LAST DAYS ON THE HOMESTEAD
"Oh, boy, we'll never get this done!" I muttered to myself as I stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat off my face. Try as hard as I could, I just couldn't keep up with Robert. He was 'way off down the row, far ahead of me, his machete swinging like a machine as he hand cut the corn we were harvesting. My job was to follow him, gather the corn stalks into bundles of ten or twelve stalks, and tie the bundles with a corn stalk. Then when we had enough bundles, we worked together to make shocks, using about a dozen bundles to make one shock. It seemed like an endless job, cutting and shocking that ten-acre field!
What worried us most, though, was that high school had already started in Hinsdale, and we were missing school! How could we ever catch up--especially, I wondered how I could catch up if I got started late in a strange school, my first year of high school? It bothered Robert, too, as he was a senior, and hated the thought of being behind in his studies. He was in a neck-and-neck race with one of his classmates to be valedictorian--the head of the class. Our sister Jean had already started on her second year, staying in Hinsdale with friends.
You see, this was the fall of 1932, and a momentous year for all of us. Dad and Mom had finally decided that it would be necessary to leave the homestead! When they first started out, in 1913, they had borrowed $1000 to buy horses, equipment, and building materials. Over the years, despite all their hard work, they simply had not been able to do more than pay the interest on the mortgage each year; the principal was unpaid. Those were terribly hard times. Part of that summer of 1932 Dad had been forced to work on the county roads, to pay the property taxes with labor, as many other men were doing. Now he was away teaching school on the South Bench, out south and across the Milk River. It was thirty or more miles in a straight line to the school where he batched during the week, and he could only come home on weekends.
Dad had located a farm two and a half miles out of Hinsdale that we could rent. But before we could move, we must cut the big field of corn! It represented the feed for our cows for the coming winter, and must be cut and hauled before snow fell. Thus we boys had the job of getting that corn cut and shocked, before we could hope to begin school. We had been promised that when we had the job done, we could start school.
You can imagine how I felt those days! Here I was ready to start in high school, in a strange town, a school with hundreds of kids, which seemed scary to me. The most students we had ever had at Richter school was seventeen! How would I get along with so many strangers?
Finally, almost six weeks into the school term, we finished the corn! The folks still weren't ready to move down to the new place. Accordingly, they arranged for the three of us Cumming kids to batch in a tiny apartment located upstairs in a remote corner of the school dormitory, in Hinsdale. The apartment had only a little gas plate, not a proper cooking stove, and there was room for our beds and almost nothing else. But it was a place to stay, and we got settled in quickly. Both Jean and Robert could do simple cooking, as they had batched the previous year, so we wouldn't starve.
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 load 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--about twelve miles. 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.

More Fun and Games on the Homestead

In about 1928, our Dad started using some very low-priced skiis (i.e. home made by the James boys) which he used for going across country to his remote school about 30 miles from home. Those were monstrous skiis, about six feet long, made of pine, and were rather wide. They had only a single strap which went across the arch of the one's foot. When he was home, on a week-end, I used to try my luck at skiing down hill.
I went one time, I remember, up on the hill in front of the house, where I wouldn't have to dodge any fences, though there were a few sage brush clumps, and some patches of bare ground, because it had been thawing. I made two or three fairly successful runs, not falling down more than a dozen times. Then came disaster! I was doing fine on my last run until I headed for and hit a patch of bare ground. Needless to tell you, I, or rather the skiis, came to a sudden halt. I didn't stop that fast, and in falling somehow knocked the knee cap on my right knee clear over on the side of my knee! Oh, my, how that hurt!
I couldn't even get up, but had to call for Dad, who was down in the barnyard, to come help me. He came, rolled my pant leg up and saw where the knee cap was. He simply pushed on it with his two thumbs, moving it back in place. Then, to my surprise, I could walk again, though the knee was awfully painful for many days. Did we go to the doctor? Oh, no--it healed up by itself. And I've never had trouble with that knee since that injury!
I mentioned neighborhood coasting parties. I think they were the result of our Mom's suggestion. For several winters, all the neighbors would get together by appointment, at someone's house, and we would all, old and young, go out coasting. I especially remember one coasting party at the Charlie Carter's. It was a beautiful cold, clear, moonlit night. You could literally see for miles, the light was so beautiful on the snow. We all went sledding on the hills north of their house, where there were great long swooping slopes. Some of the bachelor men from the area had come, too, including the James boys, Matt and Bill, and Magnus, the Norwegian brother of John Goodmanson. These fellows all brought their skiis, mostly homemade, and they had no fancy ski boots or poles to assist them. They had only single straps on their skiis, and crude willow sticks for poles.
It was the first time I had ever seen anyone who was truly skilled doing down hill runs. I can still see Magnus flying down that hill in the moonlight, making the run without poles, and on only one ski! He looked like a bird, swooping from side to side, never falling once. He was by far the most skilled person there. It was his night to shine! He could scarcely say anything in English, but he could surely ski! Another time we went to the Emil Richter's-- "Grandpa" and "Grandma" Richter to most of us. They didn't have any hills to coast on, but we were pulled on a rope behind a car or a saddle horse, down the road which was well covered with ice and snow. They went so fast it almost took my breath away! Again I remember Magnus on his skiis, holding onto a rope behind a galloping horse, jumping over the clumps of sage brush, yelling at the top of his lungs, having a great time. Whoever it was on the horse was having a wild ride, too, weaving in and out among the big sage brush clumps; he rode even faster than we who were being towed behind the car!
That night was memorable for another reason. After we had had our fill of being pulled around on our sleds or skiis, we all went in the house, had some hot cocoa and sandwiches, and then played games--"winkum," "spin the platter," and POST OFFICE! I had never heard of the latter, and was so embarrassed when sent into a nearby bed room with one of the girls (I can't even remember her name!) that I didn't know what to do. Of course you know that I was supposed to kiss her, but believe me, I never touched her! I have never played post office since! (Well, not the formal game, you understand.)
What did we do indoors? As I've indicated in previous chapters, our house was quite small, so there wasn't room for any vigorous play indoors. But we could and did play lots of table games. Tiddledee Winks was a favorite, played on a blanket on a table, with little celluloid disks. By pressing on the edge of a disk with another "shooter" disk, and snapping the shooter off the edge of the disk you wanted to move, you could snap it up in the air, and, if lucky, into a little catch basin. Scores were kept on the basis of how many disks you could shoot into the basin. One could really develop some skill, a sort of "light touch," which made accurate shooting possible.
Another game we sometimes played on the table covered with a blanket was croquet. Our set had little wooden mallets and balls, and rather fine wire hoops which could be moved around, and were not fastened down on the blanket. It wasn't very satisfactory, because when a ball struck a wicket, instead of going straight through, it knocked the wicket galley west. But we played croquet quite a lot, anyway. It wasn't until years later that I realized that our set was actually a miniature set, and that regular croquet was played on a lawn with big balls and mallets! Of course there was checkers, one of our favorite games. Dad and Mom used to tell us of how they played checkers a lot in the years before we kids came along. When they first homesteaded they didn't get around to the neighbors much, and after a long day of hard work would often sit down to play a game of checkers. They had a cat who would sit on an apple box next to the table where they played, and who would watch the game carefully. Every once in a while, apparently thinking it was his turn, he would reach up with his paw, and move a checker. And he was careful to only move it just one square! I don't think he ever won a game, of course. I wasn't very good at checkers, but could often beat my sister Jean. Then when she would get frustrated, we would play "Giveaway" which was just the opposite of checkers. The goal was to get rid of all your men by forcing your opponent to jump them, before your opponent made you jump all of his men. Jean was good at that. However, I don't think it improved our checker game skills a bit.
Years later, when I was in college, I used to play checkers with a man across the street from where my parents lived, in Glasgow. I thought I knew something about checkers, but soon found out I didn't. He would start the game with only eight checkers, against my twelve, and still beat me badly every time! He surely knew something about checkers, though I don't know how he would have fared against another really good player.
The indoor games we played were mostly card games. My Mom was a staunch Methodist, from the time she was a girl, and therefore we could not have a deck of regular playing cards in the house, let alone play with them, because she thought they were evil. She and Dad had played some kind of card game with neighbors, before we kids came along, but I can't remember the name of it, though it might have been "Pitch." There was a big thick deck of numbered cards, and we kids sometimes just monkeyed around with them, not knowing how to play the game. But we did have cards to play "Old Maid," and "Authors," and "Pit." The latter was one of my favorites, and I loved the busy trading of cards, trying to get a corner on the market in some grain. That may have been a wee bit educational, I suppose.
Then Mom discovered the game of "Rook." It was played with a special set of cards, with four different suites of different colors, with the cards numbered from 1 to 14 in each suite. It was quite complicated, calling for careful estimation of what cards your partner and opponents might have (revealed by how they bid to declare trumps), and very good memory of what cards in each suite had been played. We all really enjoyed that game, especially our mother. I don't think Dad ever played Rook with us. I suppose I had more fun playing that card game than any other I ever knew. Many years later, when I was in the service in World War II, I discovered that the experience with Rook helped wonderfully in learning to play contract bridge! In fact, except for the different cards, the rules were almost identical! I don't recall ever mentioning this to Mom; I wonder now what she might have said had she known!
We had a few toys with which we played indoors, but not too many. I always liked to shoot things with a pop gun, and can remember setting up dominoes (aha--there's another game we played and enjoyed) as enemy soldiers and shooting them down. I didn't think the cork ought to be on a string, as they were attached when the popgun was received, so would cut off the string, and thus have something like a real shooting gun.
Reading was another fun activity. We didn't have many children's books to read or look at, but the folks had accumulated stacks of old National Geographics and other magazines, and we had lots of fun reading and looking at the pictures in them. I remember that the relatives in Wisconsin sent out whole bundles of old Sunday papers, with beautiful sepia colored pictures, comics (we called them 'funny papers'), and one feature which especially appealed to me. In each week's issue there would be a story about the "Little People," a mythical community of tiny little folks who lived in a little town. I read those so carefully, and knew the names of just about everyone in the town. For a time, at least, I believed the stories were true, and that there were such little towns and people. I would pour over those stories and pictures by the hour. Another type of printed material which captured our attention for long periods of time, especially just before Christmas, was the mail order catalog. We always received the Sears, Roebuck & Co., the Montgomery Ward, and I think it was Spiegel's catalogs, both the Fall and Winter and the Spring and Summer issues. The coming of the Fall catalogs would start us off dreaming of what we would like for Christmas. In each catalog there would be pages and pages of beautiful Christmas things, toys, dolls, just about anything one could want. Our folks usually set a limit for us to choose one gift, only one, which couldn't cost more than a dollar, as our chief gift. Also, we could plan on ordering less expensive things for our brothers and sisters. Oh, what careful thinking that took--all of it fun. Then about the first part of November, we had to give our choices to Mom, and she would make up the orders, sometimes from several mail order houses. Of course we didn't get to see everything she ordered, as we usually received the gift of our choice, plus something else she thought we would like or needed. Lots of our Christmas gifts fell in the latter category, items of clothing, or things for school.
Those mail order catalogs would get absolutely dog-eared, with our thumbing through them. We thought the companies were great, and there is no question that they did provide a wonderful service to isolated families such as ours. I don't think we ordered much from Spiegel's, but we were surely familiar with their catalog. In late 1945, when I was in the Air Force and stationed in Chicago, I was pleased to find that a lot of our Air Force surplus disposal business had to do with the big warehouses owned by (and leased from) Spiegel's. I felt rather at home going there!
When we were recuperating after having some illness--measles, mumps, scarlet fever or plain flu--we liked to make and fly little paper airplanes. Then pages would be torn from old catalogs (or from less important parts of current ones) and folded to make simple gliders which we threw about the room. We had lots of fun with that, and it was very inexpensive fun. Standard disposal of the outdated catalogs was to move them to the outdoor toilet, where they would be sometimes read, and otherwise put to good use. We never had, so far as I can recall, any store-bought toilet paper on the homestead.
Swimming was an idea of Robert's--one summer he thought we kids should all learn to swim. Since neither of our parents were swimmers, we had to teach ourselves. The closest swimming water was John Goodmanson's pond, nearly a mile south of our place. We got his permission to swim there, and wearing cut-off bib overalls and similar old clothes for Jean, the three of us would walk down to Goodmanson's, carrying old inner tubes to keep us afloat while learning to swim. The mud was nearly as deep as the water, and it was quite a trick to wade out far enough to reach water deep enough to swim in. Then to launch ourselves into the water, freeing our feet from the sucking mud, wasn't easy.
But with a partially inflated inner tube around one's waist, we could manage a sort of dog paddling which we called swimming. We really worked at that, and all three of us got so we could truly swim, even without the inner tube. It wasn't particularly cooling, since we had to walk back home again in the hot sun after our swim, but it was great fun. We boys usually had spent the forenoon working at something around the place, maybe hauling water to the garden with team and stone-boat, or hoeing in the potatoes or corn, or something like that, and we would enjoy an afternoon, or part of one, spent swimming.
After a year or two, we all bought cheap swimming suits, again from the mail order catalogs. If I'm not mistaken, in those days we could get an all wool swimming suit for a dollar or less. We had choice of colors,too-- either navy blue or maroon. The skirts of those suits came half way down our thighs, on both the boys and girls suits. The boys suits had big cut-out holes under the arms. Swimming trunks were unknown in those days! We proudly wore those suits for our swimming times. Sometimes some of the other neighborhood kids would come to Goodmanson's and swim with us. We had some dandy mud fights, I remember. Later, when we moved away from the homestead down to the Milk River valley, we did lots of swimming in the river, where there was plenty of water, even enough for diving. Then we learned to use other strokes than the dog paddle!
On rare occasions we would swim in Brush Fork, a creek about two miles east of our home coulee. That stream had some deeper holes, though still awfully muddy, in which we could at least get wet. I remember one time, in the hot summer, when we rode on horses over there with Ralph Carter (or was it Vernon Richter?). Robert and I were riding double on old Snip, our saddle horse. We all went in swimming, and then decided to play Indian--I think that was it, anyway. We left our clothes on the bank of the creek, took the saddles off the horses, and on that hot summer day rode bareback up and down along the hills of Brush Coulee, on a dead run, pretending we were young Indians. Riding bareback without clothes wasn't that much fun that day, as the horses got as sweaty as we boys did, and we all ended up with some pretty touchy thighs and bottoms from that afternoon. We never tried that again, though it was fun--for a while!
With that I will tie a knot in this blog--though I may come back later to the subject of fun and games. The real truth of the matter is that we were happy youngsters, not at all deprived from not having radio or TV or ipods, or whatever, those devices that modern children think so necessary.

Great Teachers at Richter School
I must not end my account of my days at Richter School without giving credit to the fine teachers who taught there the seven years I attended. As the many years have gone by since I left the school in 1932, I have come more and more to appreciate the hard work and long hours those teachers put in to get us country kids off to a good start. I've already recounted my first two years, when Miss Woodward was teacher.
Our school was always small. The largest number of pupils we ever had, I think, was seventeen. That was when I was in the third grade. That was quite a handful for one teacher, you can be sure. So far as we youngsters were concerned, though, it was 'the more the merrier.' Our teacher that year was Mrs. Rose J. Burke, an older lady (widow of a pioneer homesteader), and well experienced in teaching small schools. We all liked her. The Carter family I mentioned earlier had moved into the community, and their seven children were all new to us. Sadly, I was the only student ready for the third grade, while two of the Carters, Ralph and Dortha, were ready for the fourth grade. Mrs. Burke, by adjusting my studies somewhat, had me study and recite with Ralph and Dortha, so that I finished both the third and fourth grades that year. Whether that was good for me, or not, I really don't know. The studies were easy for me, but having moved ahead by a year, I think I did lack social maturity in later years, especially when in high school. At any rate, I thought it was a great year. Ralph and I became good friends, very competitive in the games we played. Of course, when spring weather came, I was as anxious as anyone to be free again, but we Cumming kids would always be looking forward to school long before it began in the fall.
Our teacher in my fifth grade year was a young woman, a Norwegian, from Glasgow-- Sigurd Vegge. She was young and pretty, and all of us boys fell in love with her. I know that we had a lot of visitors that year-- young fellows just happening to ride by would stop to visit school, to get a drink of water and possibly get to talk to the teacher after school. The word really got around.
As usual, there was a community "box social" held at the school that fall, sometime near Hallowe'en, I think. All the farmers wives and daughters carefully prepared decorated boxes (each filled with a substantial lunch for two) for sale. The greatest secrecy was maintained so (supposedly) no one would know to whom a particular box belonged. Miss Vegge's box was especially sought by some of the young men in the area. The boxes were auctioned off in the evening. We had a big crowd and the bidding went higher and higher, especially as Miss Vegge's box apparently had not yet been sold. I don't remember who finally bid the best price for her box, but I know there were a lot of disappointed fellows! I had to eat with one of my sisters, I've forgotten which!
That same year the younger brother of John Goodmanson, our Norwegian bachelor neighbor who kept the school supplied with drinking water, came to visit and help John, who had had a stroke. Magnus, the brother, had a totally different last name; it wasn't Goodmanson at all. They explained that in Norway when a young man went to work for a neighboring farmer, he took that name, or some variation of it, as his second name. Anyway, Magnus was one of the several suitors who liked our new teacher.
For several months of the year Miss Vegge stayed at our house, as there was no other suitable accomodation for her in the community. I still don't know how we managed, as our small house simply didn't offer privacy at all to someone like a teacher. But stay with us she did. She often curled her hair with one of the old-fashioned curling irons which were heated in a kerosene lamp chimney, and the smell of scorched hair would go all over the house.
She had her "bedroom" (really, just a corner of the living room, screened off with a sheet) and we kids were required to vacate the premises whenever she had company. Sometimes we would quietly sneak into the attic upstairs above the room, and watch her and her company through convenient knot holes in the ceiling boards. I can remember sitting up there, having trouble keeping my snickering from being heard, while the two would sit and talk. With Magnus, who came sometimes, it was a quiet evening, for he would scarcely say a word. Miss Vegge once told our mother that she didn't know what to do--he wouldn't talk, or play cards, or do anything. He just sat and looked at her!
We were always much concerned not to bother Miss Vegge any more than we could help. One time in the spring, when the weather was fairly warm, my mother and I were milking the cows out in the lane in front of the house. This was fairly early in the morning, and Miss Vegge was still in bed. My younger sister, Mary, hearing us talking together as we milked, came to the front of the house, right in front of the window, and shouted to us to be quiet, so we wouldn't wake Miss Vegge! Needless to say, she was thoroughly awake by that time!
It was when Miss Vegge was teacher that I had my first experience in shooting a pistol. Someone had convinced her that she ought to be able to protect herself, so she had purchased a tiny .22 revolver. She brought it to school one day, with some shells, and let us older boys take turns shooting at fence posts in front of the school. I loved it, and from that day wanted to own a pistol of my own! But that was the only time that I know of that she brought the gun to school. Having firearms around the school house was forbidden, and I think someone on the school board probably told her not to bring it there again.
She was also the teacher who first talked to us children about good eating habits. One morning, early in the year, she asked how many of us had eaten pancakes for breakfast. Now that was one of the staples of life among the homesteaders in those days, and we Cumming kids were proud of our mother's pancakes, and how many we, especially our Dad, could eat. So we told her that we had had pancakes that morning, with salt pork, and how Dad had eaten a dozen or so. Then she proceded to tell us how indigestible pancakes were, how they weren't good for us, and so on.
We kids were really upset about it, and told our parents all about what she had said. Poor girl, when she came to our house to stay that winter, she found out more about pancakes! Miss Vegge only taught at our school one year, and I don't know whether she continued in teaching after her year at our school. Later she married a farmer who lived near Glasgow. Years later, she came to the the funerals of both my mother and father, and we were able to visit a bit again. She was, or is, a fine person!
I can remember so well our teacher in my sixth grade year--Mrs. Ruth Putz. She was a little whiffet of a person, wouldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet. On the first day of school she sort of danced back and forth up in front of us, telling us of all the exciting things we would be doing that year, including having a Maypole dance in the spring. Of course we country kids had no idea what that was, or whether we were interested in doing anything of the sort.
Then she began calling on some of us to answer questions, to see where we were in our studies. I remember that my friend Ralph Carter was a bit slow in answering, and she came down the row of seats, had him hold out his hand, and gave him a sharp smack across the palm with a ruler. I thought it was terrible, and could hardly look at her, I was so angry. It took several weeks for me to get over that; I thought she was awfully unfair. Ralph had always been slow in speaking, and he wasn't trying to be smart or anything.
But as school went on, we all found that Mrs. Putz was really a good teacher, and we all learned a lot that year. She rented a little shack next to John Goodmanson's house to live in. Her husband and their little three year old boy would come to the shack some weekends, and sometimes to school. The boy was just a little fellow, but very clever.
Before the year was over, Mrs. Putz had enlisted me to climb up into the attic to get down the Christmas decorations (that sort of proved that I was a "big" boy now), and also asked me to be guide on nature walks we took on Fridays. Once the whole school, with me leading the way, walked far to the east, about three miles or so, to Brush Fork, the next large creek east of our Black Coulee. There we had our lunches, and talked about various trees and shrubs. That was a highlight of the year, so far as I was concerned.
Did we have the Maypole dance? You bet we did. Mrs. Putz and her husband put up a pole down in the coulee west of the school, and we all helped make long streamers of crepe paper for the maypole. We practiced quite a bit, each of us holding a streamer, and marching round and round the pole, inter-weaving our streamers to make different designs on the pole. It was really quite interesting, we had to admit.
When the day came for the public showing of our Maypole, though, if I remember rightly, we didn't have such good luck, got mixed up, some streamers broke, and it was more or less a disaster. But Mrs. Putz was game,and didn't let it bother her. She was the first teacher we had who got us kids at the Richter School involved in county school activities. She drove a little Ford sedan, and one wet, rainy Saturday in the spring, when the roads were terrible, she took a load of us youngsters (four or five) all the way to Opheim, a trip of over seventy miles, to take part in a scholastic meet there. I think it was too wet (it rained most of the day) to have the track events, but we did well in the scholastic tests, and enjoyed it a lot. That sort of paved the way for our taking part in the scholastic and track meets held in Hinsdale in the years that followed.
Mrs. Putz later became County Superintendent of Schools, an office she held for many years. I don't know, but I'll bet a lot of teachers were afraid to have her come to visit, as the Superintendents did in those days. She had very high standards of teaching, and was a real blessing in our county. I don't think I ever saw her again after she left our school.
Viola Woodard (only now it was Mrs. Floyd Richter) came back to Richter School and was my teacher for both my seventh and eighth grade years. She was such an encouraging teacher. When I complained that there were no more books in the school bookcase for me to read, she pointed to the whole shelf of the World Book Encylopedia, and had me read that. Sometimes she would quiz me on something I had read. She also encouraged all of us in competing in the annual track and scholastic meets held in Hinsdale.
In the spring of 1932, Mrs. Richter coached me in preparation for the 8th grade exams required of all the graduating 8th graders in rural schools. (Town kids didn't have to take the tests, probably because someone thought the town schools were superior!) She promised me a dollar for each exam in which I achieved a score of 90 or higher. There were eight exams, and that promise cost her $8, the most money I had ever had at one time!
I feel that it was a privilege, not a hardship, to attend a small country school, with the kind of teachers I had had. I know that we homesteaders' kids certainly received a good start at Richter School.

FUN AND GAMES
You might get the idea from what I've written so far that we kids on the homestead never had any fun. I've told of chores--those disliked things that had to be done day after day--and going to school, and a little about hunting and trapping. Those latter things were fun, for me. But we really had lots of time for play and doing other things that were fun.
One of the best things about growing up without a lot of the modern conveniences--and money--was that we learned early on to have fun with very simple things. For example, while I was very small, I had a whole stable of horses--stick horses. They didn't have any heads, so didn't need bridles or saddles, but I rode them a lot around the yard, down to the chicken house and barn, and to the gardens. These horses were nothing more than slender willow sticks which I took out of the pile of firewood our Dad brought home for use in the stoves. If I found one that suited my fancy, I would add it to the herd. They weren't very large--maybe an inch in diameter at the head end, and about five or six feet long. I can remember that for a while I seldom went anywhere around the yard without first straddling one of those stick horses. In a way it was better than riding a real horse, because my legs got lots of exercise, and those horses never bucked, except maybe in my imagination.
One of our favorite toys, with which we three older kids played, was the old baby buggy. Our parents had used it as a proper baby buggy for all us kids, and it was kept intact until after my younger sister, Mary, outgrew it. But after that it was just a toy, and we all pushed the thing around, sometimes coasted down mild slopes in it, used it for a doll buggy, and so on.
Then when the body of the thing was in rags and tatters, we took off the wheels and used them for "T and wheels." I'll bet you never heard of that, did you? Our folks must have played with those things when they were small. Our Dad made the "T's" for us, out of lathe (thin, long boards about four feet long, a quarter inch thick, and about an inch and a quarter wide). A piece of the lathe about a foot long was sawed off one end, and nailed firmly at right angles to the longer piece. He used two or three small nails, to make sure the cross-piece would stay attached, and not twist.
With the "T" we would push one of those buggy wheels, sometimes running, and sometimes, when we had become more skilled, just walking. You twisted, or angled the "T" in your hand to make the wheel turn to the right or left. When we had learned how to use them, Robert and I could make those buggy wheels go just about anywhere. I gave up my stick horses then, and nearly always could be seen pushing a baby-buggy wheel ahead of me wherever I was going. I remember sometimes even taking the "T and wheel" when going after the cows, out on the prairie, or keeping the wheel going when bringing a pail of water from the well. We put endless miles on those wheels. At first the wheels had solid rubber tires, but those finally wore off, so that we were "running on the rim" I guess you'ld say. Of course, the soft wood "T's" wore out, too, and we would have to make new ones periodically. We stopped playing with "T and wheels" only when at last all the wheels were worn out or lost.
Then we had spears, made out of willow sticks (yes, taken from the firewood pile again) that Robert and I carried along, throwing at different things, sage brush, thistles, whatever we thought would make a good target. Too often I used to throw my spear at a cow or calf which got out of line when I was herding the bunch. I'm afraid that I was often pretty rough on the livestock, not thinking that I was hurting them.
As I carried my spear, and threw it, I was "Ab the Caveman" all over again, hunting or defending the tribe. It was all quite vivid to me, in my imagination. We had a few old traces of Indians on our land--old tepee rings up in the horse pasture--and a number of Indian stone hammers which Dad had picked up on the land and brought home. Some of those hammers were used for door stops. Then Dad had found a few, a very few, arrow heads, too. All these served to stir my imagination, so that sometimes I was an Indian boy, hunting buffalo or wolves,with my trusty spear.
In the summer of 1923, when I was four years old, our mother's father, Grandpa Marsh, came out for a visit. He was great fun, and seemed to really enjoy our place and being with us. We kids went out on the prairie east of our place with him, gathering buffalo horns, which could be still be found quite easily in the l920's. I remember that he took a bunch of them back to Wisconsin with him when he went home. He planned to scrape them down and polish them, to make souvenirs. I don't know that he ever finished any of them, but that was his plan. The search for them was fun.
On a later visit, about 1925, he also helped us trap prairie dogs in the big "dog town" just south of our place. There were hundreds of these prairie dogs, and we had not had good luck trapping them until Grandpa Marsh came. We had used the little gopher traps, and the prairie dogs were strong enough to pull their legs out of those. Grandpa Marsh, I think, bought us some slightly larger traps which would hold them, and we captured and killed quite a few.
You know, I expect, that prairie dogs were not really dogs. They are large rodents, which live in huge colonies, called prairie dog towns. They were about twice as large as the gophers which were so common. Prairie dogs ate lots of good pasture grass, and sometimes a cow or horse would step in one of their large holes, and break a leg. Nearly everyone having prairie dogs on their land, or nearby, waged war on the little critters, to keep them from spreading out any further. We kids surely hated to see Grandpa Marsh leave to go back to Wisconsin. He died a few years later, and we never saw him again.
One of our fun activities was digging! Now I am thinking of these things, I am sure it was my brother Robert who came up with many of the ideas to try different things. The hill right in front of our house had a few rocks on it, a sort of crust, but the hill itself was mostly just hard yellow sand. It was Robert's idea that we could dig ourselves some holes in that hill. We used shovels and trowels, and each of us, Robert,Jean, and I, staked out our claim, all in a row.
Robert was the fastest digger, by far. He dug a hole about three or four feet square, and went down almost nine feet! That took a lot of digging, and used up quite a bit of our spare time that one summer. My hole was not nearly so deep, but of course I was much smaller than Robert. Jean's and my holes might have been about three or four feet deep. What did we do with them? We simply dug them and left them. I've wondered sometimes what ever happened to those holes, as so far as I know we never filled them in or covered them. Robert's hole would have been a real hazard to cattle!
After Robert started high school, he had other new ideas. On a hill up in the horse pasture north and west of our house, was an outcropping of gypsum, a glassy, nearly transparent stuff which would peel off in thin flakes, something like mica. Robert learned in high school that gypsum (which is, technically, hydrous calcium sulphate) could be heated in the oven until it turned chalky white. Then it could be easily reduced to powder, and that powder, mixed with water, formed plaster of Paris!
So we went into the production of plaster of Paris, and had some fun with that, making casts of different objects, tracks, etc. I wish now we had done more of that, but our interest must have soon died out. The gypsum shelf is still there--I saw it in 1976--and I know cows won't eat it. (Note: David, my son, and I went back there in the summer of 1989, and picked up quite a bit of that gypsum. David took it home with him to show to Danny, his son.)
We didn't get much rain, but when we would get a good shower in the summer time, we kids had fun taking our shoes off and running around bare foot in the sticky mud. We had to be careful, of course, as there were many prickly-pear cactus plants, and sometimes other things which could really hurt. In my chapter on prairie medicine I told of how Robert once stepped on a board with a nail in it, while going barefoot. But that painful experience didn't stop us.
In the springtime, when the snow began to melt, the water would flow down the hill toward the house from the west, and form a little stream which ran along the west side of the house, down in front of the kitchen, and out into the front yard. For a few yards, with the help of a lively imagination, it became a real white water river. I used to spend hours out there, on thawing days, sending a little whittled-out boat two or three inches long down that river, thrilling when it made it around a particularly bad bend, setting it right when it turned turtle, and at the end of the run carefully taking it out and putting it in again at the upper end of the rivulet, to make another run. I have no doubt that this play was instrumental in making me an avid white water canoeist in more recent years. As I've grown older, though, I've sort of lost interest in putting myself in such suspenseful situations, and mostly keep my feet dry. I could enjoy a bank of thawing snow and a little stream again today!
During the winter months we all enjoyed sledding or 'coasting,' as we called it. Our Dad made a little wooden sled, with solid wooden runners with nailed-on steel strips to make it slide easier on the snow. I think he made it chiefly to have a way of carrying his books, food, and other supplies when he went to his rural schools. Often he stayed away from home for a full week, or sometimes two weeks when the weather was bad, batching at the school or in some nearby shack. Whatever, when that sled was at home, we kids used it for coasting. No matter how cold it might be, if there was good snow on the ground, you could find us out coasting part of the day.
The runners slid best on the snow when covered with a thin layer of ice. I can remember taking a can of water outside to where the sled was leaning against the house, and pouring the water down over the bottom edge of the sled runners. With the weather very cold, the water froze instantly into a coating of ice. Of course it wore off rather quickly, and had to be replaced often.
That sled and the many hills around our place gave us hours of fun. Then Robert and I found that the wooden sled wouldn't nearly keep up with the fancy boughten sleds most of the other kids had. The sled the Richter children had was especially beautiful--a Flexible Flyer, about four feet long, with concave steel runners which never needed icing, and a good steering mechanism so one could make it go where he wanted it to.
I suppose we begged a lot for a new sled, and the folks were able to get one. It was recognized as Robert's right from the start. Though it was much smaller than the Richter sled, it could be steered, and we had tremendous times with it. Then when I was about in the fourth grade, the folks gave me a sled of my own, which I kept and used clear up into my high school years! It was not only for coasting, but I used it to carry jack rabbits I shot or snared, and for carrying the mail from the mail box (a mile from our house) home. We used our sleds at school, during recesses and noon hours, then brought them home each night in case we might need them there.
Our usual coasting hill at home was the high one just west of the house. It gave us a nice long run when the snow was good, down through the front gates (barbed wire affairs which could really give a boy a lot of trouble if you didn't duck your head at the right time), and down the road toward the creek. Often the snow would have drifted deep enough that we would slide right between the wires of the fence! I also used to coast on the hill between the house and the barn, and sometimes on the hill in front of the house, where we dug those holes I mentioned earlier. Once when sliding down the hill by the chicken house, which required threading my way under or between the wires of two fences, I didn't manage to duck at quite the right moment, and got a nice long scratch from one of the barbs on the fence. It ran across my forehead, above my right eye, and immediately I began to bleed, with the blood flowing down into my eyes. I thought I was about killed, and I guess when Mom saw the blood she thought so, too. But it was soon mopped up, and I have only a slight scar to show for it today.
Our rural mail carrier, Frank Stack, used a toboggan, pulling it behind his saddle horse in the winter time, to carry the mail sacks. I think our Mom had had some experience with a toboggan when she was a girl, because she often said she wished we had one. I don't know where the money came from, but when I was in the sixth grade, we got one, about six feet long. That opened up a whole new experience in coasting. Three or four could ride the thing at once, and it could be steered a little bit, though not precisely, by pulling on the ropes on either side. Dad also used it sometimes for his treks to his schools, pulling it behind him as he walked cross-country to his school on the South Bench, south of Milk River.
We had a lot of fun with that toboggan, at neighborhood coasting parties, at home, and at school. But along in the winter, about February, I think it was, we had a serious accident with it. We had taken it to school to play with during recess. The snow had drifted into a big high bank in the coulee just west of the school house, with a sharp drop-off which provided a "jump" of maybe four feet. Well, a load of kids, girls, got on the toboggan, with our little sister, Mary, up in front. She sat with her legs hanging out over the front end of the toboggan. Down the hill they went, over the jump, and crashed into the snow bank below, catching one of Mary's legs. Although we didn't realize it for a few minutes, her leg was broken badly, both bones below the knee, and one bone had two breaks. She was crying, of course, but we tried to get her to walk on it, never thinking it might be broken.
Somehow we got her into the school house. Dad was away teaching out south of the river, and Robert was away in high school. Someone got a neighbor, Mr. Carter, to come with a sleigh and team, and he took Mom, Mary, and Jean to Vandalia, where they caught the local passenger train to go to Hinsdale to the doctor. They were gone three days, and during that time I was left alone with the livestock, school, and so on. I was only eleven, and those were lonely days! I never quite trusted the toboggan after that, though we kept it for several years. I liked the sled better, because I could steer it.
We had many other activities on the homestead that were "for fun." I'll try to tell about them in a later posting.

SCHOOL DAYS
As I begin writing on this chapter of my early days, I am reminded again of my first grade teacher, Viola Woodard, later Mrs. Viola James. (She had a long list of names: Viola Verona Hermina Otalia Ratche Woodard, and later, through marriage, she added Richter and then James!) Viola James returned to Richter School when I was in the 7th grade, and continued through the next year also. She was a great teacher! I just learned today (Fall, 1987) that she has passed on, several months ago, of cancer. She was in her eighties. I had last seen her at the graveside service for my younger sister, Mary, who died in l983. Viola James was there, as keen of mind as she was so many years ago.
Unless you, too, were one of those children who were anxious to get started in school, you can hardly imagine how eager I was to begin school. Robert and Jean were in school ahead of me, and that left me more or less alone at home. My little sister, Mary, who was four years younger than I, was too small to be much fun playing with. Each morning, when Mom would allow it, I would walk up the hill in front of our house, and watch Robert and Jean trudge off to school. Again in the afternoon, I would keep close tab on the time, and go to meet them, if the weather was good.
I learned all I could from them at home, and with their help, and my mother's, I learned the alphabet and how to count up to 100 long before I started to school. Mother had taught in high school in Wisconsin, before her marriage, and was fluent in German. So she taught all of us children how to count in German, how to recite the German alphabet, and a few German sayings and expressions when we were very small.
So when the year 1925 finally came around, and I was old enough to begin school, I already knew some of the basics. There were just two of us first graders that year--Vernon Richter and I--so our teacher, Viola Woodard, had a nice small class to work with. I can recall how proud she was of our fast progress in learning to read. We practiced our writing on the blackboard when it was our turn to use the board. And we played a lot outside, too; I think we had more time for play than the other children.
At some point in the year, I think it was the following spring, the County Superintendent of Schools came to visit our school, and I can remember showing off plenty--reading, writing, and rattling off the German stuff I knew. I'm sure she thought we were quite remarkable first graders!
Maybe a few things about the school would be helpful here, in understanding just how important the school was in all our lives. In the chapter on the homestead I have told of the location of the school, a mile and a half by road from our house, or about a mile and a quarter across lots--which was the way we nearly always went when walking.
But mere geographic location can't begin to explain how central the school was in our whole community. The school was quite literally the real center of everything to those who lived for miles around. Not only did we attend classes there during the school year, but there we had our Sunday School, vacation Bible school, and occasional worship services throughout the year, and there we had all sorts of social events. Although I don't recall anything at all about voting, I would guess that voting was done there, too.
There was nothing fancy about the school building itself. It was a wooden frame building with ship-lap exterior walls, and measured about twenty by thirty- four feet, set on a concrete foundation. It had a brick chimney for the big stove which provided heat when we needed it. The building was painted white, with a steep-pitched shingled roof. There were windows on the north, south, and west sides; none on the east. The door faced toward the north, and there was a porch with steps but no railing, perhaps eight feet by six feet, about two feet high.
Immediately behind the school, on the south, was the coal and wood shed. About eighty feet southwest of the building was the barn, which was added when I was in the third grade. It was small, and would house only four horses (or mules). Set out at precise distances, about one hundred feet from the south end of the schoolhouse were the two toilets, one for the girls and the other for boys, separated from each other about eighty feet--a good safe distance. Boys were never allowed to go anywhere near the girl's toilet, under threat of severe penalty. Even when playing ball at recess, if a ball should fall or roll near the girl's toilet, one of the girls had to be asked to bring it back.
The school buildings just described were situated on a fairly level area, with strong barbed wire fences and a lane running east and west in front of the school. The fence closest to the school belonged to the Richter family, on whose land the school was located. That is probably why it was named the Richter School from its beginning. The Roy Richter homestead buildings were about a mile and a quarter southeast of the school. The Richters were very good to all of us, allowing use of the grounds for our school games and other activities. I believe the school building was erected in 1922. My father was the first teacher to conduct school there, and was my brother Robert's first grade teacher in 1922-23.
About one hundred feet to the west of the school buildings there was a fairly steep hill, dropping down about seventy-five yards to a small creek which ran only during the wettest seasons of the year, mainly in the spring. That hill provided us a wonderful slope for coasting in the winter months, as well as a sort of break in the rather flat scenery to the north and east. Inside, coming in the door, one entered what we called the entry way. There were cupboards here for storage of books and materials of various kinds. On either side of the entry room were the cloak rooms, again separated for boys and girls. The communal water pail and dipper were located in the boys room; we all drank out of the same dipper, as was done in those days. On the walls of the cloak rooms were rows of hooks for our wraps, and benches where we sat to put on or take off our overshoes. Also these small rooms, which were only about eight feet long by maybe six feet wide, were sometimes used for classrooms for the older students, and were put to good use for Sunday School classes on Sundays.
Our lunch pails were always stored in the cloak rooms, and lunches would get mighty cold during winter weather, because there was no heat in either of those rooms. Sometimes the teachers would let us bring our lunches in before noon, and put them near the stove to thaw out before lunch time. If we had brought cocoa, as we Cumming kids often did, we could put our pail of cocoa on the top of the stove about fifteen minutes before noon, to heat it. Occasionally when someone (like me, for instance!) forgot to open the lid of the cocoa pail, we would have an explosion, and cocoa spilled over the top of the stove as the heat caused the lid to pop open.
Stepping from the cloak rooms into the main school room, one came first to the teacher's desk, which was centered at the front of the room. All the seats for the children faced toward the teacher's desk. There were blackboards covering the north wall (right behind the teacher's desk) and on the east wall. The big clock hung high on the east wall, to the teacher's left. That old clock had to be wound each week, and this was usually taken care of by the teacher. As I recall, only one teacher allowed one of us boys to wind the clock; that was a choice responsibility which had to be earned by good behavior and reliability. I don't recall ever winding the clock myself, though of course I was a model student!
The huge heating stove was located in the southeast corner of the room. The chimney took quite a bit of space in the center of the south wall. Just to the right of the chimney was the single bookcase, which had four or five shelves, and glass doors, holding the entire school library. The bottom shelf was occupied almost entirely by the set of World Book encyclopedias. Then there was a table for the big unabridged Webster's dictionary, too. Windows on the south and west sides took up most of the wall space. The windows were high, with hooks in the top sash so they could be opened for ventilation. We decorated the lower part of the windows in many different ways according to the different special occasions of the year. The floor was of curly maple, a fine, solid, and smooth floor. The seats, typical school furniture, were not anchored to the floor, but could be moved about according to need. Across the front of the room, in front of the teacher'sdesk, were low benches used for reciting.
Pictures? Oh, yes, we had pictures. Strung along above the blackboards were the pictures of all the presidents, and there was a large portrait of George Washington above all, on the north wall. Also, on the south wall, above the bookcase, was a lovely (I thought) picture of a little girl in sunbonnet, carrying a lunch pail, and accompanied by her big Saint Bernard dog, leaving home for school. The printed legend said "To school well fed on Grapenuts." That was my introduction to Grapenuts, though I didn't know until many years later what they were. I only knew peanuts and filberts and walnuts and Brazil nuts (which we ignorantly called "nigger toes") and I often wondered what Grapenuts were. But it was a nice picture!
There was quite an assortment of desks, with extras stored out in the coal shed. At the beginning of each school year, a lot of time was taken on the first day of school, fitting each student with an appropriate desk. Sometimes desks had to be drawn from the shed, and others taken out. Each teacher did her best (we never had any men teachers while I was going to school there) to make us as comfortable as possible.
The desks were of the ordinary sort, with cast iron frames, probably maple wood for seat, back, and writing surface. Some, I remember, were fairly well scarred by boy whittlers of past years. Some, too, had wads of gum, aged, hard stuff, stuck on the underside of the seats or book storage areas. The writing surface was hinged, and lifted up to allow placing books inside. Each desk had an ink well, and we used them regularly, at least in the upper grades, with stiff steel-pointed pens in holders.
There were few text books. They were furnished by the school, and used year after year. Some would get pretty badly battered after two or three years' use, and we all felt pretty sorry for ourselves at times, having to used tattered or back-less books. A big wall map, with maps of the United States, Montana, and the various continents hung on the wall behind the teacher's desk. How I loved those maps! Even when in the lower grades, I could readily draw a recognizable map of any of the continents from memory, and draw in most of the countries. We all used ruled pencil tablets, and had pencils and erasers of our own, and pen holders. Some of us had our own pencil cases, too, of which we were very proud. There was a pencil sharpener fastened on the window sill at the back of the room, next to the stove. That sharpener got a lot of use, especially on cold winter days when it was mighty cold sitting on the far side of the room away from the stove!
The stove itself was what was known as a circulating heater. It consisted of a big pot-bellied inner stove, set up on legs above the floor, with a large cylinder of embossed steel hung around it, with a space of about twelve or fourteen inches between the "jacket" and the stove proper. The theory was that as the fire heated the air around the inner stove, that air would rise, and fresh air be drawn in from under the jacket, thus creating a circular flow of air throughout the room. It worked quite well, if the fire in the stove was hot enough, and the weather not too cold. But often on very cold winter mornings, when it might be thirty--yes, thirty!--below zero outside, it took a long time to heat the whole room to the point where we could take off our wraps. Sometimes our teacher would have us all marching around the room, still in our coats and caps and mittens, while she played the old victrola, turning the record by hand, as the phonograph, too, would be too cold to run well. The tempo changed a lot, but through that practice I became familiar with some of the grand marches, like "The Jolly Coppersmith" and some of Sousa's marches. We all took it in stride, and actually thought it was fun, and not particularly a hardship. The teacher usually came to school early, walking there as most of us did, to build the fire and get the building warmed.
It is difficult for me, writing this more than sixty years later, to remember many of the details of my early school years. I do recall sitting at my desk, and watching the older children, especially my brother, Robert, recite. That was one of the secrets of the little one-room school: the younger children had plenty of opportunity to watch while the older children were at the board, or to listen to them recite. Early on I became skilled enough in arithmetic and spelling to detect errors made by the older ones, and could hardly contain myself, wiggling around in my seat, and hoping the teacher would ask me for the correct answer, which of course she never did. I think that experience had something to do with my undesirable critical nature--I learned too early to spot errors others made, and to let them know it! If one was observant at all--and I think I was--one could learn a great deal through this setup.
There was another factor working for me, in those early school days. From the time we were very small, our parents, who were both teachers and knew how to help us learn, had instructed us in all sorts of different ways. We learned to count eggs when we gathered them, and measurements from helping with the milking, and so on. So when, in school, I sat and watched the older children in their recitation, I was absorbing a lot of it. I practiced the multiplication tables with Robert and Jean, and knew them thoroughly long before I was expected to, at my grade level. In those days, children memorized the multiplication tables up through the 12's.
As I grew older, sometimes Dad would pose an arithmetic problem to be worked out in my head while milking, or hoeing in the garden. Really, I could do long division, quite complicated addition, multiplication, and even square root problems, without paper and pencil. To this day, I find that I can often do calculations (rather simple ones) faster in my head than many people can do them on paper.
Also, for some reason--probably because our parents were surely among the best educated and versatile people in the community--we Cumming kids had the idea that we were really smarter than the others in school. Teachers seemed to expect more of us, and I think that helped, too, because a person responds generally to the expectations of others. Whatever the reason, I had an easy time in school. I don't recall ever having to do homework while in elementary school, and rarely while in high school. Learning was easy and fun.
I read every book in the school bookcase before I was in the upper grades, and also the small library of books my parents had at home, even books of poetry (my Dad loved the poets). We borrowed books from the neighbors when we could, to supplement what we had at home.
I do recall how our mother used our great interest in reading to get us to read something she thought would be good for us. Whether she bought the books, or they were sent out by well-meaning relatives in Wisconsin, I'm not sure, but she had two volumes--"What a Young Boy Should Know," and "What a Young Girl Should Know." These were the closest we ever came to receiving sex instruction from our parents. Mom had the books, and assigned them to us to read--the boys to read the boy's book, and my sister Jean (our little sister, Mary, was far too young )to read the one for girls. Then Mom said we were not to read the other book--which of course we all did as soon as we could get away with it! It was pretty vague stuff, I remember. We already knew a lot more about sex than Mom ever dreamed we knew. But I'm pretty sure she worked us a little on that, knowing that of course we would read both books!
This blog entry is getting pretty long--I'd better cut it off here and return to this subject (school, not sex) later!

MORE ABOUT LADDIE
While he was still young, Laddie developed a close friendship with Nellie, our sorrel work horse. It was laughable to see those two. When Nellie was not in harness, she and Laddie had wild games of tag, first Laddie chasing and barking at Nellie all the way up into the pasture, with Nellie kicking and snorting and bucking. Then Nellie would turn the tables and chase him for all she was worth, threatening to trample him or bite him. They both loved it, and knew it was all in fun.
When Nellie was in harness, it was a totally different story. Laddie always trotted along on the left, her side of the wagon or hayrach, or sleigh. If the weather was hot, he sometimes trotted in her shade, and lie down almost under her feet when she was standing still. Then she never kicked or stepped on him, but would sometimes reach down and nuzzle him a little with her nose. They were just great pals.
Laddie loved to go out hunting. He finally got to the point where I could just take down the rifle from the wall, or ask him if we should go hunting, and he would get wildly excited. It took a lot of doing, but he also learned not to go off chasing every jackrabbit we saw. He would stand still, and let me get a shot off at the rabbit. Sometimes if the rabbit were a long ways away, I would actually rest my rifle across his back, to steady it, for ONE shot. Laddie didn't believe in second chances--if I missed with that first shot, that rabbit was his to chase. Off he would go, and sometimes he would be able to catch a rabbit which had only been wounded. I know his efforts didn't really help me much in capturing rabbits! When I was really serious about going out to get a jackrabbit or two to skin, or to feed to the chickens, I would leave Laddie at home. How he hated that!
We had Laddie for a long time. In the winter of 1934-35, Dad and I were batching at the Burke place. I was a junior in high school that winter, walking back and forth the two and one-half miles to school morning and night. Mom was working at the postoffice in Hinsdale, and kept a house in town, with our two girls. Robert was at school in Havre, at Northern Montana College that winter, and was only home briefly between quarters at the school.
The old shack at the Burke place was cold, and without Mom there to run the household, Dad and I got in the habit of having Laddie sleep in the house. (Mom had never allowed us to dogs or cats in the house) Laddie really made himself at home. In those days people didn't feed dogs special dog foods, dry or canned. The dog simply ate what was left over when we were through eating, so it was pretty easy, with Laddie in the house, to fall in the habit of letting Laddie lick our plates when we were through eating. Of course, we (usually I) washed those dishes thoroughly afterward, whether they needed it or not. Mom used to get so annoyed with Dad and me when, to tease her, we would tell someone outside the family that Laddie took care of the dishwashing at our place!
That winter was a special one in more than one way. During the cold weather Dad and I slept in the main living room, next to the heating stove. We had a little black female cat, jet black, who regularly slept lying across my neck, and old Laddie would crawl up on the bed in the night and lie on my feet! Between them, they helped a lot to keep me warm! It would get so cold at night, sometimes the water in the pail right beside the stove would freeze solid!
One time when the weather was not so cold, and Robert was home on a break from school, he and Dad took the team and sleigh and went to a place about four miles distant, where lignite coal could be dug out of a shallow vein which was exposed on the side of a hill. I was in school, so couldn't go along to help. They had to remove much soil and rock from the sidehill above the vein of coal, and when that was done, harvest the soft lignite coal, not really very good fuel. But it was free for the asking, and we hauled a lot of coal from that site over the years.
Naturally, Laddie went along with them after the coal, and also, as usual, entertained himself while they worked by looking for rabbits or anything else interesting. When they finally had a few sacks of coal, and were ready to come home, Laddie was nowhere around! They called and called, then decided he must have gone back home by himself. So they came on home--but Laddie was not there, either. We all spent a restless night, wondering about him, and fearing he might have gotten caught in coyote traps, or possibly been poisoned.
Next day Dad and Robert went back to the coal mining area, to look for Laddie, and I went back to school. When I got home that night, I learned they had found Laddie alright, with three feet caught in a setting coyote traps. His feet were terribly swollen, and he couldn't do any more than wag his tail faintly. He was fortunate that the night had not been awfully cold, so his feet weren't frozen too badly.
We nursed that old dog like a baby the next few weeks! Gradually he improved enough to get up and hobble around; most of the time he simply lay by the stove, licking and licking his sore feet. He lost a toe or two, but finally his feet were fully healed, and he was his old lively self again.
We had Laddie with us while living in Hinsdale for my final year of high school, and through the following summer. But that fall, when Jean, Mary, Mom and I moved to Havre so Jean and I could start college, the folks arranged to give him to some friends who lived on a farm about a mile west of Hinsdale, right along the highway. It was terribly hard to say goodbye to Laddie, but in the excitement of going to college, I guess I didn't think too much about it.
After that first year while I was in Havre, attending Northern Montana College, our parents and Mary moved to Glasgow, Montana, about 30 miles east of Hinsdale. In Glasgow they lived in town, so thought it best to leave old Laddie with those friends near Hinsdale.
In the spring of 1938, when I was finishing my second year at NMC, I was singing in the men's double quartet. We went on a trip representing the college, trying to interest young people in coming to Havre when they had finished high school. We sang and talked in the various high schools down the line toward Glasgow, and finally came to Hinsdale.
It was about four in the afternoon when we had finished our program at Hinsdale High School, and were standing near our two cars, parked in front of the school. I happened to look down the old familiar main street of the little town, and noticed a dog coming on a dead run right down the middle of the street toward us. When he was less than a block away I recognized Laddie! He was so excited he nearly bowled me over, and I remember getting down on my knees and hugging him hard! He licked my face, and whined and whimpered and all but talked, as he told me how he had missed me, and how glad he was to see me again after almost two years.
But we had to go on, and reluctantly I got into the car, and we drove away, Laddie following us just as fast as he could. He followed for some distance down the highway, then turned back after looking hard down the road as we drove away. I am sure he couldn't understand why I had left him again. I never saw him after that. A year or two later he was killed on the highway, chasing a car--one of his very bad habits.
Since then, though we have had great cats, and a dog or two, but I have never become so attached to any animals as I was to Laddie and Nellie and other animals we had on the homestead. Those experiences gave me a life-long fondness for animals, and I am glad for that!

NIGHT OF STORM
Scary things happened now and then when we were growing up on the homestead. One of the most terrifying experiences I ever had was in mid-summer of 1929, when my sister Jean and I spent a large part of a night out on the prairie, lost in a violent storm.
It had started out as a typical hot summer day, nothing special about it. The weather had been very dry for weeks, so that our well at home could not provide enough water to satisfy our cattle and horses. Nearly every day we pumped the well dry, and then had to wait several hours for it to refill. As a result of that, we had begun to water our milk cows, which we pastured on the open range to the east of our place, at an old abandoned well about a mile and a half from our place. The well had been dug by one of the early homesteaders who had later abandoned his claim. Our Dad had cleaned out the well, put a new platform over it, and installed a common cistern pump, and a trough and a small tank from which the cattle could drink. So each day, as a part of the chore of bringing the milk cows home, we had to take the bunch up to the old well, pump enough water for them to tank up to their heart's content, and then bring them on home in time for milking. Because the pumping of the water was quite a big job for one youngster, usually two of us would go after the cows.
On this particular day, my older sister, Jean, and I were sent after the cows. We started early enough, walking, and accompanied by our dog, Laddie. Everything went quite normally as we went east to the coulee we called Brush Fork. That was about two miles from home. We looked up and down the coulee from a particular hill we used as a sort of lookout point, and spotted the cows grazing about a half mile to the north. It didn't take long for us to get up there, round them up, and start them toward the well.
Only one thing was a bit worrisome--the cows didn't want to be driven, it seemed, and in the west there was a huge dark cloud rising, already covering the sun. We knew enough about weather signs to judge that we might get an electrical storm that night, but didn't particularly worry about that. We had seen lots of "dry storms" that summer, when the lightning and thunder were very close and noisy, but no or little rain had fallen.
The cows were thirsty, and it took a long while to pump enough water for them. Finally they were ready for the walk home. But now the storm cloud was covering nearly all of the sky, and it was getting dark quickly. We could see lightning off to the west, and there was a strange stillness. The air seemed to be standing still, most unusual out there where there was always a breeze.
We started the cattle toward home, about a mile and a half away, old Laddie helping, and hurried them along, as we hoped to get home before the storm would strike. But it was no use--suddenly the whole bunch of cows hiked their tails up in the air, and began to run back toward Brush Fork. There was nothing we could do to stop them. And then we heard the sound of the wind and rain! It came on us so suddenly, and it became dark so quickly, we had scarcely enough time to grab hold of each other's hand. The rain was icy cold, and dressed as we were in light summer clothing, we soon were shivering. The wind was powerful, blowing right in our faces, from the direction we needed to go to get home.
With the wind, the lightning, and the rain, we were nearly blinded. Our faithful dog had disappeared, whether following the cattle or not, we didn't know. There was absolutely nowhere we could go to get out of the rain.
That must have been about six o'clock in the evening. For the next four hours we wandered around on the treeless, unfenced prairie. In the brief flashes of lightning we could only get a momentary impression of a clump of sagebrush, or a gully. We couldn't see any familiar landmarks. The rain poured down; this was no mere shower; it was a cloudburst! In no time at all the water was standing on the ground, and the gullies and creeks began to flow. Because we knew the storm was coming from the west, we tried to walk south, letting the wind and rain hit the right side of our faces, but even that was difficult and sometimes impossible to do. We just went on and on, not knowing where we were, crossing what by now were sizeable streams running down the little gullies and coulees, sometimes up to our knees in rushing cold water.
I admit that we were frightened, too, by the closeness of the lightning and the loudness of the tremendous thunder claps. Unlike many other storms which we had experienced, it was not over quickly, but continued on and on. At times we would change directions, sure that home lay in this direction, or that. I was only ten years old at that time, and Jean was eleven, but we were equals out there in that stormy night. Though we believed in God, in a general way, I'm sure that we didn't pray. We just kept telling each other that we would get home somehow, and hung on to each other tightly, so we wouldn't get separated. Except for the lightning flashes, it was pitch dark.
After about four hours, and no one knows how many miles we had travelled, a flash of lightning revealed a fence corner, with a pile of rocks, and on the rocks an old abandoned wash tub! Immediately I knew where we were--at the northeast corner of the James place, about a mile and half straight east of our home. I had walked by that corner many times over the years. Now by the light of the lightning flashes, we could follow the James' north fence which ran most of the way toward our home. Unless you have been totally lost at some time, you have no idea what a relief this was to our minds!
But to follow the fence, we had to walk directly into the wind and rain, and that was difficult. Also, that particular stretch of prairie was nearly covered with prickly pear cactus. Not that we hadn't run into any of those earlier, but we surely didn't need any more spines in our poor feet. We were both wearing light shoes, and the cactus spines had easily gone through the sides and soles. We were both literally limping on both feet!
We had gone about a quarter of a mile toward home when we saw a light! It was up on a ridge to the north of us, and we knew it must be our Dad coming out to look for us. We left the fence and turned toward the light, calling at the top of our voices, although there was little chance anyone even a short distance away could have heard us in the wind and rain and thunder. Then the light went out! I remember telling Jean that the wind must have blown out the kerosene lantern Dad had, and that he wouldn't be able to light it again in all that wind.
After calling as loudly as we could several times, and getting no response, we gave up, turned back to the fence, and again worked our way west toward home. About three quarters of a mile from home, we had to go down a steep hill and cross a deep ravine. This ravine drained a large area to the north, and when we got down to the stream we found a real torrent! I was afraid to try to wade across it, but we decided we might get lost again if we tried to work our way up around it. So holding hands tightly, we ventured out. That water was nearly up to my waist! It was very difficult to keep our feet under us, but the stream wasn't wide, and we made it across safely.
Now we had familiar ground ahead of us. We left the fence, walked around the big double-knobbed hill we called Government Hill, and came on down to our east fence. Soon after that, we saw a lantern coming toward us again. Dad had run most of the way home, relit the lantern, and was coming out again to look for us. You can't know how glad we were to see him! He hugged us both so tight, and then led us on to the house. Mom was waiting up for us, dreadfully anxious for fear that we might not be found before morning. She had hot water on the stove, and towels ready to dry us off. Silly, by that time I was thinking I was quite the hero, having found our way home. We told and retold our tale, then finally got to bed about midnight. Laddie, our dog, had come home without us, and that had really worried our parents. As we had guessed, the wind had blown the lantern out on Dad's first try to find us, and though he must have passed within two or three hundred yards of us, he had not been able to hear our shouts.
"All's well that ends well," my Mom used to say. I don't know whether she applied that saying to our experience, but it was true. Neither Jean nor I so much as caught cold from our night out in the storm. The next morning was bright and sunny. The whole earth looked clean and fresh. Dad hitched up the team, and with our milk cans, pails and milking stools in the wagon, we went out to find the cows. We found them alright, about two miles from home, and milked them there on the prairie.