When I started compiling word pictures of my childhood memories, I realized they were like the mailboxes along the roads and the old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds that served as landmarks in rural Montana.  

These landmarks told us where we were and how far we had to go.  Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.  

Dropping in unexpectedly on a neighbor or relative or Someone Who Lived In Town could be done in a dozen different ways and for a dozen different reasons.

Sometimes “dropping in” was a matter of a night time emergency such as when our closest neighbor came pounding at our farmhouse door late one night. (more…)

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana where I grew up.  These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go.  Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

When I started compiling word pictures of these memories, I realized they were like those mailboxes and old barns–identifying places on the road.  This one is about the business of harvests.

On the farm, harvest comes after a lot of work, after a lot of time, after a lot of growth.  Any thaw that began before the end of March was a blessing.  Since the ground might be frozen solid 3-4 feet down, this is going to take awhile.    While waiting, he tended the machinery~~greasing, oiling and repairing things; getting fuel supplies and seed ready. (more…)

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana where I grew up.  These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go.  Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

When I started compiling word pictures of these memories, I realized they were like those mailboxes and old barns–identifying places on the road.  Here’s one for today…about the plans and thoughts and expectations of Danes who were working toward emigration to America in the early 1900’s.

What follows is a translation of immigration tips for Danish immigrants in 1911, written by Holger Rosenberg in 100 nyttige Raad for Udvandrere.  Each piece of advice was followed by a shorter or longer explanation (which are not included here).  This provides a taste of what immigrants might learn before coming to this country.  At the time, even though American exceptionalism may not have been called that, the immigrants knew something in their hearts about America and knew it was worth the price to prepare themselves for both the journey and the destination.

Our maternal and paternal grandparents had completed their journeys by 1911, but Danes were still coming.

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About 2:00 in the afternoon on a very special day, I would be sent up to the north window to keep watch.

There is a little landing three-quarters of the way up to the second story where the staircase turns for the final four steps up to the narrow hallway that runs past two small bedrooms on the left.  The first of those is my brother’s and the second one mine.  We inherited those rooms in our turn after they had been occupied and left by five older siblings over the previous 15 years.  Now the hall turns right to the last and largest bedroom that faces west.  That large one is all spruced up today, because Company Is Coming From California.

So I am sent up to The Window At The Landing to keep watch, where I can see over the trees up to the main road.  We don’t have a telephone, but two days ago we got a postcard that confirmed what the letter received two weeks ago said: they will be arriving about 2:30 on this afternoon.  Sometimes it might one or two of the unmarried aunts who would have ridden the Greyhound Bus to Glendive and then been escorted from there by other relatives.  (more…)

History never happens in a vacuum.   What we are going through right now is very much like the 1950’s….now that I  think of it.

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Strangers on our little red scoria roads in eastern Montana were met with the same suspicion as the unrecognized small plane flying north to south.  More on that in a moment.

If I were an artist, I could paint my mother’s back as she stood at the locked kitchen door talking to a salesman through the screen as he chooses his words carefully, hoping to gain entrance.

Standing behind her, I could see her left hand  pressing firmly down on the screen door hook and her right hand behind her back, holding the kitchen knife.  When Mom grabbed a butcher knife on her way to the door, we knew she was scared of something, although it was never talked about. If it happened that the lower back door to the house was not locked when a salesman arrived, we would scamper through the rooms on the back side of the house, scoot down the four steps to that door and hook the screen door there as well while she was talking through the screen door. (more…)

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana.  These landmarks told us where we were and how far we had to go.  Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us it would be awhile.  The word pictures of those mailboxes and old barns may be about events, personalities or furniture.  

My Dad was a reader, and the big leather rocking chair in the corner of the living room was where he sat to read. He had other leather club chairs too but he rarely used those. This MBOB is about that rocking chair.   

Farm kids in the 1950s were not routinely babysat.  They were cared for by their parents until they were old enough to be left alone.  Since parents didn’t care to be trapped at home for seven years running, of course, this was the reason children learned how to behave in public from age two and going forward–until they could be left home alone.

The Age of Accountability was not just a doctrine of the church in those parts.  It was a spot in the road, a pinpoint of light cast over a child’s life when that child was made to know that henceforth and forever,  they were “old enough to know better,” “should be ashamed of themselves for acting like that,” were discovered to have been “acting like a baby,” or were expected to “act their age.”  Now that magical and powerful phrase “act your age” was quite fluid in its applications but the use of it by a parent had a couple of standard characteristics. (more…)

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana where I grew up.  These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go.  Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

When I started compiling word pictures of these memories, I realized they were like those mailboxes and old barns–identifying places on the road.  Here’s one for today…about hay.

Our hay wasn’t seriously good hay.  We called it hay but knew by our early teens that real hayfields, like those in southern Montana, would easily put our hay to shame; but it was the only hay we had and when someone said, “Well, better make hay while the sun shines,” we certainly knew what they meant. (more…)

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana where I grew up.  These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go.  Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

When I started compiling these memories, I realized they were like those mailboxes and old barns from my memory–identifying places in the road over all our years.  Here’s one for today…about cattle.

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Branding irons and barbed wire fences  frequently framed range wars in the 1800’s.  They were sometimes the cause and sometimes the consequence of bitter battles between competing ranchers; between those who owned cattle and those who owned sheep; and they are surely the stuff of some bloody memories.  For me, though,  they frame good memories–born too late as I was to remember the losses and deaths in the cattle herds of the 1930’s during the depression and the dry years.

Lessons like responsibility, caring for really big animals, paying attention to details, looking for the one that gets lost or hurt are part of what spills over the life of a child on a farm or ranch that has cattle as part of its operation. (more…)

I want to give you a bit of background with today’s memories.

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana where I grew up.  These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go.  Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

When I started compiling these memories, I realized they were like those mailboxes and old barns from my memory–identifying places in the road over all our years.  Here’s one for today, first published on the Treehouse in February 2011.

Because of the anger and fear I’ve experienced  as our nation goes through so much upheaval, my thoughts have gone back  to the Yalta Conference of 1945, what my parents knew about Yalta and when they knew it. Here’s why:

My brother was 12 and I was 10 in March of ’55. We were accustomed to hearing the 9 pm news from WHO, Des Moines, Iowa. Loud and clear over the Montana prairie we’d hear Gabby Heatter’s classic opening line, “There’s good news tonight, folks!” even when there wasn’t. Radio, with Fibber McGee and Molly on Saturday night, was the center of our world on short winter days. (more…)

Mail Boxes and Old Barns was a Sunday feature on the Treehouse until the spring of 2011 when the preparation for our move from Minnesota to Oregon overtook daily schedules and pretty much ended any meaningful writing production.  I’m trying to get ready to get writing again….but until then, here is a word picture from my family blog that hasn’t been shared before.  It’s somewhat shorter than the MBOB essays, but perhaps long enough to stir up some of your memories.  Enjoy.

I’m taken back to warm summer afternoons where I hear the screendoor slam as someone goes in or comes out; where the bike chain slips in its usual way when I take off down the road; where the roller skate key isn’t in its usual place so I have to hunt for it.  I’m taken back to a place where there’s koolaid on the back porch and a bowl of fresh peaches that are dipped in sugar between every juicy, messy bite.
When I hear the singular sound of a John Deere tractor,
I hear security and predictability, even when others may chuckle a bit because they just hear a funny-sounding tractor. (more…)