Years ago, a show aired on TV that featured an elderly man who had lost his wife years earlier. In many episodes when some drama took place, the man clutched his chest, looked upward and said to his deceased wife, “I’m coming to join you, Honey.” Of course, that never happened. He always managed to continue on and the next week, another episode played when he once again declared his intent to join his wife. That may seem a bit comical which was the intent of the writer and actors of the show, but it is also a scene I have seen played out in real life.
When Mama died, Daddy thought he had fulfilled his marriage vow and decided he was free to join his bride of 60 years. For almost twelve years after her death, I contended with his desire to go to her which was intensified during bouts of sickness. Each time, he tried to justify his declaration stating that he was no longer needed. That longing to go on to his heavenly home was ever present with him.
One day my son and a couple of his friends were at the house building a ramp. Daddy had gotten to the point where he had to use a walker and we knew there was a possibility we might have to transport him in a wheelchair, so we wanted to be prepared.
the guys building a ramp, Oct 2017
On that particular day, Daddy went out the front door to the porch. He took a few steps, teetered and tottered, and fell. Though he was a small man and because of the position in which he had fallen, I couldn’t get him up. My husband had just had shoulder surgery, so he wasn’t able to lift Daddy. We called our son who came running to pick up his granddad. He came up on the porch, walked behind the little man, reached down and hooked his arms under Daddy’s arm pits, and lifted him off the ground in one swift movement. The look on that little man’s face was priceless as he briefly hung in the air before his feet touched the ground. When my son set him down, Daddy stood the straightest I had ever seen him. He was stunned. It took a few seconds before he realized what had happened, and I dare say the look on his face turned to one of disappointment.
At first Daddy believed he was finally getting his wish. Later he confessed he thought an angel showed up that day and had picked him up to make a special delivery to the gates of heaven. As far as I was concerned, an angel did show up!
I think back on that day with a smile as I imagine the thoughts that must have raced through his mind. In that one brief moment I could almost hear him say, “I’m coming to join you, Honey,” and six months later he did just that.
Yep – I played second fiddle, or more specifically, second violin. One time I even held the first chair. Now, that doesn’t mean I picked up the chair and held on to it. No. It means I “tried out” for the position of sitting in the first chair of the second violin section. I have no idea how I beat the guy who was vying for the same chair, but nonetheless, I did.
Now, let me tell you that just because you play “second violin” (or second fiddle) doesn’t mean you have a lesser position. It means that you complement the first violins as well as the other strings and instruments in the orchestra. The first violins normally play the melody – kind of like sopranos in the choir. The second violins normally play harmony and add accompanying rhythm – kind of like altos in the choir. Violas are tuned lower and have a deeper, mellower sound – kind of like tenors. The strings wouldn’t be complete without the cello that offers those rich resonating tones that have the ability to soothe the soul – kind of like the bass section of the choir. The double basses add the lower notes that define the chord and set the foundational rhythm.
I remember thinking my part was of lesser importance until one day, I realized that the others could not complete their role without the other sections. Solos are fine and have their place,
but a transformation takes place when the tones and rhythms bring harmony and balance to create the masterpiece. And so is life. It takes all parts to bring completion. The ones taking the lead cannot fulfill the finished composition without those who offer their supporting, and often lesser noticed, roles.
So, just in case you’re wondering — sure, I can play now but it sounds more like a cat with its tail caught under the rockers of a chair. There is definitely no harmony in that!
My Guest Author, my dad, said, “both scars and joys were imbedded in my childhood memories.” He often told this story a “stray kid in the early thirties when folks were too poor to nourish lice.”
Father was delivering a load of lumber when he saw a hitchhiker beside the country road. The hiker was about half grown, but his hands, feet, and nose were fully grown. His sunburned neck climbed out of a ragged shirt and his Adam’s apple made a small shelf more sunburned that the rest of him. The young man said that he had left home in Wyoming because his widowed mother didn’t have enough money to feed her family. For a week he had been hitching across the prairies of eastern Montana. Then somebody told him he might get a job on one of the mountain ranches west of Melville. That’s where Father picked him up.
Maybe it was because of the boy’s story. Maybe it was because his oldest son was confined to bed and needed company. Maybe it was because Bud Ward was that kind of a man. Whatever the reason, Father brought the hitchhiker home. He introduced him as “Jimmy Hicks”. This wasn’t his real name. It was a name born out of depression times. It symbolized a wandering youth in search of a place to stay and a place to work.
That night Alan Storm threw his spare shirt and blue jeans on a bed in the bunkhouse. He came into the kitchen with the hired men and sat down to a square meal. His sunburned Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. For a skinny kid, he sure knew what do with food.
When it came to work the new hired hand wasn’t very experienced. He chopped into rocks, fastened chains to logs the wrong way, got lost on the mountain and broke his ax handle. When he carried in an arm load of stove wood, he stumped his toe and scattered sticks all over the floor.
After the first month, Ernest Parker summed up the situation. “By the Great Horn Spoon,” he said, “that kid will never make a lumberjack.”
Some of the neighbors wondered how long the Hicks kid would keep his job. But two and three months went by and still Jimmy Hicks stayed on. His body was filling out, but he continued to dull his ax and get lost. However, Jimmy had jobs that the neighbors did not know about. In the evening, after work, he would get on his hands and knees on the lawn and I’d sit astraddle of his back and use him for a bucking horse. When he was bucked out, even Sister Barbara could ride him without pulling leather. After supper, Jimmy would sit in the middle room and talk to my brother. There was about two years difference in their ages.
Brother Jack had lost the use of his legs and paralysis was creeping up his body. He had received more x-ray treatments in Billings. His hair had fallen out again, and the doctors said that nothing could be done to stop the growth of the tumor in his brain. But in the evenings after supper, laughter resounded from the couch in the middle room.
Just like I’d find out in later years, giants and angels come in all sizes, and when you entertained one, you didn’t know what would happen. There would be good things to remember. In the next decade there would be sad things too, for a battlefield at Salerno Beach in Italy would cut short any more memories about a stray kid we knew as Jimmy.
by my Guest Author, my dad – the man of the mountains
The people down in Big Timber and Melville thought we were crazy to live that far back in the Crazies in the wintertime. They were almost right.
Winter was a son of a gun. For four months of the year we put chains on our car at the Olson Field Bridge four miles away. We carried a snow shovel and even then, sometimes, we walked and left our automobile off the road or in a snow drift.
Some winters the Cletrac tractor was the only thing that could manage the road between our house and the herd of cattle four miles down country. My father would wrap up snug and lay down on the sled that I pulled down the road and back. And driving the caterpillar tractor was cold with a capital K. At times I tied twine to the brake rods and walked behind it guiding it with lines like it was a team of horses.
Anyone who lived that far back in the mountain wilderness got acquainted with the curse of winter. The book writer in the family might say, “Winter is a bitch.” But there were also blessings. Just come with me and find a special place and enjoy our land of snowdrifts. Winter gave us a wonderland for hand sleds, skis and red nosed children. When we came home from school, we’d grab our sleds and head for the sled race tracks on the drifted hillsides.
Buck & Barbara
On one sled race that I especially remember, Sister Barbara run-started her sled, sped down the hill, crossed a swale, and landed on the limbs of a fallen tree. She jumped up with blood flowing from a tree limb gash and shouted. “I won!”
A part of the winning was having had a warm house to get into. The west wind could be is driving snow across thehouse roof pouring off the eaves like a waterfall with the snow drift on the front side of the house so deep we had to shovelsnow away to see out the window – on days like that it’s nice to be hugged by a warm house.
Icicles could hang from eaves to the ground, the thermometer could read twenty degrees below zero, but who cared, if there was a glowing fire place or a wood heater with red cheeks.
The uncles had a super large house with a massive rock fireplace accented with a mantel covered with interesting Indian relics and the mounted head and antlers of large bull elk. That fireplace burned lots of wood and sent the heat up the chimney. The fireplace was more show than heat. It would warm the back of your legs if you stood in front of it. One of our home improvements was a stone fireplace that showed the head and antlers of a buck deer. The fireplace also housed a Heatilator that would consume any wood that would burn and throw out lots of heat. Before that we had a heater stove that was made out of a fifty-gallon barrel. It had a draft vent that was borrowed from a manufactured stove. It might go “Put, put, put.” What it lacked in looks it made up by output. That stove would really put out the heat. We liked to watch its red cheeks when it got really hot.
Sweet Grass winter
REAL WINTER COMFORT
J. Frost rides the wind tonight. He shakes the window screen. He whispers through the key hole, “Let me in.”
The fire’s aglow inside, The hearth log sends its flame higher up the chimney, When it hears Jack Frost’s name.
At every heart grown cold, And every demon, dread, and doubt, Light faith’s hearth log yet again And coldness will flee out.
Rummaging through an old bookshelf, I found a tattered and torn book hidden away. A cloud of dust burst into the air as I picked up the book and wiped the jacket to reveal the title, “Prairie Rose.” Slowly, I opened the book. On the first page was the photo of a small girl and just beneath it was a picture of a mother with six children. Who was this little girl who grew into a woman? Would I like the girl, the teenager, the woman, whose stories rested between the pages?
As I began to read, it felt as if I was bound by a vortex of time that passed through the years of this girl’s life. The first scene that came into view was a cabin on the prairie in which a baby girl had just been born on a warm summer evening as green hail clouds cast balls of ice downward and the winds blew against the house. Even as a small child she held a fierce determination that could not easily be swayed. It wasn’t long before another girl joined the family. The two became fast friends and were inseparable. They were like prairie tumbleweeds, not staying in one place for long. One of the great joys of the youngsters was seeing a circus for the first time.
The hands of time reached out and pulled back the flap of a covered wagon. Two little girls peered out from the bed of the wagon in awe of everything they saw as the family traveled from Montana to Idaho to escape the drought. In just a few short years, the family made the trek back to Montana. From time to time as the pages turned, I stopped to ponder the stage set before my eyes. It was hard to imagine the mother in the photo ever being a child or a teenager, much less a wife and mother.
The little girl and her little sisterA mom and six kids
A soft wind tugged at the leaves of the book. New scenes flashed before me as time slowly moved forward. The family moved again, and a son joined the family. It was then I saw the
small figure of a little girl walking to school alone bundled against the cold. The winter wind taunted her and pelted her with blowing snow. The neighbors rescued her from the storm and kept her safe until her dad came and scooped her up in his arms.
Time picked up speed as the girl transformed into a teenager and became a young lady in love. A new chapter emerged. Within the moments, hours, days and years spoken of within the sheets of paper, the girl became the woman, wife, and mother seen in the picture. She was studious with a strong sense of righteousness. She stood up for those ridiculed by others. Her work ethics were commendable, her friendships unbreakable. This woman sacrificed to support her husband and children. Time and again, just like the prairie tumbleweed, she rolled on to another place.
“Prairie Rose” was calm as a warm sunny day, cold as the blowing snow, fresh and pretty as a prairie flower, sharp as a prickly pear, fierce as the heavy green storm clouds, determined as the blazing sun, curious as the rabbits that watched from the tall spring grass, relentless as the sticky gumbo that bogged down the tires of the cars and soles of her shoes. Yes, she was all those things, the prairie grass in the gently breeze, the cracked parched earth thirsting for a drink of water, the deep blue sky, and dark moving shadows of fluffy white clouds.
I turned the last page to the final words.
“The End. Love, Mom.”
No, that wasn’t right, that wasn’t the end!
I gently placed the book back on the shelf. The edges were still frayed, but inside I had found new, fresh stories, and treasures this lady left behind. I saw her now through different eyes. As I caressed the cover one more time, I turned with a tear and a smile. Yes, I had found more within the pages of her life, for I found a friend.
Through those years, she forged lasting friendships and strengthened the bonds of family. How could my heart not be drawn to this prairie school teacher who could ride a horse bareback across the prairie blown by the wind; who stood fearless to sweep rattlesnakes from the porch; who could calm a crying baby; who could sing a song and whistle a tune; who had spunk; who was not shaped by status; who was a perfectionist, yet never felt good enough, smart enough, or pretty enough; who was a prairie tumbleweed? Yes, I could like a girl like that, but would she have liked me?
I sat on a big rock and looked out across the foothills toward the snowcapped mountains that rose from the prairie floor. It looked as if I could reach out and touch the tops of the peaks though they were miles away. I was always in awe of the mountains even on the days they were distant and dared anyone to approach.
A breeze tugged at my hair and awakened me from my trance as the wind blew across the wide-open countryside, tossing tumbleweeds that jumped over clumps of sagebrush. Just beyond, uprooted grasses and weeds of various kinds clung to the barbs of a fence. As the tumbleweeds reached the barbed wire, they finally found a resting place. As I took in the whole scene, I felt kind of like one of those tumbleweeds that rolled across the prairie.
Tumbleweeds caught in the fence
During my growing up years, we moved from place to place. Living in parsonages with cast off furnishings of members of the congregation was not really a place to call home. However, there was one constant – the town where my grandmother lived. She spent most of her life in the mountains and even after she moved to town, they remained in view and gently spoke her name. It was there in the mountains where my father was born. When he married the girl from the prairies, she went to live with him in his mountain home and it was there that five of their six children were born. Those were their roots, their place to call home.
I came along later. Though I was small the first time I saw the mountains, it was as if they whispered my name. After each visit, the silent call became louder. I heard it in the wind that whistled through the trees and in the gusts that blew through the valleys. Others before me heard the call, too, and many answered. My great grandmother found refuge there in the mountains that spoke to her. Native Americans heard the call and climbed the mountain peaks in search of wisdom through visions to lead their people. Even now, many who visit there find solace and can feel the sacred reverence.
When I married, we almost moved to the mountains. Instead, we made a vow that one day we would move to the place where the mountains lifted from the prairie floor, the place held sacred to those who had walked among the valleys and peaks and lived in its shadow.
Yes, there were many places I called home, where we raised our children and spent time with grandchildren. Yet I still heard the voice calling. After many years, the dream I had as a child was within my grasp and now, I see the mountains every day. When my siblings see pictures of the roads that lead into the mountains, they say it looks like the road home.
Just as those tumbleweeds that found a place of rest in view of the mountains that speak, it is here we found the place we will call home and rest for a time.
“The mountains are calling, and I must go…” John Muir
She continued crocheting and said, “I don’t want to sing Strawberry Roan.”
The man continued to slap his leather gloves into his left palm and gently grasped them as he pulled them through time and again. He wore a faint grin, and after a bit said, “Margaret, why don’t you sing some of Strawberry Roan?”
She looked up then, her annoyance clearly showing by the scowl on her face and her curt response, “I don’t want to sing Strawberry Roan. I don’t remember all the words.”
There was silence except for the slap of the gloves of the man that sat in his easy chair. He tilted his head slightly, amusement on his face and a twinkle in his dancing blue eyes as he said, “Margaret, sing some Strawberry Roan.”
She gave a quick retort, but after a pause she sang a few lines of Strawberry Roan.
I watched from the other room and thought, “That sweet little man is not quite as innocent as he seems. What an instigator!”
In my grandmother’s younger years, she played the guitar and sang. I never heard her play. One day I asked her to write down some of the old songs. Strawberry Roan was one of those. Here’s a stanza:
He’s about the worst bucker I’ve seen on the range He’ll turn on a nickel and give you some change He hits on all fours and goes up on high Leaves me a spinnin’ up there in the sky I turns over twice and I comes back to earth I lights in a cussin’ the day of his birth I know there are ponies that I cannot ride There’s some of them left, they haven’t all died
I’ll bet all my money, the man ain’t alive That’ll stay with old strawberry When he makes his high dive
Fourth of July celebrations began early that day in 1923. A seven-pound firecracker baby girl was born and that was cause to celebrate. Every year after, fireworks exploded into bright cascading waterfalls and thousands of whirling, spinning, sparkling lights that dissipated into the air. We always knew the fanfare was in honor of Sister Ellen’s birthday. She wasn’t Sister Ellen to us kids, she was Aunt Ellen, and we knew her personality well suited the fireworks that added to the celebration of her birthday.
We heard many stories of the lives and adventures of much of the family, but I believe the ones we heard most were of Sister Ellen. She was even in Daddy’s sermons, you know – the gospel according to Sister Ellen. There were many hidden spiritual truths in all the Sister Ellen illustrations we heard from the pulpit.
Sister Ellen was a kid, and then a woman of many facets. She was called Soup by her dad, Sookie by Grandfather Ward, Sister Ellen or just Sister by Brother Buck, Toby by Cousin Anna, Potatuses, and Nellie. During her lifetime, she had many roles including that of a writer, warrior, ambassador, and sometimes even a conniver. Sister Ellen was also a bus driver. Yes, she sat in the saddle on old Spider and held the reins while Brother Buck sat behind prodding Old Spider whose belly moaned and complained all the way to the mountain one-room schoolhouse.
She took up arms against her English Grandfather Ward. It didn’t take much for him to set her off like a rocket ready to launch. When he broke his leg, she took advantage of his convalescence as he rested in his bed. It seems she always had someone do her bidding, that “someone” being her little brother Buck. She had to have someone to blame! Her scheme worked when she persuaded the younger brother to push sawdust through the knothole into the face of Grandfather Ward.
When she wanted a new doll, she buried her old one in the sawdust pile and had a funeral for it, appointing Brother Buck to be the presiding minister. That may have been his first call into the ministry. When she conveniently couldn’t find the doll again, she asked for a new one – a prettier one – for Christmas, which she got. There were many other incidents and tales including Effie Bowlegs, the outhouse, Nimmy Not and the bear, other confrontations with Grandfather Ward, shenanigans with cousins, and pushing her sweet little brother.
Aunt Ellen had the gift of words – spoken and written – and there were many. She was Valedictorian of the rural schools, worked for The Sweet Grass News, and wrote for The Big Timber Pioneer. After High School, she took a business course in Helena, Montana and accepted a stenographic position in the State Legislature. Later, she was secretary to the City Manager in Santa Barbara, California. She got to know visiting dignitaries from other municipalities and foreign countries, one being an Assistant City Manager of Jerusalem.
When Sister Ellen went on a tour of the Holy Land with Brother Buck and some of their cousins, the dignitary she knew from Jerusalem gave them a private tour of the city. When they traveled to another country, she came to the rescue of a fellow traveler who had an unacceptable passport. She was fearless, marched into the American Embassy, took care of the matter and somehow managed to receive a special tour of an ancient Roman City. When Daddy returned home, he laughed when he told that Sister Ellen ordered strange things to eat while on their trip. Her philosophy was, “Well, I wouldn’t eat that at home.” Brother Buck followed suit, ordered strange things, and embraced that philosophy for himself, and I am a witness to that!
Brother Buck and Sister Ellen exchanged many letters over the years. She would send him a story she had written and then say, “Now you write…” He completed his assignment and sent it to her with a challenge to write something else and reach for even great achievements. Often, they read the same book and then discussed the contents in great lengths. They spurred one another on just as when they were kids with Ellen holding the reins and Brother Buck spurring Old Spider on with a kick in the flanks.
During those years, the trail before them sometimes may have been covered with trees or with grass growing between the ruts. There were curves in the road and bumps here and there. Yet they continued to travel together, exhorting, encouraging, challenging, and praising one another. As their lives neared an end, she pushed him forward to lead the way. He complied and went on without her. At the age of 99, she joined him. Fireworks lit up the sky to signal the coming of a new year, or maybe, just maybe it was celebration of her entrance through the gates of heaven as she left this earth on New Year’s Eve. Little did she know that within just a few hours, they would welcome a favorite cousin who was proclaimed to be “another sister.”
Looking back now, the path seems clear. Their bonds of friendship and devotion to family opened the way for those who travel in their footsteps. I like to think that even now they walk side by side, but they just might be too busy talking.
Brother Buck once summed up the life of Sister Ellen,
You are the work of mystery, You carry the seeds of majesty, You are the works for miracle, You carry the breath of eternity.
Hope you’re feeling good. I’ve been wondering about you.
Hahaha. I think Effie Bowlegs is after you – still after you – and maybe you’re after him.
One summer he was having a hard time there. Every time he’d go to the bathroom you wanted to go. And one time you told Barbara, “I’ll beat you to the toilet.” And she ran around the old shop and pulled the door open and pulled him off the commode. Hahaha.
And then another time you had me get off there behind the new shop and throw rocks at the toilet when he was headed in. Bang! Bang! It seems like that year he left work early because he had stomach trouble. Hahahaha
You didn’t like the way he drove Nina & Dolly. I didn’t either. You rode with him and put your foot on the lines so he couldn’t pull them up and swat old Nina to have her keep up to Dolly.
Do you remember the first time you were in jail? Uncle Ed let us sit in the jail cell that Betsy Bowlegs had used when she was his guest. We got to sit in jail early. We thought that was quite a treat. Betsy Bowlegs had been in jail because it was just her time for that. Betsy Bowlegs was – I don’t know her name except Uncle Ed always called her Betsy Bowlegs. He would get a telephone call on weekends from the Big Timber city police. They would say, “Mr. Brannin, so ‘n’so is down here and we want you to come down and get her because we can’t handle her.” So he would come and she would call him, “Yes sir,” and “no sir,” and “Mr. Brannin,” and he’d keep her in the jail. Sometimes it was overnight and sometimes two days. One time she got so bad he had to escort her to Warm Springs to the nut house and she stayed awhile. She wasn’t related to Effie Bowlegs. Aunt Dora was related to Effie Bowlegs. I don’t know if Betsy Bowlegs was bowlegged or not. She was the Big Timber extra work for the city police. Sheri asked, “Did she drink?” Oh yes, she drank, I expect she did. Well, she couldn’t have drank because alcohol was – the states were dry – wasn’t allowed to be sold or drank. Her sober spells were kind of special. But the city police couldn’t handle Betsy Bowlegs, whatever her name was, and they would call him and he’d come and lock her – put her in jail – and she had one cell he called Betsy Bowlegs’ cell. He let you and me sit in it. He even closed the door on us.
I hope you’re doing real good.
If one of us lives to be a hundred I hope it’s you and not me.
Much love,
Buck
2011 at the airport, one headed South, the other Northwest
Now I will tell you about a boy-girl problem and a horse wreck. A horse wreck is something that happens to people who ride horses that buck, or people who drive horses that run away.
But first I will tell you about my sister, Ellen. One day she said, “I wish I was a boy.” That’s when Cousin Billy said, “If a girl kisses her elbow, she will turn into a boy. And if a boy kisses his elbow, he can turn into a girl.”
Ugh!
I’ll bet you didn’t know that!
Sister Ellen wanted to play a boys game and couldn’t. That made her unhappy.
Now my sister can do lots of things. She can touch the end of her nose with her tongue. She can kiss her wrist and her arm just above her wrist, but she can’t kiss her elbow. (I hope you don‘t try this.)
Our neighbor has a hired man. He calls him, Slim. This summer, Slim got thrown off his horse. That is bad. Then the horse fell on him. That is worse. And then the horse rolled over on him. I hope this doesn’t happen to you.
Now Slim has four broken ribs and a broken leg. His left arm was broken in two places and it fell across his chin.
He is the only person I know of who could have kissed his own elbow. But he was lucky and didn’t. Otherwise, he’d have had a BAD accident!.
