HIGH SCHOOL - AND A NEW HOME
At last we were in school! I had no trouble at all in learning to know my way around in the school. Each of us was assigned a particular desk in the big assembly room. We kept our books and tablets and such stuff in our desks, and went to the various class rooms on a set schedule. During those hours when we weren't in class we sat in the assembly room, studying or reading. One teacher or another was in charge of the assembly each hour, and maintained strict discipline. There was no talking or whispering allowed. I guess (rather, I know!) quite a few notes were passed from one student to another, on the sly. Instead of just raising our hand for permission to go to the toilet, as we had done in grade school, now we had to go back and ask the teacher directly for that permission. But if we had trouble with some question in our studies, the teacher was available,and was generally very helpful.
I had gotten started in algebra, too! Although we were six weeks late in starting, I was able to catch up fairly quickly, and always (well, nearly always!) got along just fine with Miss Dorothy Dutch. Far from being a witch, as I had expected, she was a very good teacher, though awfully strict. If she thought a student was loafing, or being plain lazy, not trying to learn, she was pitiless. Often when we were at the blackboard, working out equations or problems on the board, she would throw an eraser or piece of chalk at some student who wasn't doing well. Believe me, it kept us on our toes! We, in turn, would occasionally accidentally, of course, hold our chalk just right to make one of those horrible, spine-tingling screeches that only a chalk against a blackboard can produce. She hated that sound!
Poor Miss Dutch! I had her as teacher for both algebra and geometry, and learned a lot from her. Years later she was killed in a train accident in eastern Montana. She was one of the outstanding teachers of my high school years, though she was very unpopular with most of the students because of her strict approach to teaching.
Studies were the most important thing in that school. Freshmen had no choice what they would study; only in the last two years of high school did we have a chance to choose. As freshmen, we had algebra, general science, English, and world history. I loved them all, and caught up with the others in all the subjects before Christmas.
In the meantime, the folks were very busy getting ready for the move to the rented farm, which we called the Burke Place. It had once been the homestead of a man named Billy Burke. He had been the husband of my third grade teacher, Mrs. Rose Burke. Billy had a bad problem with drinking, and had died young, I believe. Mrs. Burke made her living teaching school, and rented the farm out to various people. We were to live there three years.
Finally, about the middle of November, we were ready to move. I can still remember that last trip out to the old homestead. The job of loading the sad little bunch of furniture and other moveable things on the hayrack (because it held more than the wagon box),didn't take very long. We rounded up the cattle, put the chickens in coops, and were on our way. Dad had already hauled the corn and a lot of other stuff, on previous weekends. I drove the little bunch of cattle, walking most of the way to the new place. It was very hard for Mom and all of us, going down that winding road to the "Point," turning for one last look at the old place, and then passing around the point and out of sight of our home for all those years. Although Dad went back once or twice later, doing the final clean-up of the move, I wasn't to see the old home again until 1946. By then all the buildings were gone, virtually without a trace.
That first night at our new home was truly something to remember. The shack--for that was all it was--where we were to live was even smaller than our former house! There was one long, narrow room that served as kitchen, eating area, and "living room." The latter area became the folks' bedroom at night, with the same old lounge bed they had used for years pulled out to make a double bed. Then there were two small bedrooms, one occupied by Jean and Mary, and the other by Robert and me. The outside of the house was covered with tar paper--so we felt right at home. It was very much like the homestead. There was only one door to the outside, facing to the east. A roomy cellar under the house had an entrance on the south side of the house. There was no attic, or "back porch" where we could have the washing machine. Thus that valuable machine sat in the kitchen, near the stove. The room was very crowded, even with our scant furniture.
Directly in front of the house, about seventy-five feet away, ran the Milk River, which formed the east boundary of the place both north and south of the buildings. The river was bordered by thick groves of cottonwood trees and diamond willows.
About forty yards south of the house were the barn and hay yard. The barn was terribly small, with room for only two cows or horses at a time. It had been the original dwelling on the place, a very small log cabin, made of cottonwood logs. The building had a very low door, and only one window. The hay yard was fenced, with the corn on which Robert and I had worked so hard and long safely stored there. There was a fenced barnyard, too, enclosing not only an open area maybe thirty yards by forty, but also a patch of brush, mostly chokecherry bushes. That sheltered area was where the cows spent most of the winter, as in the brush they could find some shelter from the almost endless wind.
Just west of the barnyard was the toilet, a sad little structure with only half a roof. In the three years we lived there, we never repaired that roof! The result was a very airy situation, indeed, with snow on the seat whenever snow fell. Just south of the toilet, and dug into the bank of the slough, was the chicken house, much like the dug-out chicken house on the homestead. It was well lighted by the sun, and was cozy and warm in the winter months.
There were no other fences on the place, except the outside line fences that enclosed the whole property. I don't remember just how large the farm was, but would guess about three hundred acres. Brush and trees covered a large part of the land. An old slough (former river bed) and an alfalfa field of about eighty acres lay just south of the house and barn. The remainder of the land was sagebrush "pasture." It was not a prosperous farm, by any means. There were no machine sheds, or machinery, for that matter.
But to me it was a regular paradise. Except for occasional trips from the homestead down to the river bottom land, for wood, or fishing, I had never had opportunity to wander around through woods, or have a river so near at hand. As it was late in the fall, and the land had not been grazed, we simply let our cows and horses roam at will all over the place. It was my job to bring the cows in for milking, as before, and that let me explore the whole place to my heart's content.
One of my first discoveries was an ancient and huge cottonwood tree that had but recently been cut down. Someone--we never found out who--had found that the old tree was a bee tree, and had cut it down for the honey. They had taken most, but not all the honey. I soon found that by reaching far up into the hollow trunk I could find and break off pieces of ancient comb, some of which contained dead bees, but some contained very old, dark brown honey. I had never tasted anything so sweet! I don't know what had happened to the swarm of bees, but there were none there that fall. I enjoyed many a sip of honey from that old tree before we cut it up and made it into firewood.
Down at the far (south) end of the place there were some little open glades surrounded by brush and willows. How well I remember one night when I was after the cows, and spotted some strange animals in one of those little open areas. They were deer--white tailed deer! I had never seen one in the wild before, or anywhere, for that matter. I watched them for several minutes; they were unaware of my being so near. One or two of them jumped the boundary fence while I watched. I could hardly believe my eyes! They didn't have to take a run at it, or anything; they just walked up to the fence, and jumped over it light as a feather! When I finally scared them some way, the small bunch of five or six all dashed away, waving their long white tails gaily. After that I often saw deer in the area farthest from the house and barn.
I soon found that there were many snowshoe rabbits in the woods, and dozens of jack rabbits in the sage brush pasture area. Both varieties were changing into their white winter coats, and could be easily spotted. Great horned owls hooted nearby every night, and Chinese pheasants were plentiful around the alfalfa field.
There were lots of magpies, too--beautiful birds that I hated with a passion. They are terribly malicious things. Oh, they are not intentionally cruel, but in effect are terribly so. While on the homestead we had learned how magpies might find a horse or cow stuck in a mudhole, and eat the poor animal's eyes! Once while on the homestead we had a young colt that had suffered a cut on his back in a barbed wire fence. Before we discovered it, the magpies had eaten a great hole in his back muscles, so that he had to be destroyed. Oh, we hated magpies, all right. All the years we lived on the Burke place I conducted war on those birds.
More to come!