HOMESTEAD DOGS
Dogs were very important to us on the homestead. A good watch dog served to keep coyotes away, and let us know when visitors were approaching, perhaps neighbors passing by or coming to visit, or lone riders who sometimes stopped to water their thirsty horses.
Our first dog was Smutz. Dad had rescued him from being drowned by some boys who were doing away with a batch of puppies. Dad came by just as the boys were putting the pups in a sack, intending to drown them all. Dad brought one little puppy home, and my parents named him Smutz. He was an odd little mutt, with long streaked gray and black hair which hung down and almost covered his eyes. He had a very short drooping tail, so that until he moved you could scarcely tell which end of him was which.
He was a fair watchdog, very vocal, but otherwise he didn't amount to much. We kids liked him, I suppose, though he was cranky and didn't like much petting. He was not good with the livestock, as he usually went to their heads, instead of the heels, when trying to drive them. He was a mortal enemy of Billy, the useless horse. When Billy would come trotting down the lane to get water, Smutz would dash out and chase Billy, on some occasions managing to set his teeth in old Billy's long tail. He would hang on like grim death, and go for a wild ride, being dragged, sometimes kicked half silly, and generally abused. He always recovered from those episodes, though we all thought he would surely be killed sooner or later.
We kids weren't very sorry when Momma decided to trade Smutz to Mrs. Stack, wife of our rural mail carrier. Mrs. Stack was a full-blooded Indian woman; they lived then in the old James place about a mile and a half from our house. Mrs. Stack made very nice rugs, and my mother was a good friend of the Stacks. One day Momma announced she had traded Smutz for a rug! Since the distance he had been taken was not great, it wasn't long before Smutz came home. They came and got him, and he never returned again. We kids thought maybe Smutz had been eaten, simply because the Stacks were Indian people. Of course, now I doubt that that was what happened to old Smutz, but we never did see him again.
Next we got Jack, a "scrub" collie--that is he wasn't born of fancy registered parents--but he was a great old typical Scotch collie in color--brown and snowy white, with a broad white neck- band, small white feet, and a wonderful disposition. He was given to us by the Betz family, probably soon after the departure of Smutz. He was such a fine dog, brave when facing threatening animals or strangers, yet so gentle little children could crawl all over him, and he would just look pleased.
Dad trained him to help with the cattle. He was a natural "heeler"--that is, he knew how to drive livestock, going to their heels, nipping here and there to encourage them to move. Most of what I know about Jack is what I have heard from my parents. I was quite small when one day Matt James and another man came by our place, on horseback. It was winter time, and Matt wanted our Dad to know that he planned to shoot a stray range horse out on the range about a mile from our place, and put poison in the carcase to kill coyotes. That wasn't unusual, and Dad thought it would be far enough from our place to not pose any problem for us, so he agreed.
I don't know how long it was after that--probably only a few days--when one cold morning Jack was missing! Then Dad came in from the barn and told us that Jack was lying down by the barn, dead of poisoning. He evidently had gone off to look at that dead horse, had gotten some of the poison, and then headed for home. But it was too far, and he died there, a terrible death from strychnine. I can remember vividly how angry Robert and I were, sitting there at the breakfast table. I think we all vowed that never again would coyote poisoners be allowed to put out that terrible stuff so near our place. Oddly, I don't remember that we were particularly angry at Matt James; probably we thought of him as a valued neighbor, rather than as a poisoner. I do know that all the neighbors around felt bad about Jack's death, for he was a very good dog.
The following summer we got another little collie pup from the Betzes. He was round and rolly-poly, and full of fun. But we were not to have him long. About that time Momma was on the warpath against the mice which were giving us a bad time in the house. She had purchased some rat poison, mixed it with some lard, and placed it around the house at various points. You can guess what happened! One day the new puppy got into some of that poison, and died under the house in agony. All our efforts to help him failed. I needn't tell you that Momma stopped using poison on mice!
We named the next collie pup we got from the Betzes Laddie. He wasn't marked or long- nosed quite like the typical collie. This dog was dark brown, with a white collar, and was gener- ally heavier in the shoulders than the usual collie. From the time he was very young he showed a lot of individualism and personality. He was easily trained to do different things, though, and was a very good stock dog.
While Laddie was still quite young, Dad trained him to go up into the pasture and bring the cows home. (We sometimes pastured the cows in the horse pasture, when there was enough grass for them.) As our house was below the level of the hill just to the west, Laddie was unable to see the cows when he was ordered to go bring them in. So he would gallop up the hill, and begin looking for the cattle. He loved to do this, and would bring the cows home at a nice easy walk, as if he understood that cows shouldn't be hurried when their udders were full of milk.
There was only one trouble--Laddie enjoyed so much bringing the cows home that he would sometimes go out and do it on his own. As a result, he had to be broken of that habit! He seemed to have an internal clock as he would come every day to meet us on our way home from school. How we loved that! He was very playful, would dash in circles around us, just out of reach. Robert and I would sometimes pretend to be fighting. Immediately Laddie would get in between us, letting us know he wouldn't stand for that!
Laddie seldom got to see any wildlife except jackrabbits and an occasional skunk. He chased jackrabbits to his heart's content, running them for miles, then coming home empty-handed, but happy. He always enjoyed that, though I doubt that he ever caught a healthy rabbit. Strangely, he didn't bother our tame rabbits or chickens. Sometimes in cold weather we would see Laddie curled up out of doors, with a cat or two snuggled up against him for warmth. He and all the pets slept out-of-doors, regardless of the weather.
Skunks were a different matter! I don't suppose you have ever had a chance to see a skunk out in the wild, or especially when challenged by a dog, have you? Skunks have strong wills and are not easily bluffed. When threatened, a skunk will not run, but will stand facing whatever it is threatening him, and will jump up and down a few times with his front feet, as if to make his opponent back up. That's a clear signal for us humans that the time has come to back off, for the skunk's next move is to let go with his nasty spray.
However, that bluff didn't work with Laddie! He seemed to have the idea that he had been chosen to destroy all skunks. After a few preliminary barks, Laddie would dash in, grab the skunk any way he could and shake the daylights out of it. More than once I have seen him do that, shaking the skunk so fiercely it appeared that Laddie had a black and white collar, with the spray from skunk making a strange greenish haze or halo around them.
Laddie wouldn't let go until the skunk was dead, but, oh, what a price he (and we) paid! He would be sick to his stomach, his eyes would burn so he had scarcely see, and he smelled so bad we would have nothing to do with him until the smell had worn off a bit after a few days. Once after such a duel with a skunk, I saw Laddie take a running jump into the water of the creek, as if knowing that would help his eyes.
Laddie never got over that business of attacking skunks! We often wish sincerely that he would leave them alone. Of course, skunks were not very plentiful, so Laddie didn't get smelled up more than once or twice a year. In case you haven't observed this, a dog carrying skunk scent carries it a very long time, and any wetting, from swimming or rain, brings it back fresh and strong! I don't recall that we ever, ever attempted to give Laddie a bath. In those days farmers just didn't bathe their dogs.
Old Laddie loved to go along whenever we took the team and wagon, or rode old Snip, the saddle horse. He would trot alongside of us, looking up now and then with a big grin on his face, happy as a lark. We seldom denied him the right to go along, as he gave us a certain sense of security, especially when we kids went after the cows or were going to town with the wagon.
Laddie was never hesitant about a fight any dog who might challenge him, and I never knew him to run from a fight. He was very strong and quick, and gave more than one dog a sore foot. Exactly as I had read about collie dogs and the way they fight, Laddie would go for the feet of his opponent, biting them severely, and that often ended the fight almost before it was well started.
(Though I'm not finished with the story of Laddie, I must leave it for another chapter in this blog!)

Please forgive my giving at the end of the latest blog details of the harsh realities of killing turkeys! I stand corrected! But I must say that an important, though often unpleasant, part of life on the homestead involved the death of animals. Most of us eat meat purchased in the market without giving a moment’s thought to the death of the creature involved. Let’s go on!
When I was in about the fourth grade, Ralph Carter gave me what I thought was a most desirable gift--a pair of tame rabbits. The Carters had lots of animals, sheep and horses and cattle, and pigeons, too. But the animals I liked best when I went to visit Ralph were the rabbits. They kept a smallish variety, the adults about the size of a cottontail, but cloaked in a pretty, soft, brown fur. The Carters kept them in small pens, with wire mesh screen in the bottom. What did they do with them? They ate them! Tame rabbits are much better eating than the wild kind, who develop toughness with all their exercise. Up to the day Ralph gave me the pair of rabbits, the Carters were the only folks in the community who raised tame rabbits.
I failed to consult my parents before bringing that pair of rabbits home from school, where Ralph had brought them. They were in a little cage, which we set up in the back yard, behind the house. Of course Mom had real reservations about having rabbits, but I was allowed to keep them. We knew absolutely nothing about raising rabbits, and simply fed them the same as the chickens-- some mash and grain each day. My sisters and I would also bring them handfuls of green grass, when we could find some.
Naturally I don't remember just how much time elapsed, but those rabbits were better at arithmetic than I was--at least at multiplication! Soon we had several cages of rabbits, and more to come! You can probably guess what happened--one day some got out of their cages and there was no chance of catching them. So we just let the rest of them go, too.
It wasn't long until we had little brown rabbits all around the place, down around the barn, making their nests under part of the house, and in the woodpile. We had lots of rabbits. We did eat a few, though never very many. It was an odd sight to see those rabbits come running when we called the chickens for their food! They would come scurrying from all directions, like a brown wave mixed in among our white chickens.
I remember that one day Robert and I discovered several dead rabbits down near the well, when we went for water. Their bodies were still warm, and for a few minutes we couldn't figure out what had happened to them. Then Robert discovered a weasel watching us from the far bank of the creek. That explained the dead rabbits! The weasel had been killing them, and drinking their blood. Robert ran to the house for the .22 rifle, and Mr. Weasel was soon put out of this world.
We knew it was wasteful to feed all those rabbits, but we kids liked them, even though we never made real pets of any of them. Years later, after we had left the old homestead, some of our old neighbors told us that there were still little brown rabbits living around the old place. There were none to be seen in 1946, though, when we went out there to see the old place, after WWII.
We also had some white mice once. I think Vernon Richter was the one who gave me that start in livestock raising. Like the rabbits, the mice were once just two, then more, and more, and more. We only had them around for a short time, though. Mom decided something must be done quickly, and made a plan to execute the whole bunch at once, with chloroform.
I remember how that plan was to work: we put all the mice into a big wash tub, where they couldn't get out. Then a wad of cotton or a rag, I don't recall which, was saturated with chloroform, and dropped into the tub, and the whole thing covered up to make it air tight. It didn't take long for them all to become unconscious, if not dead, and then Dad took them up on the side of the hill, dug a hole, and buried them all in a mass grave. I really felt little concern for them, as I hadn't especially liked them, anyway, and Mom was greatly relieved. We did speculate a little as to whether they had been dead, or just under anesthesia! At least none of them dug themselves out!
Then we had cats, cats, and more cats. My sisters, Jean and Mary, always loved cats, and it was very difficult to get rid of any extra cats, particularly when they were just little kittens. So there were always quite a few cats running around the place. Some would be around the barn or barnyard when we milked, and enjoyed getting a squirt of fresh milk direct from cow to cat. Of course, they didn't catch all the milk squirted at them; it got all over them, but they could lick that off easily enough.
You would think, wouldn't you, that the cats would have eaten the rabbits? Well, they tried, and I suppose they did get some of the little ones at times. But you should have seen how those adult rabbits could handle a cat! If a cat came near a nest of young rabbits, the adults would run right at the cat, jump over it, and give the cat a ferocious kick with both hind feet as the rabbit went by overhead. Even a large cat would be tumbled head over heels with such an attack. The cats quickly learned that it was not safe to be around rabbits that acted like that!
We did have some trouble with the cats catching and eating little chickens. After hatching the chicks in an incubator in the cellar, they were put outside in a little shelter, with a "run" covered with chicken wire. Sometimes hawks would swoop down and try to catch one, but the wire protected them.
One day one of the cats was out there, reaching down through the wire mesh, trying to catch a chick. Mom saw it out there, grabbed up the broom, and ran out to drive it away. She may have intended only to scare the cat, but her aim with the broom was too good, and she broke its back! We then had to put the poor thing out of its misery. Mom felt awfully bad about that, but we kids sometimes teased her a little about being so deadly with a broom!
Every once in a while, Dad would decide (with some encouragement from Robert and me) that there were just too many blooming cats around, and we would have an extermination campaign. On one such occasion, Robert used the .22 to do away with several of them, despite the screaming objections of the girls. The poor cats hadn't done anything to deserve death, but we had to get rid of the surplus, as we saw it.
I've just read back over some of the above, and realize how blood-thirsty I must sound! It would be nice, I suppose, to think of animals and turkeys and chickens just living peacefully forever, but that was not the way it was on the homestead. Death was a very important part of managing animals, and we boys, at least, grew up with that understanding. We never wanted to be cruel to animals, but we could shoot a cat, or kill a rabbit to eat, or chop off a chicken's head, without a qualm. In all our killing of animals we tried to inflict a quick and painless death, and truly felt bad when that didn't happen.
Now that I've said that, I see at once that we didn't always feel so casual about the death of dogs and horses. Cows and sheep and pigs could come and go, but horses were lasting, and dogs were friends, even considered a real part of the family.
When Dad and Mom first came to the homestead, they purchased a team of two mares, for use on the farm. I don't remember one of those mares, but I do remember the second one, who was still alive and working when I was small. Her name was Babe, and she had had a series of colts. Babe was a gentle old horse, slow as molasses in a cold winter, but willing to work some if forced to. We could ride her, and she was our first and only saddle horse for quite a while. But she wasn't a comfortable horse to ride, because she had a very broad back and wide rib cage, and could seldom be coaxed into even a trot, let alone a gallop.
I think Dad had kept only one of her sons, or if she had produced any other males, I don't know of them. But one was enough! His name was Billy; he was a truly handsome horse, a beautiful chestnut in color, with a white blaze on his face, and long streaming mane and tail. You see, Billy didn't have to work; he just lived a life of ease and ornriness. When he was old enough to break for work in harness, somehow in the breaking process he injured a muscle in his shoulder (this was called a sweeney, I think), and could never pull after that.
Billy was kept with the work horses, so was frequently around the barn. He drank water by the barrel, or so it seemed to me, for I often had to pump for him. He loved to come trotting down the hill from the pasture, down the lane in front of the house, kicking at old Smutz the dog if Smutz came out to challenge him, and letting his innards make the peculiar hollow sound that only a horse can achieve as he trotted. I guess he was gentle, though I once saw him kick with both feet at Dad when Dad walked behind him. Fortunately, he missed!
When we moved off the homestead in the fall of 1932, old Billy was brought along with the other livestock to our new home on Milk River. But he was a fence crawler from away back, and didn't stay long. He crawled the necessary fences, and took off back to the homestead. Did you know that horses can do that--go back to their home, just as a dog or cat might do? Well, Billy did it. I remember we had to go bring him back more than once, but finally we just let him go to fend for himself, on the open range. We never saw him again.
Beside our working team, the mares Nell and Frolic, we had quite a few other horses which had for years been allowed to run on the open range. Every year, or maybe it was every two years, we would try to round them up, and with the help of neighbors, do the necessary branding of the colts, and castrating of the males.
I recall one such roundup, when we had gotten permission from the James family to use their corral to hold the horses for branding. Several of the neighbor men, mounted on good horses, had rounded up the range bunch, and gotten them into the corral. I was quite small, but old enough to watch from the corral fence, and was greatly excited by the swirling mob of horses circling in the corral. One mare, a strawberry roan, was considered "mine." You see, Dad had given each of us kids one mare out of the bunch on the range to call our own. My mare was the recognized leader of the whole bunch, and I was very proud of her. She had had a number of mare colts, and was then a "grandmare" or grandmother, whichever you like.
I don't remember that mare's name, but she was surely a wild one. As I watched, she got as long a run as she could, and sailed out of that corral as if on wings! Others tried it, but she was the only one who got away. Some years later that same mare, a beautiful animal, managed to throw and drag a broncho-buster whom Dad had hired to break some of our wild bunch for riding.
He was working the bunch alone on the prairie, or range, several miles east of our place, living in an old abandoned homesteader’s shack. Apparently one morning he didn't even do his breakfast dishes, but went out to ride that mare, right after breakfast. No one was there to see, but she either threw him, or the saddle turned. His foot must have caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged to death. When he was found by accident some days later, he had been dead for quite a while. The mare was standing around, with the saddle hanging upside down under her belly. That ended the breaking of our range horses for riding!
In the spring of 1932, a horse-buyer came through the homestead country, offering to buy up range horses for hog food! We were so proud of our Dad! He needed cash badly, but he refused to sell horses for $2 a head, which was what the man offered, to be slaughtered and processed as hog food. So when we left the homestead that fall, we just left the range horses to continue their wild life on the range. A few years later, someone told us that he had seen our "bunch," still out on the range, and apparently doing well.
In those days there were lots of "wild" horses on the range. Nearly every day when going after the cows we would see a bunch or two, their long, untrimmed tails flying out behind them as they ran. They were all very wary of humans, even of little boys and girls on foot, as we usually were. Many of those wild horses had marks on them from saddle sores, or harness burns. Those old horses had probably done a life-time's work before being turned out on the range to die. But there were lots of younger horses, too, which had never been broken to ride or work.
Also, we sometimes saw a wild stallion, a big black fellow who was a pacer (he swung both legs on one side forward at the same time, then the others on his other side, etc.). That was considered a desirable smooth-riding gait, and we admired him very much.
Our favorite horse was old Snip, though for the life of me I can't recall how we came to have him at our place. Dad must have bought him or traded a cow for him, or something like that. He was no youngster, but was lively and quick on his feet, and smarter than most horses, I'm convinced. We thought he was a mustang; he was small and wiry, with small hoofs.
At that time (and on through all our farming days) we had only one saddle--an ancient army McLellan cavalry saddle, named after the famous Civil War General. It had been designed for and used by the U. S. Cavalry from the Civil War days on. I think Dad bought it when he first came to the homestead. It was terribly uncomfortable to ride on, and we boys were thoroughly ashamed of it. It didn't have a horn, so there was no place to anchor a lariat--not that we ever were good enough with a rope to catch anything from the horse's back! But that saddle did have lots of convenient rings and loops and hooks on which things could be tied, and was much better in that respect than the usual stock saddle.
Maybe Snip resented that light little saddle just as much as I did! We soon found that he couldn't be trusted, in a lot of ways. I've told in another chapter of his little trick of letting on everything was alright, when first starting out on a ride, and then suddenly bucking when about a half mile from home. He dumped me more than once.
Also, he would hold his breath, expanding his middle to the utmost when we were tightening the cinch straps. Then, when someone was ready to mount, he would let his breath out, and the saddle would slip around under his belly! Very neat! We learned to get around him on that trick, too, by giving him a sharp jab with a knee when about to buckle the cinch strap. He would grunt and let his wind go, and we could then get the strap another notch tighter.
But Snip was very useful to us, and we rode him many, many miles, after the cows, to round up the horses, sometimes (rarely) to school, even down to the Milk River to fish a time or two. He could be used in harness, too, though he was a bit light for that.
How I wish I knew his full history! Once when our neighbor, Charlie Carter, was at our place, he went over to old Snip, looked him over carefully, then announced that he was sure that Snip was the same horse he had once seen working deep in a coal mine, years before. If that was so, we never really knew. Maybe Snip was thankful to be out in the open air again!
Old Snip died all alone one winter day, while pasturing in John Goodmanson's pasture south of our house. We hadn't seen him for a day or two, and I went looking for him. He had gone just as far as he could, a full mile from our place, and must simply have laid down and died there, weary, and old and cold. We kids grieved over him for days.
Nearly all of the farm work was done with our only team, Nellie and Frolic. I remember them so well! Frolic was black, with scarcely a white mark on her anywhere. She was the daughter of one of the first mares Dad had purchased when he started homesteading. She was a pretty good sized horse, at least in the eyes of a small boy like me. The thing I remember most about her was that she stepped on my foot once!
I was very small, barefooted (for it was summer), and was no doubt standing too near the horses. Anyway, as old Frolic stamped her feet to shake off the pestiferous flies bothering her, I managed to get my little bare foot under one of her hoofs! It came down hard, and she had no intention of moving it again, it seemed to me. There was no one near me to help, though I was uttering very loud cries of distress! I kicked at her leg with my good foot as hard as I could, but she wouldn't move! Finally, after a long time, or so it seemed to me, she lifted her foot and I could get away. My poor big toe was cut and bruised, and I lost that toe- nail as a result of the injury. I always held that against Frolic, I think.
The other mare, Nellie, was my favorite. She was a pretty sorrel in color, with black mane and tail. Nell was very frisky, and lighter in weight than Frolic, but was a good worker. For a long time Dad entertained ideas of having Nell broken to ride, but somehow that never came about. I guess she would let some people ride her, but none of us ventured to try it.
The two mares together caused more than a little trouble for us, as they were prone to run away! I don't think that ever happened out on the homestead, but when we moved to the Burke place, in 1932, they got the idea that a runaway would be fun. I remember the first one, which occurred not long after we moved there, probably in the next summer.
Dad had left them unattended for just a minute right in the farmyard of the place. They were hitched to our hayrack, as we had been putting up hay in the slough. Something triggered their move, and off they went on a dead run, first down the road a little way, then off across the sagebrush pasture land, the empty hayrack bouncing wildly behind them. Soon they came to a steep little hill, dropping down into the slough. They didn't hesitate a moment; down they plunged, the wagon and rack almost overtaking them. I suspect the noise of the bouncing rig behind them sort of helped to keep them going! All three of us--Dad, Robert, and I--were chasing after them, hollering "whoa, whoa" at the top of our lungs, but that didn't phase them one bit.
They continued on across the rough ground of the slough, across the alfalfa field, then took another turn and headed back across the slough! Dad, Robert, and I were still chasing them, but had fallen quite a long way behind. We didn't see exactly what happened, but we knew from the tracks they left. They chose to go between two big cottonwood trees, in the row of trees which bordered the slough at that point. There was a sharp dip of about eight feet there, and the rack must have been partly airborne, for they got through between those trees without the hayrack touching the trees on either side! Robert and I measured the distance between those trees later, and it was NOT wide enough for the rack to go through at ground level. Yet it made no mark on either tree! It was airborne!
On they dashed across the slough and headed into the woods. It happened that there was another large cottonwood tree there in front of them. I guess they didn't communicate well, because they tried to go on opposite sides of that tree, with bad results. When we finally got there, the two horses were still staggering around as if drunk. I think they had bumped heads on the far side of that tree! The tongue of the wagon had struck the tree, of course, and was shattered into splinters, but otherwise the rack was not damaged too badly, considering its wild ride! They were a pretty tame pair after that for a while.
Then one day while Robert was driving them hitched to the mower, cutting hay, they took off again. It may have been that they were stung by yellow-jackets or bumble bees. Thank goodness, Robert toppled off the seat backward, and not in front of the sickle! That pair cut a wide and woolly swath through the hayfield until they tired out, then simply stopped. No harm had been done,except that some hay had been cut rather poorly!

ANIMAL FRIENDS
It wouldn't be quite right to write about my early life on the homestead without giving some space to the various animals that were such an important part of our lives. Although I am a long, long way away from the farm, there is still something of the farm in me! That old saying "you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy" is surely true in my case. A good share of the "country" in me has to do with animals, and my continuing interest in and liking for them.
Dad's farming operation was what you might call true diversified farming. Of course, that was the pattern on nearly all the homesteads around our area. Money was so scarce, each family simply had to raise as much of their food as possible, and that meant having lots of animals and chickens around the place--they constituted the grocery market for us! So we had chickens, turkeys, cows and their calves, horses, cats and dogs--plus some others I'll mention later. We always had our own eggs, butter, milk, and meat, and sometimes had surpluses to sell. Everything was used in some way or another; very little was ever wasted.
I may have mentioned in an earlier chapter my recollection of a huge old red steer, with long horns, which I saw from my Dad's arms, when I was about three. Of course, he was no pet so far as I was concerned, but Dad and Mom liked him, and hated the day he had to be butchered to provide meat for the family. In general, though, we didn't make particular pets of any of the cattle. We had to deal pretty closely with the milk cows, so they were all named. Some of them even knew their names, I'm sure, especially Old Vollie, the cow the folks bought when the Voliekinovitches left their homestead. She (the cow) was the matriarch of our whole herd, and was kept almost until the end of our days on the homestead.
There were some rather special cows. One I remember was part Jersey, a little black cow with wicked horns. I don't think we kept her very long. The chief thing I remember about her was her aggressiveness when she had a new calf one spring day. She had dropped her calf in a coulee about a half mile from the house, and Dad, Robert and I went out to bring her and the calf in. Robert and I were quite small, and were tagging along just to see the calf. We made the mistake of assuming that she would behave like the other cows did, with some blustering when anyone got too close to the calf, but no real objection to our handling or picking up the little one.
But not that Jersey beast! Before we got really near her and the calf she began to paw the dirt like a bull, and act pretty nasty, tossing her horns, and bellowing. She made a dash for the dog, and he quickly retreated. Then she chased Robert and me up a hill for a ways! We had been warned that when a cow or bull chased you, to always run up a hill (if one were handy!) and that the animal wouldn't chase you very far. I still don't know whether that is completely true or not, but she didn't follow us any great distance. After that, Dad decided that discretion was better than valor! The upshot of it was that we all left her and the calf, to let her bring it home when she was good and ready.
We raised turkeys in small numbers for several years. Beside the noble experiment Robert and I conducted once to see how long young turkeys could swim (see the chapter on fun and games, yet to come), turkeys meant a lot to us. We ate some, we even ate some of their beautiful big mottled eggs at times. They were especially important to us because we realized some cash money from them, by butchering and selling them.
The hen turkeys pretty well took care of themselves when it came to accumulating a clutch of eggs and hatching out the little turkeys. As soon as the little turkeys were large enough to learn to find food for themselves, a new task was created, one just suited to a small boy like me. That was sort of herding or watching them as they wandered around the place, feeding on grasshoppers or other tidbits they liked. They had to be protected from themselves, seeing to it that they didn't wander too far away, and get lost, and also from coyotes, which apparently like young turkeys. We didn't lose many to coyotes, but they did get one once in a while, when there was no one around the birds while they were out away from the buildings. Actually, I never saw a coyote while watching them, but I was sure there were some around, somewhere. I was mortally afraid of coyotes, and made a rather dubious guardian for the flock!
The turkey that gave me trouble was our big old gobbler. We had him for two or three years, maybe more. He was a huge old bird, and very jealous of his flock of hens. When I would be alone, without the dog to protect me, he took it upon himself to keep me away from the flock! (Did he think I was an odd rival gobbler?) First he would strut around for a while, gobbling at intervals. Then he would put his head down and charge straight at me, and, of course, I would turn and run like crazy! But like the cow I mentioned above, he didn't follow very far. He didn't really want to catch me, I suspect. One time I was armed with a sort of walking stick, or maybe it was one of my stick horses, when he came at me. I waited until he was within range, and swung hard with that stick, catching him right on the neck. To my horror, he dropped in the dirt, fluttering his wings a little, and appeared to be dying! I thought I would surely be in big trouble if he did die, though inwardly I felt quite triumphant in having done battle with him, and having won! However, like the famous Scots, "after lying in the dust to bleed a while" he slowly recovered, and walked off, pretty wobbily, back to the other birds. That didn't fully convince him not to bother me. It was probably that November, when we were preparing to butcher the whole lot of the turkeys--twenty or so, I remember--that we had the turkeys penned in the chicken house, feeding them to get as much weight on them as possible. I had gone into the chicken house for some reason--no doubt to feed the silly things--when that gobbler came after me again! This time there was no place to run, and I had nothing to defend myself with. He literally ran right up the front of me, and beat me about the head and face with his big wings. I was the one who retreated that time; I got out of there as quickly as I could, shaken but not really damaged very much. How glad I was when that old bird hung cold and limp along with the others! He was by far the largest of our turkeys, dressing out at nearly twenty pounds!
Butchering turkeys was a messy business, at least the way we did it. Turkeys had to have their heads and feet on when sold, so you couldn't simply kill the turkey by beheading it, as we did with chickens. Also, the killing had to be done in just the right way, or the feathers would be almost impossible to pull out, especially the big wing feathers.
The technique our Dad used was to first hang the turkey by its legs up to one of the rafters in the barn. Then he took a long, thin-bladed knife, very sharp, opened the turkey's mouth, and with the knife cut the big blood vessels at the back of the throat. The bird then was simply allowed to bleed to death, which really took only a short time. In that short time, though, there was lots of blood flying every which way from the wild flopping of the turkey's wings.
Then came the difficult job of picking off the feathers, without benefit of scalding as was done with chickens. After most of the feathers were gone, there usually was a need for a long session of pulling pinfeathers--little feathers which had not yet had a chance to emerge fully from the skin. We used tweezers to pull the pinfeathers. Sometimes the big wing feathers gave us a lot of trouble, because they wouldn't come out easily at all. We used a pair of pliers on them, to get a good grip. I think it took us most of two days to butcher that whole flock of turkeys and get them ready to take to Glasgow to market. I think this is quite enough for a blog. Another chapter will reveal more of my nature, I suppose, by telling of other animals in those homestead years.

CHORE BOY
One of the advantages of growing up on a farm is that there is practically never a time when there isn't something to do. As a boy it seemed to me that most of the time there was too much to do--that is, too much of things I didn't really want to do. Those activities were called "chores." We kids were all started on chores when very young, first being assigned the easier things that we could handle, and then growing into more difficult jobs. Just for fun, let me tell you of some of the chores I had to do, when about ten years old.
At this time I had a lot of chores to do, especially during the school term, because my father was a country school teacher. He taught in small rural schools, often located several miles away from home. Even in good weather he sometimes could get home only on week-ends, and often during severe winter weather, he would be away for several weeks at a time. My brother, Robert, had started high school, boarding (doing chores for his room and board) at a farm also miles away. Thus I got the full load, though my Mom was awfully good to help me.
Here's how a typical winter school day would go. Mom would get me out of bed about six o'clock-"time to go out and milk, John." She would help with the milking if we had more than two cows to milk. So I would get up, put on heavy overcoat and overshoes, take the milk pails with some warm water in one, the kerosene lattern in my other hand, and trudge down to the barn. Still dark out, the fifty or sixty yards to the barn seemed like a long way, especially if there were new snow drifts to tramp through. The lantern would throw long shadows--something which always made me feel slightly (or more!) scary.
We kept the milk cows in the barn winter nights. The first thing to do would be to clean the stable out, throwing the manure and soiled bedding straw out the wide door of the barn onto the manure pile. A messy job, believe me! Then fresh straw had to be brought in, and thrown under the cows, and some hay given them in the manger, so they would have something to chew on while we milked. Usually by the time I had this done Mom would have come down to the barn.
We next washed the udders of the cows (that's what the warm water was for), and began milking. We had to hurry, and often the old cows would give us a love switch across the face with their wet, dirty tails. Sometimes their teats would be sore and cracked from the cold weather, and a cow would kick--hard--upsetting me and making me spill all the milk. Usually one or two cats would be sitting around, begging for milk, and I might squirt a shot of milk at them. Some of them became pretty skilled at drinking milk "on the fly."
The milking finished, Mom would take the milk back to the house, and begin fixing breakfast. I next turned the cows out of the barn, threw a lot of hay over the fence for them and the other livestock in the barnyard, and then went to the well to begin pumping water for all of them. If you have never seen a big old milk cow drink, you can have no idea how much water each of them could put away. Pumping by hand, from a deep well, was a slow, cold business, and there were always ten or twelve head of cattle, and maybe two or three horses there to be watered. My body would be plenty warm, with the work of pumping, but my hands and feet would get awfully cold. But when all had been watered, and the wooden barrel (used as a water tank) left full, I would fill a bucket with clean fresh water, and head for the house.
Done with chores? Oh, no; after breakfast the chickens had to be fed and watered. Only then could I stop and get ready for school. Sometimes I would be so late I'd have to run or walk really fast to get to school by nine o'clock. We had about a mile and a quarter to walk to school.
In the evening it was pretty much the same routine, in reverse. The cows had to be brought in, watered, fed, the milk cows put in the barn, and milked again. Mom usually had fed and watered the chickens, and gathered the eggs before I got home from school, but if she hadn't, it was a chore for me to do. And, in addition, there was wood to chop and bring in, filling the wood box, and the slop bucket to be emptied. Only when all that was done, and the dishes washed and put away (we kids all took our turn at washing and drying dishes), would I feel my day's chores were done. And then sometimes I would have a weasel which I had trapped, or a jack-rabbit, to skin before going to bed.
Did I feel put upon, and sorry for myself? Of course I did at times. But I knew that all my friends in school had the same sort of round of chores to do, and that the tasks simply had to be done. I learned a lot from being a chore boy--particularly that when something has to be done, the best plan is to get right at it and do it. No use complaining, or feeling sorry for yourself. That lesson has helped me all my life. Now I can say that I'm truly glad that I had that background as a chore boy!

PRAIRIE MEDICINE
Some of the clearest memories I have of my boyhood out on the homestead are of illnesses and minor accidents, and the treatment we had available to us. Our nearest doctor was in Hinsdale, about fifteen miles away. While he would make house calls, even that far out in the country, we would only call on him for major things, such as the birth of a child. To travel fifteen miles to see a doctor, when your choice of transportation was team and wagon, or riding horseback, or walking--well, that was a long way! A trip to Hinsdale, with horses, took two hours or so each way. The result was that with only rare exceptions, when we we were sick or injured, home remedies were applied.
What sort of illnesses did we have? All sorts of things. I'll tell you of a few of them. Probably most frequent ailment at our house was "stomach ache." Our Dad had real trouble with his stomach being upset. Not having such things as Tums or anything like that on hand (I'm not sure they had been invented as yet), his remedy was simple and good. He would place a couple drops of peppermint extract on a teaspoon of sugar, and take that. Sometimes he stirred the mixture into a cup of hot water to make a fragrent tea.
That ailment was awfully contagious! We kids would almost simultaneously come down with the same problem, while the peppermint bottle was still out. We had to have the same treatment right now! I know we didn't fool anyone, but we often complained of stomach ache so that we could the have sugar and peppermint treatment.
We did have to be a little careful, though, because if we complained just a bit too earnestly (or sometimes couldn't help complaining over a really bad stomach ache) we got the next standard treatment. I don't think it is available nowadays-- Castoria, the children's laxative. I think it was an extract of the castor bean, or maybe of prunes. Whatever, it was highly flavored to cover its true origin, and colored dark brown, about like vanilla extract. I do know that it worked just as promised! But if it didn't, the bottle of real castor oil was right at hand. Oh, how I remember taking that horrid stuff, holding my nose with one hand, opening my mouth, gulping it down, and then quickly trying to rinse the bad taste from my mouth with water. We all hated castor oil.
Like most youngsters, even today, we had sore throats quite frequently. I, especially, suffered from bad tonsils, and often suffered from a very bad sore throat. Treatment for this began with gargle, a homemade concoction sometimes made of vinegar, hot water and salt, or of just plain hot water and lots of salt. Our parents did keep a large bottle of Listerine on hand, and sometimes that was used, straight from the bottle, as a gargle. Naturally, we kids preferred the homemade gargles over Listerine. I really don't recall that any of the gargles were very effective.
Then, if the sore throat became really painful, and the tonsils became enlarged as mine were a lot of the time, we faced "swabbing." That was dreadful! A wad of cotton on the end of a little stick was dipped in iodine, and our throats liberally swabbed with the powerful antiseptic. It made one gag, and we kids always were worried that we might swallow some of the iodine, for it was reported to be poison! When we were a little older, mercurochrome became popular as an antiseptic, and it displaced iodine for swabbing throats and for minor cuts and scratches. We kids liked it much better than iodine.
Despite the preventive efforts, we often came down with severe colds, in both heads and chests. We doped our poor stuffed-up noses with either Mentholatum or Vaporub, both fairly strong and aromatic mixtures of menthol and vaseline. Then when we went to bed at night, we had Vaporub vigorously rubbed on our necks and chests, and the areas were covered with flannel cloth to "keep the heat in." We had never heard of taking vitamin C, or nose drops, or even using aspirin to relieve the symptoms. Antihistimines hadn't been invented yet.
When we developed really serious chest colds, with deep coughs and croup, there was a further step to be taken. When we went to bed, Mom rubbed us thoroughly with Musterole, a vicious smelly grease made of essence of mustard and some kind of vaseline. It was really strong, made to take the place of mustard plaster, I guess. It not only carried a real stink, but it burned one's skin, and was truly awful if some got in your eyes! It had the power, though, and it seemed to help break up a cough, and we used a lot of it.
Once my little sister, Mary, when just a little girl, had such a bad cold on her chest the folks thought she was going to have pneumonia. An elderly neighbor lady, an old timer on the prairie, happened to come by, and suggested a radical treatment. We gathered most of the onions we had in the garden, and she made a crushed onion plaster. She covered poor little Mary's back and chest with the onions, and covered it all with flannel. It was indeed strong medicine, but it worked, and Mary recovered quickly. If I remember right, Mary was never very fond of onions after that.
We all caught the usual childhood diseases, and generally shared them with all the kids in the neighborhood, mostly through our contacts at school. We drank out of a common water dipper, at school, and so all were exposed to any cold or other illness which one person might have. We all caught the German measles, and spent our hours at home in darkness, to protect our eyes. At that time no one knew just how dangerous measles are. Having them as a child may have been the original cause of my sister Mary's multiple sclerosis later. Then we all had mumps, with classic swelling of our jaws. Fortunately, they didn't "go down" with either of us boys, as they sometimes did. And we had chicken pox (which you don't catch from chickens!), and cow pox, which we may have caught from the cows. That cow pox was much more severe than chicken pox, maybe about half-way between chicken and small pox, in severity.
Something which we definitely got from our cows was ringworms. It is caused by a tiny parasite which digs into the skin and causes a raised, very itchy, scaly ring-shaped sore on the skin. I once had a terrible one high up on my left arm, around toward the back of my arm. Mom didn't know just what to put on it, so she swabbed it with good old iodine, out of a bottle that was half dried up. Wow, how that treatment burned! The iodine was too strong, and raised a big blister on my arm. But it cured the ringworm! I still have a faint scar to show for that!
By far the worst illness we kids had was scarlet fever. The Richters got it first; no one knew how or where they caught it. They brought it to the little country school, and I think every youngster in the school got it. My older sister, Jean, came down with it first at our house, and then Mary, who was not yet in school.This was in February, and the weather was nasty cold.
Finally, one day both Robert and I became ill with it, at school! I'll never forget that walk home. It was only a mile and a half, and my head was aching so I could hardly see anything. But somehow we made it home, and were undressed and put right to bed. At that point I went into convulsions, Mom has said, and was desperately ill for many days. We all ran high fevers, and were constantly in need of water to drink, or a pail to vomit in, or whatever. All four of us kids were sick at the same time. And to top it off, our Mom, who never seemed to be sick, came down just then with an attack of appendicitis, and needed lots of care.
All the work fell on poor Dad. Naturally, he was really worried about us all, and did everything he could to help us. The doctor from Hinsdale couldn't come out, for there was a regular epidemic of scarlet fever all over the area. Several children died that winter. But the doctor did send out something--quarantine signs to be put up to warn anyone coming near our place that our house was quarantined and not to be entered!
This made it impossible for Dad to go to town for medicine or groceries, or even to get the mail. Only when neighbors came by (as some of those good folks did) could he order the things we needed. It seemed like forever, but we all were down for about three weeks, and then began to get better. When we were all well enough, Dad took us to Hinsdale in the sleigh to see the doctor. The doctor said it was alright for us to return to school, but we must first fumigate the house! That was quite a process, involving burning some sort of sulphur candles in the house while we all stayed outside for several hours. I don't think that did any real good,except to perhaps thin out the mouse population!
Well, we got back to school, and then I had a relapse! Again I was terribly sick, and it took about six weeks for me to grow strong enough to return to school. During those six weeks I had to take a tablespoon of cod liver oil with every meal. I went through quarts of the smelly stuff! Also, Mom made me lots of homemade cocoa, and I drank that and ate graham crackers when I couldn't keep anything else down. To this day, whenever I get stomach flu or similar illness, I actually taste and smell cod liver oil and cocoa and graham crackers, even though nothing of the sort is around! I really do!
Being sick in bed had some advantages, though. One of the "treats" we enjoyed when sick was having "milk toast." Both Mom and Dad could make that to perfection: homemade white bread (we never had store bread) toasted on top of the old cast iron cooking range, soaked in hot milk, with lots of butter, and seasoned with salt andpepper. Boy, that was good!
When we were a little older, after the scarlet fever epidemic, all we kids at Richter School were taken to Hinsdale one day for small pox vaccinations. Bravely (I never did learn not to volunteer to be first!) I said I would go in to the doctor's office first. There was really nothing to the process; a little scratching on the skin of the upper left arm, then the doctor smearing a little vaccine on the scratches. The nurse covered it with some adhesive tape, and it was all over. I went back outside, and was leaning against the side of the doctor's little office building, talking with some of the other kids. Then all of a sudden I came to-- I had passed out! People who were inside the office said my head made a most interesting sound, bumping down over the shiplap boards, as I collapsed. That fainting (really a matter of going into a form of shock) has plagued me all my life. There is something about my innards that is triggered by an injury, or something like an injection, which causes my blood to gather in the lower abdomen, and I pass out. I've been embarrassed by it time and time again.
But back to the small pox vaccine; it really "took," with all of us. We had big ugly scabs on our arms, where the vaccine had been applied. But eventually all our arms healed up, and none of us got small pox!
Did we go to the dentist? So far as I can recall, none of us Cumming kids went to a dentist until we were well along in our teens, and had long since left the homestead. Yes, we had lots of cavities and toothaches. The only help for that was a sort of medicated wax which was pushed into the cavity of the aching tooth. Sometimes our Dad had to pull a truly bad tooth for us, without anything to ease the pain. I know that I made my first visit to a dentist when I was seventeen or eighteen, and then only because I had an ulcerated tooth. I guess we did have some teeth extracted by Doctor Cockrell, in Hinsdale, but he was not a dentist, and didn't have any regular dental equipment.
I do recall one visit our Dad made to the dentist in Glasgow. He had a very bad tooth, and the nearest dentist was in Glasgow, twenty-five miles away in a straight line, across country. And that's just the way Dad went, walking across farms, coulees, creeks, and all. He preferred walking to riding horseback. The dentist pulled the tooth, and in doing so opened a big hole from the gum up into the nasal passage above. It was a painful mess, so Dad stayed overnight in Glasgow. Then the next morning he walked home, carrying a fifty pound sack of flour! Dad was a great walker; none of us could keep up with him. He had trouble with that "tooth hole"for years after that.
We had lots of minor injuries when we were little--scratches from barbed wire fences, bruised toes (horses loved to stomp on my toes!), and the like. Once Robert, while walking barefoot, stepped on a board with a nail in it. The nail came clear up through the top of his foot. To make matters worse, this board was right out in front of the chicken house, and surely must have been contaminated with chicken droppings.
Go to the doctor? Oh, no. Dad just used the big stock syringe he used to vaccinate cattle, filled it with Lysol solution, and disinfected the nail hole with that. Painful, but effective! Robert had no infection whatever from that bad wound.
The only major injury I can remember was when our little sister, Mary, broke her leg at school. This was in her first year of school, and she broke it in a sledding accident. It was really fortunate that she didn't have both legs broken! Robert was away at high school, and Dad was teaching some thirty miles away, out south of the Milk River. A neighbor took Mom, Mary, and Jean to Vandalia, where they caught the local train to Hinsdale. There Doctor Cockrell set the leg (both bones were broken below the knee) and put on a cast.
That left me home alone, with all the chores to do, and school to attend, too. I was eleven years old, and batched alone for three days, milking the cows, taking care of the chickens, and so on. Boy, was I lonesome! I hated to go home after school to the empty house. But everything went alright, and Mom and the girls were home on the fourth day. By then Dad had gotten word of the trouble, and he came home, too, for the week-end. I remember that while alone there, I broke the standing rule at our house which said that the dog couldn't be in the house! I had Laddie stay inside with me at night, and that helped a lot.
Of course, many other things happened to us, many scratches and bruises, but I won't bore you with those. Oh, maybe one more! One cold frosty morning I rode old Snip, our saddle horse, out to find the cows which I had been unable to find the evening before. About half a mile from home he decided to buck a little, and easily tossed me off--to sit down firmly on a big prickly pear cactus! Would you call that an injury, or an illness? I tell you it was both; my feelings were hurt plenty, and I was nearly sick at my stomach from those miserable cactus spines. If looks could kill, that horse would have been dead on the spot! As it was, he just kept a little ahead of me, not letting me catch him all the way back home. I couldn't have ridden, anyway, so it was just as well. Dear Mom had a bad task that morning, pulling all those cactus spines from my "derear."
No, we didn't have modern medicine, but we all survived just fine! Prairie medicine was good enough!

This installment of my life story is a continuation of the description of the homestead property, and includes some very candid descriptions of our neighbors. I trust no one will take offense!
There was a path running from the front of the house east toward the barn, around the south side of the hill. Right at the southern-most point of that path, Dad had built the chicken house, dug into the side of the hill. It was fairly large and airy, with a good tight roof of limbs of trees covered with boards and sod. A large window, covered with a special cloth-like material of wire netting embedded in translucent celluloid, provided light and ventilation. There was room for maybe sixty or so hens, lots of nests, and roosts for the chickens to use at night.
On beyond the chicken house, around the hill about forty yards or so, was the barn. It, too, was dug into the side of the hill. It was built of rather wide boards, had a slightly peaked roof, and had a sort of loft where cranky old setting hens nested and made life miserable for me at times. I often had to gather the eggs from the nests there, and the old biddies, brooding hens who wanted to set on the eggs, would peck at my hand as I reached in. They were a troublesome lot! The barn was rather small, with room for only four horses, or cows, to be stabled at one time. It was pretty dark, too, having only a couple of small windows. There was a wide door in the center of the east side. Right out in front of that door was the manure pile; when we cleaned the barn, we simply tossed the manure and straw out the door onto that pile. From time to time, when the pile got pretty large, we would load the wagon with the stuff and take it out to the fields or pasture and scatter it around for fertilizer. We never had a regular manure spreader. Another important use for manure from this pile was to bank the house, in preparation for winter. That stuff helped to keep out the cold, even though it was a bit smelly toward spring.
There was a sort of sump or low place, right in front of and under the barn door. This served to gather the drainage of liquids from the animals inside (you can guess what I mean). It was a hazard when getting in or out of the barn; you had to jump across it, if it was full, or, in cold winter weather, take your chances on the ice formed on it. Periodically we had to scoop up the liquid and toss it on the manure pile, using a big scoop shovel.
Just to the north of the barn was the fenced hay yard, where we stored hay, and straw for bedding. The path from the house ran on around the hill, going by the chicken house, above the barn on the side hill, around the hay yard, and down to the well.
We kids were really proud of that well, as we had the best-tasting water of any of the farms around. Dad had dug that well by hand, down through hard sand and some layers of rock, to a depth of 44 feet. He put in the well casing as he went down. Mom helped sometimes, too, dumping the buckets of dirt Dad hauled up from the bottom by pulley. Dad also made a device to allow him to work alone. Working at the bottom of the well, he could fill a bucket with dirt or rocks, haul it up to the top, and the device would dump the bucket off to one side, and then allow the bucket to be returned to the bottom of the well. Dad often invented tools or devices to make our work easier.
Of course it wasn't quite according to the book to have the well so close to the barnyard, and down hill from it at that, but we never suffered from contaminated water. The sand must have been a very effective filter!
From the southwest corner of the hay-yard, right next to the well, a fence ran south to the south property fence, and then west up past the house. This was the main barn yard fence. We didn't have a corral, branding chute, or other typical ranch paraphernalia. (Inserted here (I hope!) is a photo of a primitive water color painting I did of the barnyard, painted from memory.)
When Mom and Dad first moved onto the homestead, Mom named some of the hills around. A little more than half a mile to the east, just outside our fenced land, was a hill which had two knobs or summits, with a slight dip between them. I guess that reminded the folks of the two houses of our congress, because that hill was named "Government Hill." For some reason, I never dared to climb up that hill until the last year we were on the homestead. I had been told that someone had once killed a rattlesnake there, and that made it "off limits" for me. I didn't have to be warned further. When I did finally climb the hill, I found it wasn't nearly as high as I had imagined it to be, and there were no snakes in sight, just a lot of sandstone ledges. The hill just to the west of our house, in the horse pasture, was the highest point on the west side of the coulee for some distance.
Another distinctive feature of our landscape was the landslide, just outside the northeast corner of our land. To us kids that was a fascinating thing. Sometime in the not too distant past a big section of the hillside had slid down, leaving a big V-shaped gap. The formation was young enough that there was little vegetation growing on the raw soil exposed by the slide. Of course, we had no idea what might have caused the slide, but speculated that there might have been an earthquake sometime when the soil was very wet. It was not the only such scar on the earth in our area. The hills running on north in Black Coulee showed evidence of many such land slides in the long-distant past. The exposed soil in 'our' landslide contained something very strange--many tiny fragile white snail shells about 1/4" long! Apparently at some time in the ancient past the whole area must have been under water. When we lived there it certainly was far too dry to enable snails to live there!
I mentioned earlier that most of the land around us had been homesteaded, but abandoned. When Dad and Mom first came out, they had neighbors to the east of them, about a mile and half away, whose name was Volikeinovitch (my spelling may not be correct). Another family, the Lofovitches, lived near them. Farther east, and maybe half a mile north there was another homestead shack, empty and forelorn. The plot of land my parents claimed for their homestead had also been homesteaded earlier, but relinquished. I don't know the name of the man who tried there first. We only knew that he was a Finnlander, and that Finnlanders didn't give up easily. I think that as the years went by, our Dad figured out why that man left!
It seems that quite a group of Finnish people, who came from an area in Finland near the border with Russia, had come together, and settled in that neighborhood. Most of their names ended in "vitch." But, sturdy and hardworking as they were, one by one they left the area--it was too tough for them. When the Volikeinovitches had been there for some time, they found that people had difficulty spelling their rather long name. So they took legal action to have it changed, to make it easier to spell: Volikeino! My parents used to laugh at that, because they thought the remaining name was the part which was most difficult to spell!
My friend, Earl Britsch, told me recently that Mr. Volikeino was concerned once that his brother-in-law might be trying to take his homestead away from him, and that that concern entered into his desiring to change his name. Also, Earl said that when my Dad was teaching at the Nault-Miller School, northwest of Britsch's, Mr. Volikeino would ride a bicycle all the way to the school (about eight miles), across the rocky prairie, to talk to Dad about his troubles. To make it even more difficult, his bicycle didn't have any tires! It must have been very difficult riding!
When the Volikeino's moved away, they sold Dad a milk cow, which the folks naturally named "Volley." She was a great favorite with us kids, as she could be milked from left, right, or rear, and could even be ridden, if anyone wanted to sit on her extremely sharp old backbone! She was the matriarch of our herd of milk cows, and we all loved her, even though she was bossy, lorded it over the other cows, and could drink an incredible amount of water.
North of our land there was a strip of "open range" about a mile wide, and then one came to the south fence of the Hank Weasa place. I don't know whether they were Finnish or not, but they had chosen a workable place, and their son or grandsons are still living there. We didn't get along well with them--at least Dad didn't--so we had almost nothing to do with them. I was never at their place when we lived on the homestead, though the last two or three years I went to Richter School, the Weasa kids attended there also, as their rural school had been closed. We became good friends, though our parents and the Weasa parents apparently never visited or had any contact with each other.
It's a sort of long story, about those bad relations, but maybe it will fit in here as well as anywhere. Dad had come out from Wisconsin with a background of dairy farming, and a dream of having a herd of good milk cows. When I was very small, he bought a little Holstein bull calf--Sir Ector Echo DeKalb, I think his name was. He was a registered purebred bull, and cost a lot of money--fifty dollars, if I remember correctly. Well, Sir Ector (we called him "Echo") grew up to became a very nasty, ugly bull. He was the terror of us kids, always bellowing and threatening to get us if we got in any pasture with him. I guess he did help to improve the herd some, but he didn't live very long.
Somehow one time he got out of our pasture, out onto the open range. We knew he was gone, I guess, but not just where. Now it was a known range law, where nearly all the cattle on the open range were beef stock, mostly Herefords, that a dairy bull was not allowed to be on the range. So Hank Weasa, seeing that Holstein bull on the range, simply shot him. He was man enough to come to our house and tell our Dad "I've shot your bull." I don't know what Dad said to him at the moment, but he surely didn't have anything to say to Hank Weasa after that! There was nothing we could do about it--it was range law, and Sir Ector was in the wrong place! We kids surely didn't mourn for him!
Immediately south of us lay the land of John Goodmanson, a Norwegian bachelor farmer. I don't know how he had acquired so much land, but he farmed a full section (640 acres), and owned (or controlled) another section or so. John's house and other buildings were located just a mile south of our place, and half a mile east of Richter School.
A little over a mile east of Goodmanson's was the James place, another Finnish family. Mr. James was quite elderly when I was a boy, and had two sons, Matt and Will, and a grown-up daughter, Inez. I assume Mrs. James had died at some earlier date. The two "boys" (really grown men) sometimes worked in the copper mines at Butte during the winter months. They were good neighbors and hard workers. I think because of our Dad's influence, we evaluated most of our neighbors by the amount of hard work they did. We always appreciated those who had a reputation for being hard workers. We knew that we, the Cummings, certainly were hard workers!
One of the interesting things about the Jameses, was that they had a sweat bath house (an early day sauna!). Some of the neighbors used to go there for a good old fashioned sweat bath in the winter time. A big fire was built in the low dugout building, to heat the rocks in the center of the floor. Then water was sprinkled on the rocks to create steam. The ones taking the sweat bath sat naked on benches around the hot rocks, and were reported (I never was invited to take part, so I am not an eye witness) to switch each other with little willow switches. When they had had enough, they dashed outside and rolled in the snow, regardless of the temperature! Hardy people, the Finns believed it kept them from becoming ill during the winter.
To the northwest of our place, about three miles away, was the homestead of Vic Point, also a Finnlander. His homestead dwelling was near the top of a rise, quite a bit higher in elevation than our place, and visible from miles around. As I recollect, and I certainly don't want to malign the man, he was not a ‘good worker.’ According to what the neighbors told us, he spent his winter months (he was never around during the cold weather) "making hair bridles." That term meant that he was in prison, supposedly for some minor deliberate theft done right under the noses of the keepers of the law. Thus he could get free board and room, and be comfortably warm without effort. I do know that he seldom seemed to work his fields, and we and others suspected him of operating a still and making his living selling moonshine. I have no evidence of this, of course--but, he had no visible means of support. Robert tells me that Vic did grow some potatoes and flax. Once he paid Robert fifty cents to ride behind on Vic's plow, and drop seed potatoes in the furrow.
About a mile and a half west of us, and south a mile, was the homestead of the Lee Ellsworth family. From the times when I remember them, Lee Edward Ellsworth and his wife, Ava, lived there, with a whole brood of youngsters born at short and regular intervals. Each child was named with a first name beginning with "L" and a middle name beginning with "E", so that their initials were all the same--L.E.E. We all loved Ava, his wife, who worked very hard, and bore with her husband with remarkable patience.
The older children went to Richter School while I was there; the younger ones weren't of school age when we left the homestead. I remember how one night when I was very young, Ava and Lee came to our place, with their first child, a "blue baby," as babies with congenital heart problems were called in those days. The baby died, despite all my Mom's best efforts to hold on to it's life.
A mile west of the Ellsworth's was the homestead of the Nurmi's, another Finnish family. Their children also attended Richter School, and we got along fine with all of them. Their oldest son, Harvey, was older than any of us Cumming kids. Their second son, Stanley, was an especially good friend of my brother, Robert. We often were invited to stay over night (one of us at a time) with Stanley, and I, at least, enjoyed the different foods they ate (Mrs. Nurmi made most interesting sour bread) and seeing and sometimes having a ride in their huge Willys Overland touring car, one of the earliest cars in the neighborhood. The Nurmi kids drove a mule to school, I remember, and that was a curiosity to most of us, as there weren't very many mules on the farms in that area.
South of our place two miles was the homestead of Roy Richter, whose children were also our schoolmates at Richter School. I think Roy may have donated the land for the school, as it was named after the Richter family, and was located at the northwest corner of their land. I'll tell more about them later. South of their place a mile was the old Ellsworth place, the original homestead of Lee's parents. Old Grandma Ellsworth was a great friend of my mother's, and often used to visit us. She is the one who taught me to eat, and really like, clobbered milk, the stuff that cottage cheese is made from. She was a midwife, and helped deliver many of the homesteaders' babies in that area. Grandma Ellsworth moved away while I was very young. I don't know where she lived after that.
When I was in the third grade a new family moved onto the old Ellsworth place--the Charlie Carters, who became great friends and good neighbors. They had a band of sheep, and I got my first experience with sheep while visiting with Ralph, their only boy. He had six sisters, who were extremely popular all around the area as they grew up. They were all pretty girls, and lots of fun.
Due west of the Carter's was the original Richter homestead, occupied from very early days by Mr. and Mrs. Emil Richter. Everyone in the area respected the older Richters, I believe; all the kids in the area called them "Grandpa and Grandma Richter." They had a fine old log house and barn, and often entertained the neighbors from all around at sledding parties and the like. They had four sons, Ray, Cliff, Roy, and Floyd, who had their own land and families. It was Ray who loaned Dad and Mom the money to get them started on the homestead.
South of the Carters about two miles, or maybe three, was the John Betz place. Mr. Betz, who was my first Sunday School teacher that I can recall, had settled there about 1890, after coming up from Texas with a trail herd of beef animals. He was a very picturesque man, a great rider, and had many interesting stories to tell. Somehow--I don't know whether there was any truth in the story or not--I always had the idea that he had been one tough hombre when a cowboy, and had gone by the nickname "Blue Betz." I do know that when he first built his ranch house (of cottonwood logs cut on his land) he shot wolves and even a cougar from his front steps; he told us that, himself. He also had an old pistol that had notches on its grips; his son Paul showed it to us once. His ranch was located on the lower reach of Black Creek, the same creek that ran through our homestead. On his extensive land--he had hundreds of acres and big corrals, etc.--Black Creek had become quite a respectable stream, and had lots of trees growing along it, and good swimmingholes, too.
Mrs. Betz was a wonderful woman. Mr. Betz' first wife had become ill and died when quite young, and he hired a young Norwegian girl to come help take care of Mrs. Betz and the child, John Betz, Junior. After the death of the first Mrs. Betz, the hired lady married Mr.Betz. They had one son, Paul. We loved the second Mrs. Betz, she was so kind and hospitable. The whole community would often gather at their place for picnics or worship services. We boys would tear around over the hills, go swimming when the weather was warm enough, climb trees, and so on. Mrs. Betz used to knit wool caps, and made mittens for all the kids in the area, each Christmas. Those were the most beautiful woolen mittens, thick and warm, and done with lovely patterns. We all looked forward to receiving our mittens each Christmas, usually given to us at Sunday School the last Sunday before Christmas, or at the school Christmas program.
We did have a laugh at Mrs. Betz' expense one time. They were at our house for a meal, and our Mom asked her if she liked pineapple. Mrs. Betz had come over from Norway as a young girl, and apparently had no idea what a pineapple was. But she wasn't going to admit it, and told Mom "No, I don't; we had so many pine trees around our place in the old country, I just got sick of pineapples." That's the way Mom used to tell about it! I think she kept a straight face when Mrs. Betz said that, as there was no offence given!
Another funny thing happened at the Betz's one time. Our Mom liked to make root beer from extract, water, and sugar, following the recipe provided by the Hires Root Beer people. She told Mrs. Betz about it, and one time when we were visiting there, Paul took us boys out to the old bunkhouse, and got out some bottles of root beer which Mrs. Betz had just made. But this was something different from that which our mother made! Paul, their son, opened a bottle and the foam and liquid shot clear to the ceiling! We boys thought it was great; it had a nice bite to it which ours at home never had. Of course, as kids will do, we told our folks, and Mom soon put a stop to our drinking any more of that root beer. It was real beer! Mrs. Betz told us how she had let it stand a few days in a wash tub before she bottled it!
Other neighbors (we thought nothing of ten or twelve miles' distance when counting our neighbors) who meant a lot to us were the Charlie Britsch's, who lived about six miles to the northwest, and south of them, the Jim Sherry's. We first got acquainted with the Britsch's when Dad taught at the Nault-Miller School, in their community. We often would go to their place to visit. They had a good plot of land, part of a relinquished homestead which adjoined the land originally homesteaded by Mrs. Britsch, when she came out west. She was a brave lady! She was only eighteen when she came out as a teacher and homesteaded, all alone.
Her son, Earl, told me that when she was on the train coming out, somewhere in North Dakota the body of a man who had been shot was placed in the railroad car in which she was riding. She almost decided to turn around and go back home right then and there. Earl said that later, when times were pretty bad, she would say that she wished now that she had gone back! Her husband didn't homestead. He was a threshing machine salesman, when he met and married Mrs. Britsch. They had a sizeable sheep operation, maybe two or three hundred head, and I remember visiting there when they were docking the lambs, and later in the summer, shearing.
Somewhat like the practice of travelling threshing rigs, there were travelling crews of sheep shearers, in those days, who would come in and do the shearing for small sheep owners. (Did that word "docking" throw you? It means cutting off the lambs' tails. Many people don't know that lambs are born with long tails, about ten or twelve inches long. These have to be cut off, for sanitary reasons.) I remember that once when we were there during shearing, I had the doubtful privilege of tramping the wool down in the big wool sacks. I didn't stay at that job very long; it was hot and greasy down there in the huge sack with all those big pelts tossed down on me. I didn't like it a bit!
The Jim Sherry's I remember especially because she was a skilled gardener, and we went there sometimes to buy watermelons and citrons. They had a windmill and a plentiful supply of water, which helped greatly with gardening. Mom made great pickles from those two vegetables. Also, Mr. Sherry (Jim), an old time cow man, made the most marvelous "honk" when he blew his nose! Once at their place for supper, he whipped out his big red bandana handkerchief, and blew his nose right there at the table. I was unable to control my laughing. I sort of snorted and blew up, and made a mess of things-- including greatly offending Mr. Sherry. That was really a remembered evening, because later, when I went out to the outdoor toilet, I managed to drop our precious flashlight down the hole! Dad had a miserable time retrieving it, and I was not allowed to forget the whole business for some time.
Two other neighbors: east of the Carter's, I forget just how far, were the farms of the Lempke's and the Wedels, both German families. I don't remember much about the Lempke's, except this. One time at a community social event at the Richter School, the ladies had prepared oyster stew for everyone. Mrs. Lempke, I am told, knew that her husband had a strong dislike for oysters--they actually made him sick. It was simple enough for him to avoid eating the oyster stew, or soup, but what he didn't know, for a while, was that his wife had slipped an oyster into his cup of coffee! According to the story, when he had drunk his coffee down to the level where he found the oyster, he became violently sick, and, I guess, pretty upset with his wife. Because they were of German origin, they weren't very well liked in the neighborhood, and moved away when I was still quite young.
Mrs. Wedel, who lived on a couple of miles east of Lempke's, was a widow when we first knew them, and had three children, Theodore, Peter, and Helen. Mrs. Wedel pronouned their names with a strong German accent-- "Tayodoor,"Payter", and something like "Haylen." She was very proud of her children.
One winter Helen stayed at our house for several weeks, to enable her to attend school at the Richter School. We kids, I'm afraid, gave her a pretty bad time; we just didn't like her at all, because she had strange ways. I remember that she had long blond hair which had to be braided each day. Our Mom had to do that for her.
The Wedels came to our Sunday School off and on-- mostly off, after one of my doings. Mom had invited them to eat Sunday dinner with us one summer day, after Sunday School and church. We were all seated around our big oval table, in the "east" room, and had a scrumptious meal before us. Mom asked Mrs. Wedel to pray, and she did so, at some length, and in German! I had never heard anything like it, and held on as long as I could, then snorted (I had an awful problem with that explosive laugh!) and began to laugh. My laughing set my sisters and Robert off, and I guess we all laughed. Poor Mrs. Wedel was terribly offended, hardly said another word all through the meal (although they managed to eat well enough) and then they didn't come back to Sunday School or community functions for a long time, a year or more. I remember how bad my mother felt about it all, but apologies didn't do any good.
My brother Robert tells me that our Mom may also have offended Mrs. Wedel in another way. Once while Helen was staying at our place, Mrs. Wedel brought over a whole dishpan full of homemade soap. Momma said, "You must think Helen is going to be awfully dirty." She meant it as a joke, but Mrs. Wedel took it as an insult to herchildren! They were still living on their farm some years after we moved away. I know, because I was on a rodent-poisoning crew in l936 and we went over their land. I guess you know I didn't identify myself to any of them, and sort of kept myself in the background!
That's enough for now about our land and neighbors. I'll probably have quite a bit more to tell of some of the people and adventures we had as we kids grew up there on the homestead.

FAMILY HOMESTEAD
Although I know it will be difficult to make it interesting, I'm going to try to describe the homestead where I was born and where we lived until I finished the eighth grade. The looks of the old place, the lay of the land, the location and nature of the buildings, and the adjoining lands are clearly printed in my mind--but are not completely shown in any photographs. I am including a couple photographs showing something about the house and yard.
As I told in another chapter, Dad and Mom came out to Montana in l9l3, and settled on a plot of 320 acres, the maximum amount of land allowed under the Homestead Act, if the homesteader wanted to retain mineral rights. The agreement with the government was that they would build a liveable house, and live on the land at least six months of each year for five years. Then they would be given title to the land.
The land they chose lay in a fairly broad coulee through which ran Black Creek. This stream (a stream only in spring or after a cloudburst!) ran roughly north and south, though it wound around a lot. Ultimately, about six miles directly south of the homestead, it joined another small creek, and together they emptied into Milk River, maybe ten miles (straight miles, as a crow might fly) south of us. North of our place, the creek and its coulee ran another ten miles or so, originating in the Laundry Hills, a range of hills named after a man who had ranched there in very early years.
The creek ran diagonally through our land, entering at a point about three quarters of a mile north of the house, winding around a bit, and then running out at a point about one hundred yards east of the house. The land, which our Dad fenced right away (that was another requirement of homesteading), was in a big rectangle, a mile long north and south, and half a mile wide east and west. Our house and the other buildings were located in the southwest corner of the land. A good share of the land was covered with sagebrush--the little low variety which grows about a foot or two high. The rest of the place originally had buffalo grass or wild bunch grass on it. Along the creek wild rose bushes grew in big thickets. There was only one "tree" on the place--a skinny little diamond willow, maybe eight feet tall, with just a few branches.
Oh, I forgot to mention the rocks! A part of the land was literally covered with a sort of gravel and cobble mixture, although the bottom of the coulee had few rocks, but was covered with a heavy clay gumbo soil. I understand from my scanty knowledge of geology that the land had once been covered by a glacier which had left long ridges of rocks and gravel when it melted. One of those ridges was on our land. Beneath the topsoil and gravel deposits lay hard yellow sand, I don’t know how thick.The hills to the west of our fence line, and one fairly large hill just east of the house, were also glacial deposits of rocks and sand. Some boulders were quite large. We never lacked rocks to throw!
We actually used additional land, whether rented, or just loaned to us, I'm not sure. Just west of our house there was a fenced pasture of about l60 acres which I think belonged to our neighbor to the south, John Goodmanson. We used that pasture for our horses a good share of the time, and sometimes for the milk cows. Then to the north was strip about 2 miles wide, beyond the fenced portions of our land, and running several miles to the east, was what we called ‘open range.’ That is, it was land once farmed by earlier homesteaders, but relinquished for some reason or other. There were no fences remaining, just a few old homesteaders’ shacks here and there. Thus our cows and horses, when not confined to our pasture land, could wander off to their hearts' content, going about 12 miles east and then north clear to Canada, without finding a fence. It offered great possibilities for wandering, but a nice free addition to the needed pasture for the live stock. We were glad to have it available.
Now--the buildings. The original homestead
building was a "shack" about 14'x 16', built to comply with the government ruling that homesteaders must build a dwelling on the land chosen, and live there at least six months of the year for five years, before getting clear title to the land. The building was of very simple frame construction, with absolutely no insulation to keep out the cold. In preparation for winter, an outer covering of tar paper was nailed on, to keep the wind from blowing through. Hence the common name "tar paper shack." Early on Dad added a kitchen, about 10'x 12', in which was located the wood-burning cook stove, table and benches for eating, cupboards, a wash stand, and a trap door giving access to the cellar.
The two rooms had no concrete foundations, but rested on rocks embedded in the soil. The cellar was deep enough that it only rarely allowed frost to get to the canned vegetables, fruit, and raw vegetables stored there. In the spring of the year, Dad also used the cellar as the location for the incubator in which we hatched out dozens of little chicks.
Kitchen added; clothes line, turkeys, sister Mary When I was about three or four years old, Dad bought another homesteader's shack, and with help from neighbors, moved it to our place to attach it to the east side of the house. I can imagine how happy my mother was to have the extra space, as up until then all of us had slept in the original room, which also housed Mother's semi-grand piano, the heating stove, beds and bookcases, etc. The new addition had lots of room, and an attic accessible by stairway. That attic was the bedroom for my brother and me except in the coldest winter weather, when our bed was moved downstairs. More about all this later. The roofs of all three parts of the house were covered with heavy roofing paper over tar paper, and were quite weather proof. Then on the back of the whole structure Dad built a room called the "back room"--small, but helpful, as there was room there for a washing machine, and some storage. This room, which had no heat at all, was also used to store meat, and Mom's great home-made sausage, during the cold winter months. Just outside the "back room" was located a large, round stock tank used for
storing rain water when it was available. Sometimes in the winter it was filled with snow, and provided a deepfreeze for meat.
Directly behind the house, about fifty feet or so, was another very important building--the toilet. Most of our neighbors referred to such buildings as "out-house" or some unprintable title. We were more elegant--it was "toilet" to us. A standard one-holer, with a good tight door, and a few knot holes to give ventilation and some means of seeing what was going on outside, it was a popular place. Discarded mailorder catalogs provided reading material and....(We all hated the "slick" pages! Once in a great while we had the luxury of using apple wrappers from a box of Washington apples.) During warm weather this outdoor facility was no problem, but in the winter time it was a real test of character. Little time was wasted when the frost on the seat might be, and often was, as much as an eighth of an inch thick. Oh, how I hated to have to make that last trip out there before going to bed on a cold night!
Just east of the toilet was our wood pile, which was composed mostly of firewood carefully gathered and hauled home from the woods along Milk River, about ten miles south. But there was also there a modest collection of discards, including, I remember, an old sleigh with fancy curled runners. We never used that sleigh, so far as I know. I don't know how Dad came to have it. Also, of course, we had a chopping block or log, where we chopped up the willow firewood, and a saw horse to hold logs while cutting them with a bucksaw. Dad also had his cold frame right next to the wood pile, at its south edge, used for starting his many tomato, cabbage, and other plants there each spring.
Just a bit east and south of the woodpile was the granary. Compared with granaries on other farms around us, ours was a midget--maybe eight feet square, and only six or eight feet high. It had a good "Dutch" door on its west side, a door which opened in two halves, top and bottom. In the granary were stored such things as oats, shorts and bran (these latter two items were mixed with water to make mash for the chickens), and similar things. There never was very much stored there, as the folks rarely had enough cash to buy very far ahead. Also stored in the granary were old magazines, and sometimes my brother would hide in the granary, to read. He was always a great reader.
On the north side of the granary there was a sort of bench, on which each of us kids had a box for our own collection of "queer stones." We took a lot of interest in watching for special rocks, small pieces of petrified wood, agate, and such. Dad encouraged us to be on the lookout for anything like that. Just to the east of the house, and immediately behind the granary, there rose a fairly sizeable hill--at least it seemed large enough to us kids. It was a glacial deposit, I think, mostly of hard sand with a liberal covering of cobbles and gravel. That hill separated the house from the barn, and was named "Pilot Knob" by my mother, according to my brother, Robert. (My recollection differs here--I thought "Pilot Knob" was the hill to the west of the house. That hill was much higher, and thus better qualified to serve as a landmark.)
Back to the hill between the house and the barn--just behind the granary, and up the hill maybe thirty or forty feet was our smokehouse. This was used for smoking hams and bacon. Dad had built the smokehouse of boards, in a box-like form about three feet square and maybe forty inches high, and covered it with tar paper to keep the smoke in. It had a fairly tight-fitting cover which could be raised to allow us to hang the salted meat on hooks inside, where the smoke would surround it. About twelve feet down the hill from the smoke house was the fire pit. A little trench had been dug from the fire pit to the smoke house, to carry the smoke up to the meat. The trench was covered with slabs of sandstone.
The whole thing worked beautifully--if one of us kept the fire at the right level. We would start a nice little fire in the fire pit, then put on heavy green wood to make a lot of smoke. The fire had to be tended pretty carefully, so that it wouldn't burn too hot, or go out. The meat had to be smoked for quite a few days before it would be completely cured. That smoked ham and bacon was just not to be compared with the hastily cured, unsmoked meats one buys in the stores today. As for the rest of the farm buildings, gardens, and so on, they must wait the next installment.