Looking Back Again: Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana

Looking back we see a panoramic view of the hills & prairies of northeastern Montana filling with immigrants & refugees from one end of Europe to the other.

The promise of free land drew many and a measure of success drew still more. On a rare rainy day, a lonely homesteader drafted a proposal,

�Olga, you should really see to it and come over here to America. I hope you understand me. I think you will never regret what you do. You shall get everything under the sun you may wish, as far as I can arrange it, and I think I can. And I do not think you will long so much to be back home, should I hope!

Did she make the 3,000 mile journey to Dodson to live with this man twenty years her senior? Their translated letters hold the answer.

In search of a better life, the Montanans chronicled here came from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, France, Czechoslovakia, and Russia. Their stories tell of challenges overcome�by grit, faith, and hard work. Humor helped:

�Her mother had an especially difficult time, as many Norwegians do, with pronouncing the letter �j.� Upon being given a puppy, she was asked what she would name it. �Yack� she said. Her daughter was disgusted. �Mother, you know you can�t say Jack. Why don�t you give him a different name?� Her mother took her advice, and named the puppy Yip.�

They scratched out a living as best they could� He grinned, �I was never broke, but at times I was badly bent!�, but the high price of "free" land�frigid winters, parched summers, dust, loneliness, hunger�killed thousands, & scattered still more to the winds. The psychological toll was heavy:

�her mother had contemplated taking her own life because of the tragic circumstances. She did laundry for others to put food on the table after she left her husband. He died on his birthday after suffering a gunshot wound, known as a �gutshot wound� because it was intended to cause much pain. His last words were, �If I had my life to live over, I�d live it differently.�

Looking back again we see the survivors, the fruit of their labors, and their legacy. The pioneers who �stuck it out� raised children with a tolerance for the often harsh environment and, nonetheless, an appreciation of the advantages of rural life.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean during World War II, one such second generation Montanan expressed the sentiment of many when he wrote in his journal,

�Out here a person has time to think�there isn�t anything I like out here better than to lean on the rail of the ship in the middle of the night when it is calm and clear, and just think. I think of many things, but my thoughts always end up in one place�Home.�

The isolation�Ida remembers going to town only twice in three years while the older children were small�imbued them with a deep appreciation for what social intercourse was available. They were all in the same boat and they didn�t let hard times prevent them from having good times together.� Many survived only with the help of the best neighbors in the world:

Before John knew what was happening, his horse was roped and one of the men had slipped a noose over his head. With the rope around his neck and his horse being led toward the river and a convenient cottonwood tree, he decided he was doomed to an early death.

The men refused to listen to a word he said but proceeded on their way, jogging along toward the river and the tree. As they reached the brush along the river, Fate stepped in. They came across a man who owned the ranch next to the �71� � �I know that boy � and there�ll be trouble if anything happens to him.� �

But neighbors are never perfect:

��While working in the grocery department of the store, a lady came in one day with a crock of home-churned butter. �I�d like to trade you this in exchange for some other butter,� she said, adding, �A mouse fell into the cream, but what people don�t know won�t hurt them.�

�Charley chuckled as he took the butter to the back room where he quickly unwrapped the �butter paper� from it and wrapped it in another kind of paper and handed her the same batch, still chuckling, and agreed, �That�s right, what people don�t know won�t hurt them!� �

As with all children, the children of these survivors had little trouble finding ways to play. Sometimes this posed hazards of its own:

�We children played in the closed-down cyanide mill,� she wrote. �Before it closed down, a sluice box carried the waste into Rock Creek. We were all warned that the water was poisonous; we never drank it, of course. But when the water evaporated, it left the finest sand, excellent for making gold-colored mud pies!�.

When a group of families lived sufficiently �nearby� and could afford a teacher, their children were educated. At times a teacher could be found, but not a suitable building. Nonetheless, education happened�She taught for ten years, one term of which was in a saloon-turned-school building in Landusky. Some children remember walking three miles to school in the morning and afternoon �. �I�d cry at night with leg ache,� but the alternative could be worse:

One year a �school bus� was fixed up by enclosing a truck. The exhaust was to be used to heat the bus. The first day of school after a two-week Christmas vacation, the kids were excited to see each other. Chatting happily about what they had received for Christmas, they sat on the benches in the bus. Suddenly things began to get quiet. One by one, the children began getting sick and collapsed into the aisle.

The kids survived and life went on in the hills and prairies of northeastern Montana. Read on, �Look Back Again,� and enjoy these oftentimes fascinating stories from the lives of real Montanans.

Looking Back Again Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana

Looking Back Again
Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana