MONTANA

Sometime before we went to Montana, the Andes moved there and built a sod house on their homestead. Anyhow, Dad and Lester went there and found a place that joined the Sam Andes farm on the north. We homesteaded one hundred sixty acres then got preemption of an additional one hundred sixty acres. Lester stayed in Montana and worked for Uncle Sam and Dad came back to Missouri.

When we went to live in Montana, just before I was four years old, Ada, Milla, Hiel and I went with Mother. Lester was already there. Dad and Marion stayed in Missouri for awhile. We traveled on the train. On our trip, we couldn't afford to eat in the dining car which was available. Mother took our lunch along. I remember Mother had some puffed rice for us to nibble on. There was water available at one end of the train but you had to have your own drinking cup. Mother had one of those collapsible cups made of aluminum and it was quite a novelty to me. I'll never forget that. I remember, too, that when I had to go to the toilet, I was scared to death because when you went in there you could hear all the roar and rattle of the rails. I don't know if I even used it or notÄwho knows at the age of three.

I remember when we got into Culbertson, Montana, early in the morning, Lester was out on the platform waiting for us. I didn't recognize him but Mother kept saying, "There he is out there in those kick-eye (her way of pronouncing khaki) pants." I remember crossing the Missouri River in a ferry boat and getting to the Andes homestead and living in their sod house for a few days. I'm not sure how long we lived with them until we moved into our own shack, which was just a mile north of them.

Lester had built a shack on our homestead so we could move into it. It was just a shack built of wood that had been hauled from Culbertson with a team and wagon. It was about twelve by twenty-four feet in size. We lived in that the first winter. It wasn't sealed inside at all and it got pretty cold. Montana winter temperatures often went to thirty degrees below zero and occasionally to forty degrees below. We just had an old coal stove to heat with. The coal we burned was a very poor grade called lignite, which could be mined out of some of the hillsides around, usually from the Sam Andes place. We usually dug our own, but it could be bought for about two dollars a ton. We seldom had two dollars to spare.

I remember at night when we'd wash up and set the wash pan under the stove, in the morning the water would be frozen solid.

In the summertime, we gathered creeping cedar for Mother to cook with. The creeping cedar grew around over the hill tops. It took root anywhere it touched the ground. We'd gather pieces that were dead for fuel.

When we first moved to Andes, Montana, as the little settlement became known, before Dad and Marion moved out, we didn't have a well. Sam Andes had a well, alkali, but very usable. We had an acetylene can that we'd picked up at the dump. It was about a five gallon can and it had a lid. We had a little pull wagon and we'd put the can in that and go over to Uncle Sam's well to get our water. That was our supply for nearly a year until we got a well. Of course in the winter we melted snow.

Before Dad got there, Lester borrowed a team of horses from Uncle Sam and plowed a fire guard around the buildings. In those days, if a prairie fire got started, it could just sweep everything. There were lots of prairie fires in that country, so Lester plowed a strip about twelve feet wide in the sod. He turned the sod upside down so no grass was visible, around all the buildings about a couple of acres.

We had no bathroom and no toilet facilities. We would sneak out and use one of the furrows in the fire guard for a bathroom. I don't know how long we'd lived there, but quite awhile, before Lester built our first toilet. Mother was going to have a women's meeting at our house and she said we had to have a toilet. So Lester built the privy for the women's meeting.

I remember the years before Dad and Marion came to Montana, we didn't have much to eat. I'd been out playing and when I came in Mother fixed me, instead of bread and milk we didn't have milk, she fixed water with some vinegar and sugar in it and we put bread in it. That was real good if you were hungry.

That same summer, Uncle Joe Higgins loaned us a milk cow. We tethered her out down by the coulee and the milk tasted so good. A coulee is what we call a dry creek in this part of the country. In summer it was dry, but in the spring when the snow melted it was a raging torrent. The area was designated by the various coulees. There was one by us and one over west of us.

Meanwhile, Dad and Marion stayed in Missouri and worked on a road job and cooked for the crew. Marion had a team of mules that he drove. Of course, all the road work was done with horses and mules then. Transportation was slow so the men stayed at the job and lived in tents. Dad cooked for them, so he didn't do any of the actual road work, but Marion did. They brought Marion's team of mules, Tom and Jerry, with them when they came to Montana.

Dad and Marion didn't come to Montana until cold weather either that late fall or winter, or maybe the early next spring of 1913. I can't remember just when. They rented what was called an emigrant car on the train, loaded it with livestock, machinery, what little furniture we had, all on this freight car. They brought fence posts, mules, pigs, chickens, everything all in the same car. With the car, one man was entitled to ride in the caboose and that was all. But, Marion came along so he hid in the freight car. I remember him saying that he just about froze to death. They had a big, old box that they had put fruit in. He took the fruit out, turned the box upside down and crawled in it with a kerosene lantern to keep from freezing. He was really a stow-a-way.

The part of Montana where we lived was farming countryÄdry land farming country. Wheat was mostly the cash crop. We raised barley for the hogs and oats to feed the stock. Oh yes, quite a bit of flax was raised too. We usually had a pretty good garden.

The first few years we were there we did fairly well. The crops were good. We didn't know what fertilizer was, of course. We managed fairly well until the drought set in a few years later. Then, World War I came along and it seemed everything just went haywire. Everybody there mortgaged everything they had for everything they could get out of it.

As I said, wheat was the main cash crop. The thrashing was done with a huge one or two cylinder gasoline tractor or a steam powered thrashing rig. The thrashing rigs would come through the country. They had to be fired with coal or if there was a place where they were thrashing flax, they would fire it with that. The flax straw had enough body to make heat to fire the engine. They were big rigs, or at least we thought they were then. They were big but not nearly as powerful as they have now. You had to have a big crew of men come in. Sometimes, we left the bundles stacked in stacks but ordinarily six to eight men with teams and wagons hauled the bundles in from the fields to pitch them into the separator. Then two or three teams and wagons would haul the grain away from the separator to the granaries or wherever you wanted it. You had to cook for them and find a place to sleepÄusually in the straw stacks.

I think it was two years before we left Montana, maybe three years, that Dad bought a Case tractor, plow, header and separator. (It was about the same size as the little 1020 Case I had at the Pittsville place.) We used the tractor to plow and thrash with and that was all. Up until that time, all our farm work was done with horses and we hired somebody to come in to do the thrashing.

A few years after we got to Montana, Dad added an addition to our shack on one end and then an addition on the other end for a granary. It was about 20 feet square. We used it for bedrooms that summer but had to store grain in it that fall. It was about eighteen or twenty miles to the nearest railroad where we could sell the grain. It took a man with a good team and wagon all day to haul fifty bushels of wheat to town. To get there we had to cross the Missouri River on a cable ferry in the summertime and on the ice in the winter. So we needed a place on the farm to store grain to feed the livestock or until we hauled it to town in the wintertime.

I'll never forget that granary. When Dad was ready to harvest the grain that fall, he stacked the bundles right behind the granary which was hooked onto the rest of the house. He was going to separate the grain from the stack directly into the granary right out of the old separator. Of course, the grain separator was powered by a big two cylinder gasoline tractor that makes lots of noise. The separator itself made a terrible roar. Well, when that thing started up my old tomcat, Dandelion, was asleep under the kitchen stove. When he heard the roar, he just went into hysterics. He ran up inside the screen door trying to get out and scratched me when I tried to get him down.

Mother wasn't too happy either, because she was trying to cook dinner for the crew of men. She had not only the noise to contend with, but also the dust and chaff that came in through every crack and hole and there were plenty of them.

All our grain had to be hauled to town by horses. To get to Culbertson, we had to cross the Missouri River by cable ferry in summer and on the ice in the winter. It was usually done in winter because a team could pull more on a sled and we could cross the river on ice and didn't have to pay a ferry toll. That's why we had to have granaries. It was an all day trip to take a load of grain to town. We'd take in a load of grain, get a little bit of money and buy supplies to live on for a while longer.

One time, Lester had gone to town with a load of grain. I think someone was with him, but I don't remember who. It was in the spring, and the ice was beginning to get thin. We didn't have a post office in Andes yet, so he was bringing the mail home with him for the whole community. Because the ice was getting thin, he walked along beside the sled or wagon; I don't remember which. He broke through the ice and went down. He had the mail sack in one hand, and as he went down, he managed to grab the edge of the ice with the other hand so he wasn't swept under the ice. He saved himself and the mail. The team got across all right.

There were just no trees in that part of the country. Just one old elm tree down by the coulee in Andes and a few buffalo bushes around. When we first moved there, Dad was going to have some trees. He ordered enough shade trees to plant all around the fire guard surrounding the house. He also planted an orchard out by the garden. Most of the trees leafed out the first year, but later, the drought set in and they just never did do anything. But, we usually had a pretty good garden.

We usually had ten to twelve head of cattle. We never had many sheep but sometimes we did have a few. There were a few around the country. Somehow cattlemen and sheep men never did get along so there wasn't many sheep. We raised some hogs but seldom had any to sell. Occasionally Dad would load up one or two and take to town, but they were mostly for our own use. They were our meat and lard. I don't remember of ever butchering beef. I don't know why; I guess because we could sell the beef whereas hogs weren't worth much on the market.

We had horses usually six or eight. Usually we had a five-horse and two-horse team. We rode the work horses. I remember the mules. They were the same team Marion brought from Missouri, Tom and Jerry. Jerry was killed when a granary blew over on him in a windstorm, but we still had Tom. I use to ride Tom to school and would turn him loose and he would go home by himself. I never put a saddle or bridle on him; I just guided him with a stick.

When we first moved to Andes, you could go out across the prairie and find many piles of white buffalo bones and buffalo horns. One of the old ranchers, that had lived down by the river for years, told us that fifty years before, the buffalo had roamed that country in great herds, but they had been killed off. I remember, as a child, my folks looking out the window and saying, "Look, there goes some antelope." But I never did see any. We never did see any deer, but there was supposed to have been some down in the breaks along the Missouri River. We did have lots of jackrabbits and prairie chickens. I remember in winter, sometimes on moonlight nights, we used to go out around the hay stacks and grain stacks with .22 rifle and shoot jackrabbits. You could see them all around. Dad use to get lots of jackrabbits and prairie chickens and we ate lots of them because that was the cheapest source of meat we had. We had to eat what we had.

After a few years in Montana, Dad mortgaged something or borrowed enough money to buy material for a new house. It was twenty-four by thirty-two feet in size. It had three rooms upstairs and a full basement. It was a nice bungalow house. We named our place BIDE-A-WEE.

We hauled gravel from a big gravel bank over near where Aunt Ella Stout lived. It was about twelve or fourteen miles away. It was toward Fairview, the opposite direction from the river. We hauled gravel with a team and wagon for the basement. I remember one day when Marion, and I don't remember who else, was going for a load of gravel. I went along and was going to stop at Aunt Ella's because Ada was working for her. I was going to stop there and visit Ada while they went on for the gravel. They would stop for me on the way back. They just dropped me off and went on and I went into the house. There was nobody home. I went all through the house and hollered and yelled and cried. I went through the barn and still couldn't find anybody. I didn't know what to do. I almost had hysteria. Then, about an hour or so later, Lester came by in a buggy. He had been to Fairview to pick up a girlfriend of his. I've forgotten for sure who she was, but I think it was Hunter Ferguson's sister, Olive. They found me there and they found a note on the table telling me not to stop; because Ada had gone to the neighbors and for me to not stop. But, I was already there. Anyhow, I went on home with Lester and his girlfriend instead of waiting for the boys.

Bide-A-Wee was a real nice home. One thing about it was unique. When the folks had lived in Missouri, they were afraid of tornadoes. I don't know if they ever had any experience with one but they were afraid. They were afraid when they went to Montana they might have a cyclone blow the house away. So when Dad poured the basement and foundation he set the floor joist down into the concrete in the top of the basement wall. There was no way the house could blow away with out taking the whole foundation with it. After we left Andes, years later, somebody bought the old Bide-A-Wee house and moved it to Fairview. I would still like to know how they got it out of the foundation wall.

We managed to survive by Dad taking a contract to run a Star Mail Route. For the first four years he went from Andes, Montana to Sioux Pass, Montana fourteen miles each way. When that contract was completed, he made a new contract to go from Andes, through Sioux Pass and on over to Dore, North Dakota. That was thirty-two miles. He went one way one day and back the next day. Dad stayed at the Bide-A-Wee place one night, ran the route to Dore the next day and spent that night there; then the following day he would make the return run from Dore to Andes. The family moved to Dore and various ones of my brothers and sisters then lived at Bide-A-Wee. For eight years he ran the mail route for Uncle Sam Andes.

I don't know what he earned for the first route, but for the route from Andes to Dore he got two hundred dollars a month. It seemed like quite a lot but much of the time he drove a team and wagon or a team and sled. I knew at one time during the war he paid as much as forty dollars a ton for hay to feed the horses. But, he made a little something to live on.

When he first started the mail route, we had an old Model T automobile that he would drive in good weather. We called it "Huldy." Dad bought it second hand from a doctor in about 1913. He went to town to get it and came home walking in after dark. He had had a blow-out on one of the tires about a mile or two from home. So he just walked home. Somebody had to go back in the morning and get it. If I remember right, they just took the tire off the rim and ran it on its rim. We did that a lot.

Later, Dad bought an old Model T Ford ton truck. He drove that on the mail route for the last few years in good weather. When he bought it, it was just a chassisÄno body at all. He built a six by eight foot platform on the back of it and a seat on the front of it. There was no windshield. It did very well. Its top speed was about twelve miles per hour. He could run the mail route in just a few hours. Then in the afternoon and evening, he would haul gasoline to the threshing machines. Sometimes he hauled freight to Sioux Pass and Andes. They both had stores, and he would haul freight to them. In that way he would earn a little extra money. But four or six months of the year, he had to run the route with the team.

One time Dad started out on the mail route with the old ton Model T truck and got about three miles. He broke down and came walking back home. He had broken the crank shaft. Hiel and I went out and tore the thing to pieces and put in a new crank shaft. It was about a twenty-four hour job so he was able to drive it on the mail route the next day. He borrowed a car to deliver the mail the day he broke down.

It was during the time that Dad was running the mail route from Andes to Dore that Mother broke her hip. He was hauling freight in the old Model T truck. One weekend somebody wanted Dad to haul some cattle, so he built a makeshift rack around the platform on the back of the truck. He loaded two cows. He and Mother were taking them somewhere. When he started the truck up, the cows lunged forward and cracked one of the boards. Well, Mother said, "I'm not going to stay in here." She stepped out and twisted and broke her hip. I was twelve years old so it was 1920.

Dad took her to the Fairview hospital. It was a house that had been converted to a hospital. The doctor examined her the best he could, but he had no X-rays. He insisted the hip was just out of joint. He put her to bed with a big weight on a pulley on her foot to try to pull it back into place. She lay there for months, I'm not really sure how long. It never did any good.

She came home and walked on crutches but was always in pain. Sometime later, perhaps a year I guess, Dad sent her to Williston, North Dakota, where there was a hospital that had an X-ray machine. They found that the ball of the joint had broken off and in all her moving around the sharp bone was prodding up into the flesh.

Dad made arrangements for her to go to Independence, Missouri, to the Sanitarium to have an operation. In the mean time Uncle Joe and Aunt Mabel Higgins had moved from Andes to Independence.

Dad put Mother on the train and Uncle Joe met her and took her to the Sanitarium. Dr. Harrington took bone splints out of her shin bone and pegged the ball back in place on the hip joint. They said it was the first such operation in the Independence Sanitarium.

Mother did get so she could walk pretty well with a cane. She always limped and had a lot of pain. Probably if she could have had the operation sooner, it would have been more successful.

Sam Andes ran a grocery store, blacksmith shop and the post office in Andes. The school section joined the Andes place on the west. Every area had a school section given to them by the government. Sam Andes had rented the school section, fenced it and used it. I think it was when I was in the second grade that the school was built there on the corner of the school section. It was still standing when we visited Andes in 1970.

Before I started school, I remember visiting school a few times. At that time, school was held in one of the Neil's old granary buildings. They lived about a mile north-west of us.

My first school was in Andes. They had a little old garage or shack or some sort of building that I started school in. I remember the first day. Hiel and I walked up to the school house. A number of children were already there playing in the yard. He handed me his lunch pail, a half gallon syrup pail, to take with mine into the school house while he went to play with the kids. I didn't want to but I was six years old and he was eleven so I didn't have much choice.

I went to school at Andes through the fourth grade. Then, when dad took the mail route to Dore and we moved there, I went to a consolidated school there for the fifth, sixth and seventh grades. For the eight grade, I moved back to Bide-A-Wee and stayed with Ada and Clifford and attended school at Andes. My sister Ada had married Clifford Wilcox.

My first school teacher was Miss Urich, then Miss Kline and then Gladys Randolph, who later married Lester.

It was while I was in the fifth grade that Lester and Gladys lived on the Bide-A-Wee place and farmed it. That spring Lester thought he had to have some help. All the machinery was horse drawn. I took time out from school and stayed with them, and plowed one hundred acres with a five-horse team and a twelve-inch gang plow. Gladys, having been a school teacher, helped me with my studies. So, when I went back to school at Dore, I just picked up my studies and went on from there. I was out six weeks.

My grade school sweet-heart was Leota Hall. I was an eighth grader and she was in the sixth grade. Bud Stout, a cousin of mine, had been sweet on Leota. They were quite a coupleÄalways together. He left town or something and she was lonesome, so I just took over from him. She was a sweet little girl, and I used to have some fun with her. When I left Andes, Jerome Andes took over, so I'm told. Jerome was older, Hiel's age.

When we first moved to Andes, we had Sunday School as Uncle Sam's place. In a year or two they built a frame addition to their sod house. It was sixteen by twenty-four feet or something like that. It was big enough that we had Sunday School in it and all the neighbors came in.

To start with, there were very few church people, but this was the beginning of homesteading and people kept moving in until we had a good sized congregation. In a few years, they built a church. I would guess it was twenty-four by thirty-two feet in size, but I don't remember for sure. We used to have it full. There were no classrooms. They would just have the classes sit back to back.

In bad weather, we would have Sunday morning services; then have a basket dinner, or whatever. Anyway, we ate dinner there. Then, we would have an afternoon service and everyone would go home before dark. But, in good weather, we would have both morning and evening services.

Later, they built a big church barn to put the horses in when it was bad weather. Years later, I understand Pete Peterson bought the barn and moved it to his place. He lived three or four miles straight south. He wasn't a church member but was one of the old-timers. Somebody else bought the church and moved it away when the branch was disorganized.

I was baptized in 1916 at the age of eight. Gladys Randolph was teaching school at Andes. She was converted to the church. She and I and Leslie Vail and some others that I can't remember were baptized by Lester in the alkali coulee pond. When the snow went off in the spring, the coulees would run torrents of water and whirlpools would form large pools of water that would last long after the coulees dried up sometimes all summer. As the water receded, it became more alkali. I learned to swim in one of these ponds. That's were I was baptized in an alkali pond. It must have been in the spring, shortly after my birthday.

Aunt Mabel and Uncle Joe Higgins had a place in Andes that joined Uncle Sam Andes' place on the south. They lived there for a while then they moved to Fairview. I don't know when.

Uncle Jerome and Aunt Ava Wildermuth never lived in Andes, but they did own a place that joined Joe Higgins' on the east. Different people farmed it for them. They lived for a time in Fargo, North Dakota.

Money was scarce and there were no jobs around our country except for farming and of course, not even farming in the winter. Various ones of the kids went to work and stayed with Uncle Jerome and Aunt Ava at different times. Lester was the first to go to Fargo to work. He worked on a garbage wagon. It was a team and wagon hauling the garbage. Later, Ada went to Fargo and worked in a biscuit factory that made biscuits and cookies. Marion also went there to work at just anything he could find to do to earn a few dollars.

Milla didn't work at Fargo, but she did clerk in the store in Andes for Uncle Sam for quite awhile. She sometimes ran the mail route with the horse and buggy for Dad. That is, when it was just to Sioux Pass and back.

Ruby and Ray Gouldsmith were married in Missouri and both Claire and Lester Lynn were born in Missouri. Several years later they moved to Montana. They bought a place over by Fairview on beyond where Aunt Ella lived. Ray bought this little place. Their son, Giles Girard, was born there. They started a store and post office called Girard. They were still there when I left Montana. He eventually sold out and moved to Andes. While they were living in Girard, Ruby died in childbirth. The fetus died and blood poisoning set in. I don't remember any details. I was staying with Lester and Gladys in Orting, Washington, and going to high school when Ruby died.

Milla and Ada used to have dates with boyfriends. Well, the boys had dates too, but that was different because we got in on what was happening with the girls. The girls when they would get home from a date, would quite often have candy or trinkets or something that had been given to them by their dates. Milla always put hers in a closet under the eaves. One day Hiel and I got into to it and, oh, if we didn't have a feast on candy! She threatened to skin us alive.

Ada and Clifford Wilcox were married August 4, 1916, at Andes, Montana. In those days when a couple were married, there was usually a chivaree, and the couple were expected to furnish treats. Cliff and gone to town and bought treats for the crowd. It was a wooden bucket of candy about an eighteen or twenty quart bucket, I would guess. It had cardboard dividers in it and had a different kind of candy in each section. The chivaree never did develop, and the candy was hidden. Well, Hiel found it, and he and I used to eat this candy until they caught us at it.

Milla and Hunter Ferguson were married April 2, 1918, in Andes.

Lester and Gladys Randolph were married June 19, 1918, in Andes.

Marion and Lottie Powell were married November 19, 1919, in Andes.

Hiel and Anna Wilcox were married when I was home between my freshman and sophomore year of high school. Hiel rode over west on horseback to get Eli Bronson, who was a missionary over west of Andes, to come and perform the ceremony on June 10, 1923.

Ada and Cliff traded for an old truck. It was a Model T pickup, or a Bobcat, as it was called then. It had a little platform body on the back of it. We christened the truck, "Teddy."

After Milla and Hunter were married, they were going to stay on Hunter's dad's farm which was about sixty miles westÄover around Redwater country. They borrowed or bought a truck to move over there with. After they got moved the truck just sat out and got so it wasn't run able. Well sometime later, I don't remember exactly when, Clifford wanted it. He couldn't get it back because it wouldn't run. Hiel and I took a team and spring wagon and went over after that pick-up.

It took us all day of hard driving to get there. We got there and stayed all night. By that time Hunter and Milla didn't even live there; some of his relatives lived on the place. The old truck was still there. Hunter had taken the spark plugs out to try to work on it and had left them out. It had rained down into it and the engine was frozen up tight. You couldn't get it to turn at all. Hiel, being quite a mechanic, was going to take the head off and the pan off to see what he could do. But then he said, "Oh, let's just tow it home."

The people who now lived there had an extra horse of ours. So, we hooked our team to the truck, the spring wagon behind the truck, the extra horse behind the spring wagon and started home. We did have good brakes, though! All we had to do was put the truck in gear and it would lock the wheels because the engine wouldn't turn at all.

We didn't travel very fast going home. I remember we got down to Redwater, a nice little stream about ten to fifteen miles from where we started. It was noon and since we hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast we were hungry. There wasn't any place to buy food, but there was a farmhouse off the road about a quarter of a mile. Ada had given Hiel a twenty dollar bill for expenses. We had that and about sixteen cents in change. Hiel persuaded me to go up to this farmhouse to see if I could buy something to eat. So, I went up and told the lady I'd like to buy half a loaf of bread and a little slab of bacon. She hem-hawed around and finally let me have it. I went to pay her with the twenty dollar bill but she didn't have any change. So I said, "Well, all I've got in change is sixteen cents." She let me have it. I went back and we built a fire of sticks and roasted the bacon. That was the best bread and bacon you ever ate in your life!

We went on toward home but it got dark so you couldn't see anything. There wasn't any road; we were just driving across country. We decided to stop and spend the night. We did have some blankets with us. When we got up the next morning, we found that there was cactus all around us. Somehow, we had managed to find the only spot around with no cactus.

We got home about noon the next day. Cliff took the truck, apart and finally got it running. I think this may have been the truck they called TEDDY. When they moved from Montana to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, that is what they drove. It was still in Coeur d'Alene the last I knew.

While Hunter and Milla lived on Hunter's dad's homestead, over by Redwater, I spent one summer with them. Milla got a bad toothache. Vida was the nearest town, but Wolf Point was the nearest railroad town. We took a team and wagon and took Milla to Wolf Point to have her tooth pulled. It was an all-day trip. We had to cross the Missouri River.

Lester and Gladys lived at Bide-A-Wee for a while and I worked for them one fall. The next year, Marion and Lottie lived at Bide-A-Wee and the next year Ada and Cliff were there. It was when Ada and Cliff was there that I went back to and stayed with them. I went to school in Andes for my eight grade.

Hiel and Anna took over Bide-A-Wee the next year.

The winter I stayed with Ada and Cliff, Cliff was running the mail route for Dad part-time. On Sundays, he would be at Dore and wouldn't be home to go to church with Ada. Ada had Claudine and Rebecca, and Winton was a baby. We always went to church. In the wintertime we'd walk or take the team. I remember taking a homemade bobsled. I took a horse, put a lariat rope on the saddle horn and fastened it to the sled. I took Winton in my arms, and Ada and the two girls rode on the sled, and to church we went. It was only a mile.

Hiel was always telling me stories of what should have been how wealthy we should have been. It was always interesting, and I was gullible enough to believe him. I remember one day we tangled; I don't even remember about what. I got sore at him and threatened him, so he took me out in the back yard, took me down and sat on me. He threatened me with all sorts of things. Mother had to come and separate us. It was nothing too serious.

We made our own entertainment. Most of our fun was parties and such. I remember when Hiel was ten years old, Ada had planned a birthday party for him. We were out around the grain stacks playing hide and seek. The Andes and Vail kids, Russell Bullock, who stayed with the Freemans, and one or two of the Neal kids came sneaking up the back way and found us. We had a good party. The kids had taken up a collection among themselves for a gift. It was mostly pennies and nickelsÄthere wasn't much money. Hiel bought a sterling silver ring with the thirty-five cents gift of money. I though it was wonderful.

I also remember Uncle Joe Higgins was quite a candy maker. One winter night he invited our family to his house to make candy. We drove the team of mules and sled, tied then up to the clothes line post and went in to make candy. The first thing, he discovered he couldn't find the dishes he needed to make the candy in. He ask Aunt Mabel where they were and was told they were dirty and she had shoved them under the cabinet out of sight so she wouldn't have to wash them. He made a batch of candy and we all had a big time. When we went out to go home, the clothes line pole, the mules and the sled were all gone. We walked home and when we got there the mules were standing at the straw stack eating with the sled and clothes line and post all in tow. We had to walk about a mile and a half. The road was crooked and they had to go through several gates. They had to swing out to make it through the gates. You would have thought they would have hooked up on the gate post but they didn't. The made it all the way home.

I remember another time when we went to a birthday party when the Clarence Higgenbottom family lived on the Freeman place, just west of Andes about one-half mile. We went over there and had a big time. The Higginbottoms weren't church people. We church kids didn't dance and Clarence knew that. Well, they got us to dancing the Virginia Reel and such. We had a big time and it was about four o'clock in the morning before we started home. It was cold and storming. That was when I was staying with Cliff and Ada. Well, Russell -

Bullock, I think it was, and I got to the school house. The fire had been banked for the night so we stirred it up. We warmed up and just spent the rest of the night there. The folks were kind of concerned about us, but I guess they figured we could take care of ourselves.

In summertime we sometimes went to a pretty good sized pond, three or four acres, that Sam Palmer had dammed up, and would go swimming. We often went on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we went in our old ton truck, sometimes in Uncle Sam Andes' old touring car but often on horseback. It was about five miles from Andes to Palmer's Dam. We didn't know about swim suits; we went naked. The road into Sam Palmer's place was right beside the pond. Often a bunch of us boys, ten or fifteen or so, would be swimming when someone would drive by. We'd all have to get under the water quick because we didn't have anything on.

Noley lake was about a mile or mile and a half east of Dore. It was a natural lake about five miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. When we lived in Dore, we used to go swimming there. There was suppose to be some deep spots in it, but I know I've waded clear across it.

Noley Lake had lots of fish in it, but mostly carp that weren't much good. One winter we went down to the lake and the fish were coming to this one place to get air. We took a pitch fork and you could take then out by the buckets full. We took and them even though they were carp which weren't too good, because you ate what you had.

In the wintertime we sometimes would skate on the lake but, the problem was, there was usually snow on the ice. But once in a while it was real good skating.

At the school there in Dore, there were three teachers, all maiden ladies. I remember Dad used to think it was great to get the school-ma'ams to go skating with us. I don't think either Dad or the teachers ever skatedÄjust a bunch of us kids. We would walk down and skate and have quite a good time. Sometimes we would sweep the snow off but usually we waited until it was clear.

Right up behind our house at Dore, was a big irrigation ditch that we used to go swimming in. It usually had water in it in the summertime.

Also at Dore, there was a railroad siding. There were always a bunch of freight cars on it. We kids used to go down and play on these carsÄespecially on moonlight nights. We'd run on top of those box cars and have a great time.

I remember a time or two when we'd run short of coal and Mother would send me to the tracks with a bucket. I would walk up and down the track and pick up coal to take home and burn. That's when there was the old coal burning locomotives and the coal would fall off the coal car. It was quite legal to pick it up.

On March 28, I think it was the year Lester and Gladys were married, we had a real bad storm. We had allowed ourselves to get short of coal and we ran out of coal right in the middle of the storm. Lester took a horse, hitched him to a stonebolt, and went down to the depot to borrow some coal to get by with. The wind was so cold that he had to take an old jacket and put it over the horse's face to keep the cold air from going up his nostrils so he could breath.

Over by Lone Butte, which was over toward Girard where Ray and Ruby lived, there was a big pond where we used to have our Sunday School picnics. It was a wooded area with a lot of timber and a big pond. We had a Sunday School picnic there every summer. The whole community turned out. We had a big basket lunch and Dad used to make lemonade in a fifty-gallon barrel. He would get it two-thirds full of spring water, then add lemons, sugar, citric acid and whatever else. Quite often, someone would go to town and buy a ten-gallon freezer of ice cream. We had a big time. We had horse races and foot races and just what have you. It was an annual event. Most of the neighbors who didn't belong to our church of course didn't attend church very often, but they always came to the Christmas Program and the Sunday School Picnic.

When we moved to Montana, very few people lived there. In the few years we were there, all the land around about was homesteaded and fenced and cross fenced. When we left in 1922, most everyone had gone. Most of the people left because they didn't have anything to live on anymore. Houses were going to ruin, fences were torn down and horses were roaming the prairies because the people had moved and left them there. There were hundreds of horses roaming the prairies in 1922 and 1923.

Some of the old timers, who did manage to hang on a few years until more prosperous times, and are still living there, own thousands of acres of grazing land. They have done real good.

The last year or two we lived in Montana, we boys, that would be Hiel and me, the Andes boys, and Russell Bullock, would go down to this old ranch. It was Joe Palmer's ranch, about a mile and a half north of us. It had been deserted. There were old corrals there. We would run a bunch of stray horses into the corrals, catch then and take turns riding them. Ordinarily, you would get some pretty wild ones and have some exciting times.

I remember one Sunday we caught a big old black horse and he was a mean looking fellow. The boys put a saddle on him and insisted that I ride him. But I wasn't going to ride him in anyway. They threatened me and everything else. Finally, one of the big boys, Jerome Andes, I think, got on him. The horse just trotted off as gentle as you please. I remember how humiliated I was.

I left Montana the fall of 1922. I had graduated from the eighth grade at Andes. In order to go to high school, I'd have to go to Culbertson or Fairview. There was no place to stay there. Lester and Gladys had moved to Washington state and they invited me to stay with them and go to school. So that fall Mother and I took the train to Washington. Hiel and Anna were living at Bide-A-Wee and Dad stayed with them for a while. Mother stayed a month or two in Washington and then went back to Bide-A-Wee.