Ox in the Mire

In a previous post, I mentioned our septic system at our Montana ranch. Waste water flowed from the house to a small septic tank a short distance from the house and then on to a crude cesspool. The cesspool was just a pit that was lined with timbers and then it was covered with planks. Waste flowed into the cesspool and was leached out into the surrounding soil. We knew what was below those planks and we did not venture to play on them at the risk of falling into a very undesirable place.

As I was sorting through my Dad's pictures yet again, I came across a series of pictures that tell an interesting story. As I looked at them, I was reminded of the scripture in the the New Testament, book of Luke, where the Pharisees watch to see what Christ will do when he comes upon a sick man. Christ asked them if it was right to heal on the Sabbath Day and then he healed the man and answered with another question: "...saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?" Though we are cautioned that we should not deliberately or through negligence allow the ox to get in the mire, I think any diligent farmer would straightway get him out. I can only imagine the urgency with which my Dad went about getting this unfortunate horse out of the pit he had fallen into--yes, our cesspool.

Old Sayings

One saying my mom used to use was "I'll let you get back to your rat killing". I don't know where it came from, but she gave new meaning to the phrase.

Because of a very poor foundation and the dirt cellar under the house, rodents were always a problem for us. We tried to ignore them but it was kind of hard to do. I used to lie awake at night listening to the mice gnawing in the walls and it drove me crazy. I hated mice then and still do. I think that is why after most of the kids had moved away from home Mom and Dad began to allow cats in the house. They helped control the mice.

I think this is one of their cats taking a nap in the wash basin.

Mom had another method of rodent control when we were younger. She put D-Con around the house and it helped with mice, but the pack rats were not affected by it. We started to notice that one tray of D-Con was always covered up with a stray T-shirt or something and then we noticed other little "treasures" that were squirreled away in that area. We determined that we had a pack rat in the house but couldn't catch it and couldn't poison it. The fact was confirmed one afternoon when we were playing in the house and a ball or something that we were playing with went under my bed. Jim went in and crawled under the bed to get it. To his great surprise, something ran across his body and darted out the bedroom door, through the kitchen and out of sight in the porch. Jim didn't really get a chance to see it but it felt big to him. I just saw a fleeting figure that looked like a cat but we didn't have cats in the house at that time (I was wishing we did at that point or maybe even a dog!). It had to be that pack rat and it was big. As Jim and I were discussing this memory a few days ago, we weren't sure if it was on this occasion or some days later when Mom finally decided she had had enough. We discovered that the rat had gone under the water heater and was cowering there while we all tried to get a look at it.

Did I tell you what a good gun handler my mom was? The first time my dad took mom deer hunting with him, she was the one who shot the deer. She was so excited when she saw the deer fall she started pounding her rifle on the ground in front of her as she jumped up and down and dad had to reminder her how dangerous it was not to mention it was very hard on the rifle. Anyway, Mom saw that rat under the water heater and said she was going to take care of him once and for all. She went and got the 22 rifle and got down on the floor and took aim at that rat. We were all warning her that it would be very bad if she shot the water heater, but I guess she had confidence in her rifle skills and fired anyway. To our great relief she got the rat and not the water heater. For quite a while afterwards we talked about the demise of that poor pack rat.

A Few Memories of the Old Homestead

I have often made the claim that I stand with one foot in this generation and one in the past. On the Montana prairie we lived a simple life without many of the so-called modern conveniences of the mid 20th century. But do you know something? At the time, I didn't know our lives were lacking. It was life and we loved it--mostly.

In 1951 Mom and Dad moved their little family of five kids to the ranch between Melstone and Musselshell, Montana. (We went to school in Musselshell and went to church in Melstone.) Five more kids were born here. The house was built about 1900 and I think it started as just a little two or three room shack. This part of the house had just a small crawl space under it. There was a low ceilinged porch with warped floor boards that were covered with lineolum that kept wearing out because of the warped boards. From the porch you could step down into a small area that served as a store room. I think the floor was just hard packed dirt that they put lineolum over. The other direction led into a kitchen area and off of the kitchen was a small bedroom that became the girls' bedroom.

Here is the only childhood home I remember. On the left side of the picture(between the two bedroom windows) you can see the trap door that led to the cellar, and to the right of the entrance to the porch was the pump house. When I was at home, we did not have that shelter over the pump, just another trap door.

Sometime before we moved there an addition was made. A cellar was added and three more rooms built over it, making the house L-shaped. The front room connected to the kitchen and then two bedrooms beyond that. Mom and Dad had their bedroom at the end and had to go through the boys' room to get to their bedroom. There were no interior doors on any of the rooms. Mom just hung curtains to provide privacy for the bedrooms. It helped prevent temper tantrums because it was kind of hard to stomp off to our bedroom and slam the curtain.

The plumbing in the house was pretty simple. The water pump from the well was right outside the house by the porch. It was almost a straight shot to run the water line the 10-12 feet from the pump to a small wash basin in the porch and then under the kitchen to the kitchen sink, maybe another 15 feet. In the kitchen on the same wall as the wash basin was where our first electric washing machine was installed. This was the extent of our indoor plumbing for many years. For our bathroom needs we used an "outhouse". I have a vague remembrance of the chamberpots (aka thundermugs)that sat under our beds to save a trip to the outhouse during the night.

I think it was sometime during my gradeschool years when Dad dug a hole in the store room floor and installed a flushing toilet. We still used the outhouse as much as possible during the daytime to avoid overloading our indadequate septic system.

Here is a picture of Sonia and Heidi posing by the outhouse--a two-seater. We were really uptown!

When I was growing up, on Saturday nights we pulled out the old tin tub, which looked much like these, and everyone bathed whether we needed it nor not. Ours was probably between three and four feet long. (I could carry it by myself when I was a teenager if I didn't fill it too full.) We slipped the end of a rubber hose onto the hot water faucet of the wash basin (and then a little cold water) and filled the tub and then carried it into the store room and bathed. Or we filled the tub with a bucket. The first time I took Verlin home for a visit, he inquired about the availability of a real bathtub. Dad took him out to the Savage Ranch and they got a tub out of one of the abandoned houses there and took it home and Verlin helped install it in the store room. To quote from the musical "Oklahoma"--"Everything's up to date...they've gone about as far as they can go".

Happy Valentine's Day

As I was walking past the seasonal aisle at Albertson's the other day, I began feeling sorry for myself because I won't ever again have someone shopping for a special valentine for me. Then I remembered the half eaten very special Valentine cake sitting on top of my refrigerator that Kylie made and delivered with a hug. And a few days later, Hyrum delivered a valentine with a picture of Nemo and Dory.

Verlin was never a great romantic but he did sometimes remember to get me a card or some candies for Valentine's Day. I found out it was always better to remind him if a special day was coming instead of waiting to see if he would remember and then be upset when he didn't. "Valentine" was one of those words like aluminum (he pronounced it "alunimun") that Verlin just couldn't get right. I miss his very sincere "Happy Valentime's" wish. He liked to sort through the little candy hearts to give me ones that said "Be Mine". I will be his Valentime FOREVER!

And Ice Skating

Winters on the river were fun too. These pictures were taken at a family reunion on the farm about winter of 1991-92. It was such an adventure going up the river on the ice especially when there was no snow covering the ice. We could look down and see seams in the ice that showed how thick the ice was, easily a couple feet down in the slower water. One year my mom and dad found a supply of old used hockey skates at a pawn shop or someplace and bought several pairs. We were so excited when they brought them home. We all sorted through the skates until we found a pair that fit us best. I didn't find an exact fit but that didn't matter. I just put on several pairs of socks to take up the extra space and headed off to the river with the others to learn how to skate. Because the skates were rather large, I lacked the ankle strength to stand upright on my skates. My ankles just kind of turned in and I skated more on the insides of my feet rather than on the actual blades. It didn't take very long for my ankles to get tired and sore and I would have to quit and rest. You can imagine our delight a few years later when Santa brought Jim and Calvin shiny new black skates and Denise and I graceful white figure skates for Christmas. I never did become a skilled skater but it was a lot more fun after that. I treasured those skates for many years.

Which way to the river?

We spent many carefree summer hours in the old swimming hole. Sometimes it was just the kids and sometimes Mom and Dad would join us in the evening when the chores were all done. I remember one rather embarrassing experience with my mom and my sister Denise.

Contrary to my belief as a kid, the river was not private property and occasionally a sportsman would ask permission to access the river from our property. Early on, we had trappers who set traps along its banks in hopes of catching the diminishing beavers and muskrats and bobcats. It wasn't long before the river wildlife was all gone and only the fishermen came. I remember one black fellow who came by. On his first visit he introduced himself (I don't remember his name) and asked "which way to the river?" We of course showed him and he went fishing that day and a few times later.

One warm summer day in the middle of the afternoon, Mom, Denise and I were possibly on an outing to find berries that grew along the river banks. As we passed by the old swimming hole, someone suggested a dip in the river to cool off. We all agreed. We were quite confident that we had privacy that particular day, so we slipped off our shoes, shirts and pants and slid into the water. We had not been in the river long when we heard a greeting from the bank above us. You guessed it. We were a bit startled to see our fisherman friend who had chosen that particular day to fish in "our river". He stood there for a spell, passing time in pleasant conversation, hopefully unaware of our discomfort as we treaded water and smiled and nodded in response. Thinking back, I am glad that it was not what you would call a clean river. The water was always a little mirky. By and by, our visitor said good bye and headed up the river to find a place to fish. Giggling with relief, we were soon able to get out of the river, put on our clothes and get home.

All Work and No Play...

Besides meeting our irrigation needs, the Musselshell River provided hours of fun for us, such as---

Floating---
I remember Mom taking us on a float trip down the Musselshell River. We caught a ride to a point several miles upstream from our farm and threw in our innertubes and floated down the river to our place. We had to stand up and carry our tubes through several locations where the irrigation demands had diminished the water flow to a trickle. When we were little we called these the "rapids" but I realize now they were nothing like the rapids that serious river rafting/canoe enthusiasts would encounter. There were also a few spots where "fences" had been stretched across the river (I think we called them a water gap) to prevent the cattle and horses from leaving the pasture via the water route. Our tubes did not even closely resemble the ones pictured here either. Ours were discarded tire innertubes with multiple patches, but they got us from point A to point B with a lot of fun in between! Oh, and we did not have life vests either. I thought that was what the innertube was for!

It looks like the ice is still moving off the river in this picture. This picture might have been taken not too far from our favorite swimming spot.

Swimming---
We had a fun swimming hole on the bend of the river just below the barn and corrals. In the summer we fished and swam there and in the winter we skated there. The river bank on the barn side of the river was quite high, maybe 10 feet higher than the water level. The other side of the river had a gradual shallow bank with willows growing along it. I still love thinking about the sweet smell of the willows along the ditch banks and the river banks. That is where we hung out in the shallow water before we actually learned how to swim. I would compare it to the shallow wading pool at a public pool...only better! We enjoyed sinking our feet deep into the black river mud and covering our bodies with the mud and then diving in to wash off the stinking mud. At one point the boys built a diving board on the high bank that we used for a while until it became too rickety to use and was finally washed away by a flood. We also had a spot that we threw water on and slid on like otters. It made a great mudslide. We wore out more than one swimming suit sliding on that mud. Just off to the right of the diving board was an old truck that somehow found its final resting place at the bottom of the river. When I was very young I couldn't even reach the truck unless I dove down to touch it, which I didn't like to do, but as I got older I could stand on it on my tiptoes and keep my head above water.