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.
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.
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