence! 

Poppy’s desk was in the middle room. That’s where he kept track of his ledgers and maybe where he wrote his poems (or so I’ve heard. I don’t have any of his poems.). It was a mysterious place, one we kids weren’t allowed near.

Outside, on days the men worked in the shop welding and fixing things, his poetry came out in a blue streak. Mama would always whistle when she walked by, so the blue streak would stop for a minute. (Is it any wonder that Daddy Buck had learned to cuss in English, Spanish and Norwegian by the time he was 5 or 6? English from Poppy, Spanish from The Uncles, Norwegian because we lived in a Norwegian community.)

Poppy was pleasant, kind of quiet, smart. He was so proud when David was born! He had 3 granddaughters by then, but David was the first boy.  Poppy wanted the Ward name carried on! I think he would be amused that out of all his 20 grandkids, 46 or so great-grands and 50+ great-great-grands, the ones with his initials (for Robert Carrington Ward) came through his second oldest granddaughter.

I know he would be proud of the whole crew! With a twinkle in his eye, he would bounce them on his knee and sing to them. 

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Alaska Excursion

North to Alaska continued….    by my Daddy

This past Monday we flew back into warm and dry country – up to 100 degrees in the shade. It didn’t take long to wish we had some of that Alaska Weather that got up to 72 in the sun. (We only had one day in the sun. The rest of the time there was a cloud and fog covering).

In Seattle we met Betty from California, Donna Marie, her daughter, Linda, and Son in Law, Tom, from Wyoming. We rode a bus about 60 miles to Vancouver. Donna Marie was a talk guide. She had been raised near Seattle. Later she and Russ went to Vancouver. One time they flew up to parts of Alaska.

We boarded the tour boat at Vancouver and the first day we sailed along the Canadian coast until we reached the lower parts of Alaska, 600 miles north of Puget Sound. Our first stop was at Ketchikan which sits under steep mountains with a waterfront about ½ mile wide. Ketchikan might be as big as Big Timber. We went to a Lumber Jack show where an American and a Canadian Lumberjack put on a contest for us – chopping spruce logs in two, riding spinning logs in the water, carving with a chain saw and climbing tall poles. I think that 20 years ago Bee could have climbed at about the same speed. Then we took a tour bus through the mist and rain to Bligh Park about ten miles up the inlet where we saw numerous totem poles and a tribal meeting house. Our bus driver told us that one out of six adults in Alaska had a pilot license, and that the automobile drivers knew how to drive in rain and fog, but they couldn’t handle sunshine. The sun came out on our way back to town, and sure enough, there was a car wreck ahead of us and we had to take a detour.

Lumberjack
Ketchikan

The next day we stopped for a daylong visit of Juneau. My daughter and son-in-law took a cable tram to the top of the mountain ridge. Betty, Donna Marie, and I took a gander at the Juneau Alaska Museum which covered history, government, mining, fishing, wildlife, Indian, Russian and American culture, and all sorts of clothing, kayaks, sleds, hides, and furs.

Skagway

The next day was spent at Skagway where Betty and I took a train through Dead Horse Canyon and on to White Pass where the Yukon miners lost horses and lives on the way to the Yukon gold fields. (I think that Barney Brannin hauled dynamite to mines out from Juneau and not from Skagway.) There were lots of clouds and fog on the west side of the pass, but the east side – where we entered Canada, was free of the clouds and fog.

We spent two days touring through the glaciers on Glacier Bay and College Glacier Bay. Saw whales, sea otters, sea lions and three dots that moved on the narrow shore two miles away. People said they were bears. But I have had dots in front of my eyes that moved faster and were called floaters. (However, they didn’t eat berries.)

Sea Lions
Bald Eagle

We told our tour boat good-bye at Whittier – where all the town’s population live in one large high-rise apartment house. Then we rode the train past Anchorage and on toward Denali Park where we would stay two nights. A big part of the way had a bay inlet on one side and mountains on the other. We got a close-up look at some Dahl Sheep.

Receding glacier

For miles we traveled through forests of white spruce, black spruce, birch, and quaking aspens. Any homestead along the route with a few houses was given a name. One place was named Montana. It was a bare open patch of about two acres that looked like the remains of a junk yard. About a mile further on a woman stood beside a cabin clearing and waved at us – Welcome to Montana. We didn’t stop.

from Montana, Alaska

When we entered the region of Denali Park, we couldn’t see Mount McKinley (Denali – “THE BIG ONE”) because of clouds and fog. As we got further north the trees were smaller. Some places the forest was Black Spruce, twelve to twenty foot tall – or shorter. In higher region the forest gave way to tundra.

On our tour of Denali Park, we got pictures of moose and caribou and visited some Athabaskan women who were selling their handmade jewelry. From Denali we went to Fairbanks. It is in a lower climate and has a wide variety of trees, gardens, etc. A river boat tour stopped at an Indian settlement where we saw a Native American salmon water wheel catching fish. A young lady was hanging them up on poles to dry. We saw reindeer, and dog teams, and fur tents. Some Eskimo girls modeled Eskimo clothing.

getting off the boat in Fairbanks

Flying back from Fairbanks to Anchorage at 30,000 feet, we got a good view at Mount McKinley. WHAT A MOUNTAIN THAT IS!
July 11, 2010

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North to Alaska

Many of my adventures in life included my daddy. When I was just a kid, we talked about going to Alaska, along with my sister of course. He talked about us making the drive. It was quite a challenge to make such a trip but, nevertheless, we dreamed of the day when we could make it happen. As the years passed, time narrowed and it looked like that dream would never come to reality. Daddy got to where he wasn’t getting around as well and had to have assistance with a cane. I knew time was short. One day I told my husband I wanted us to fulfill that Alaskan dream. I approached Daddy and told him my plan. As usual, he was ready for an adventure. When I asked my Aunt to go with us, she said she would. Then Cousin Donna Marie got on board along with her daughter and son-in-law. I made the necessary travel arrangements for our Alaskan cruise and four-day inland tour. All they had to do was meet us in Seattle. What an adventure! 

Here is part of my Daddy’s recounting of our Alaskan trip from 2010:

I went to Alaska with my daughter and son-in-law, my 81-year-old sister-in-law, Betty, and my 82-year-old cousin-in-law from Wyoming and her daughter and son-in-law.  Luckily, I was on a tour boat, bus, or train most of the time because that 82 year-old-woman with long legs could have walked me to death.

Daddy & Cousin Donna Marie

We boat toured about the three hundred miles of islands an inlets and mountains that hang down from the main part of Alaska like a dog’s tail. In some of the inlets we saw huge glaciers dropping small icebergs into the Pacific waterways.  This made me wear two flannel shirts and a warm jacket and wish it would warm up to 60 degrees.  

Skagway

Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway are small towns huddled on narrow water fronts along some three hundred miles of bays and inlets surrounded by straight up and down steep mountains. This is part of the Tongass National Forest which is the largest National forest in the USA. It stretches from below the Alaskan border below Ketchikan to Yakutat Bay. This may be the wettest place under the American flag, a place where annual rainfall is measured in feet and not just inches. It is a place of mountains, rain forest, 1,200-pound brown bear, and fish – salmon so plentiful the Haida people live well and find time to carve their legends and history on large cedar poles. This is still a place where tall cedar and spruce poles are carved with their stories of flying birds, animals and big nosed ancestors.  

I was raised in Montana, but I’ve been interested in Alaska. One of my aunts – the one who dropped me on my head when I was a baby – raised her five children in Alaska. My Aunt Tooie raised her five children along the waterfront in Juneau. The house they lived in has been dredged away to make a place where large boats can anchor.  Cousin Beth used to work in a courthouse there (she is now 87 years old and lives in Idaho.)  Betty and I ran through the rain and fog trying to keep up with long legged Wyoming Cousin and took in a very good museum.

One of the snap shots shows a house built at the waterfront on what looks like a wharf itself. Sid Brannin, my bronc riding uncle, traveled from Alaska to Montana like a yo-yo on a string. His two oldest girls, Sydney and Margaret, near 90 years old, are still in Alaska.

We had about six hours in Ketchikan and saw a lumberjack contest between a Red shirted Canadian and an Alaskan as they chopped trees in two, rode spinning logs in a pond, and climbed long poles resembling the White Spruce and  Sitka Spruce of the Alaskan rain forest which their lumberjacks topped off for their gin poles in their logging and skidding operations.  

I was raised at a sawmill and timber operation in Montana where one year my uncles rode saw logs floating down the Sweet Grass along the Rein meadow. They fell off just like the Alaskans did in their lumberjack contest.  Guest Author, my Daddy

To be continued…..

Uncle Ed & company, 1910