 |
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
 |
||
|
The Days of Cowboys and Indians I stood there a very long time trying to orient myself. Finally I spotted my old friend. It was only ten feet away, hiding in tall weeds, its rusty hand As I drew near I could make out its familiar profile. My mind sharpened and flashed back to that special day decades earlier when I first noticed it standing proudly in front of the small house my grandparents called home after their big house burned. As though it were yesterday, I reveled in my memory of grabbing that big handle the very first time, raising it far over my head and then pulling down with all my might to produce a quick gush of cold water. That was the best old water pump in the world. And old it was, even then. In those "low tech" days so long ago it seemed like a magic toy. I pumped that handle for all it was worth and all I was worth. I kept a close eye on it, as though it might sneak away, and I raced my grandmother whenever she grabbed a kitchen pail and headed for the door. More than once I shoved my brother Tom aside, to be first to wrap my dirty little mitts around that handle, the very same handle I now spied, lurking silently there in the brush. I didn't realize its true importance back then, but I knew it must be an awfully big deal on that mysterious ranch, perched as it was between the little house and big old barn. My gaudy red rental car seemed starkly out of place as I stood quietly beside it in the warm sun, pleasantly trapped in a time warp. Birds chirped excitedly in trees along the nearby Yellowstone River. I drifted back to those exciting times so many years ago when the family gathered here on special holidays. I could almost smell those wonderful, steaming meals being artfully prepared by my mother and grandmother and Aunt Mary. In the back of my mind I could hear excited voices chattering away as busy hands ripped wildly at wrapped packages early on Christmas mornings. I recalled the big buckets of water, water from this very pump, that were heated to a boil on the old wood burning stove. And I remembered the endless stack of dishes waiting to be washed. On very special evenings my very old and very German grandfather, we called him Papa (photo) sat in My brothers, cousins and I badgered him to tell them anew each time we visited. His distinctive voice was enthralling. His grandchildren, of which I was proud to be the eldest, sat at his feet as he doled out the exciting details, stopping frequently to light his pipe and laugh at our wide eyed expressions of awe. Sometimes on those precious holidays I carried buckets of dirty coal from the barn and explored places where Indians were said to have stolen horses many years before. I imagined myself hiding in ambush, protecting the ranch from all manner of danger. What joy. What a mesmerizing place for a child to experience. What a delicious feast of warm memories for a man to quietly recall on a late summer day. Suddenly a bird had the presence of mind to call out its own name: "Chick a dee dee." A bee flew by, busily seeking the few flowers not taken by an early snow the week before. The sound of a tractor working a field wafted past me on the light breeze. A big, quizzical dog bounded up, looked me over and pranced happily off, unconcerned. Nearby I could see the place where the original house once stood. It was my home for nine months, beginning when I was 18 months old. More than four decades later, in 1990, I flew my small plane overhead in lazy buzzard like circles and spotted the old foundation's outline. As if it were no place special, several sheep were grazing quietly where the kitchen had once been. How could they do that? Didn't they know I spent my second Christmas there? Before I was four years old that house and everything in it burned to the ground, leaving me only its hazy image. It had been near that house in 1945 that my Grandmot Years before that my Aunt Mary, when just a girl, nearly drowned in a ditch. In an adjacent field a rattlesnake struck my mother. Where the barn had long stood the grass was now long and dark green. At the site was a small house, a little building, since enlarged, that my grandparents called home after the fire. It was a place where so many things were said and done, where important lessons of life were imprinted in the minds of children and where adults who had few possessions made do with what they had, there was nothing at all, nothing but rich memories which now surged through the mind of a middle aged man in search of his past. My focus returned to the pump. It was probably standing there when Papa, born Herman Utermohle in northern Germany on January 12, 1868, bought a share of the ranch in the late 1880's. He and my Grandmother retired from the ranch and began to write his memoirs in 1953, when he was 85 years old. All those years, water from this very pump nourished his life and the lives of his family, ranch hands, friends, strangers, neighbors and animals. The hands of so many people who contributed something special and treasured to my life gripped this very handle, just as I gripped it now. After everything it meant to so many people for nearly a hundred years, how could this great friend now lie untended, uncared for, a derelict? As a blond haired little boy, it was here beside the pump that I hugged a cute kitten I found in the barn. My best friend Skipper played excitedly nearby. He was the best dog anybody ever had.
At this spot I more than once leaped into the waiting arms of my loving Aunt Mary (photo) and my strong and spunky Grandmother and my aging, wonderful, wise Papa. Even now, recalling the twinkle in his eye brings tears to my own, as it has so often down through the many years since he's been gone. I noted that the current owners of this land built a log house nearby. How good, I thought, that they did not offend my memories with some modern atrocity. I would later be thrilled to learn that the "new" house was not new at all. It was the same house! The new owner, when beginning the destruction of the little house with the big memories, found that although the foundation was crumbling, its walls were in fine shape, except for about 40 bullet holes and a shotgun blast that had been fired from the inside! So the house was indeed renovated, a new roof added and the entire structure rotated 90 degrees and placed on a new foundation some fifty feet away. It looked so different. (photo below). I was sad to also learn later that the wonderful old stove, the one that had seen the creation of those monstrous holiday meals, eventually rusted ou A doctor from Billings is the new owner of the ranch. He said that during the work, gaps in the inside walls of the house were found to have originally been filled with newspaper. The copies were dated 1887. The house is now rented to someone from New York. I wonder if that person knows or appreciates the deep history of his little Montana home across the river from the town of Greycliff. Not really a town in the traditional sense, Greycliff is a tiny village whose few buildings are barely noticed by those who speed past on nearby Interstate 90. Years ago, completion of the new highway cut off the life's blood of many little towns like this one. Scattered across the west, they now lie near death, withering like gnarled old vines in the frost of fall.
An Exxon sign announces the old gas station. But there is no gas and there are no pumps. The old school seems in good shape, however. My grandmother taught grade school there. One day she let me ring the bell, which I did with such exuberance she made me stop for fear that people across the valley would think it the announcement of a fire. Beyond the school is the hill I climbed as a boy. It seemed so much bigger then. From that lofty vantage point I spied the long stretch of railroad track which followed the river and passed through the town, and still does. I could see the coal and water docks where dirty, hissing steam trains squealed to a stop and stood impatiently as new supplies tumbled and sloshed aboard. One day, from my magnificent perch, I saw a scene so fascinating that I've played it back a thousand times in my mind: a The tall silos where the trains had stopped are long gone. In their place, 500 yards of open space from the town, stands a sign: "East Greycliff." Good Lord. A town of two or three families has a suburb? Somebody in the railroad business has a sense of humor! The only "suburb" of Greycliff is the well known prairie dog town. There, furry rodent like creatures pop their empty little heads out of burrows, to the amusement of tourists and the temptation of people with guns. As I sit in my car quietly reflecting on the events of yesteryear, a train of today abruptly interrupts. Sure enough, down at the end of those same tracks, it rumbles steadily toward the town. As the growing din penetrates the serenity, a young girl in a blue dress emerges from the Saddlery. She climbs onto the hood of an old car and readies herself for the show. A modern whistle blares importantly as the train churns toward the crossing at all of 36 miles per hour, not much faster than the old coal burning monsters of another era. Three straining engines pass, followed obediently by 96 lumbering, squealing cars. Railroad names from across the nation display as a moving billboard: Montana Rail Link, Santa Fe, Burlington Northern, Northern Pacific, Oregon and Northwestern. Some cars carry coal, some corn, others are loaded with scrap metal. Then, after the brief excitement, the prairie's silence slips in like a fog and the little town resumes its long slumber. For me too, the show is over. My time is up. I must press on. People are waiting for me. The reality of modern life, held blissfully and self indulgently in abeyance for more than an hour, shatters my warm cocoon of memories, reclaiming its cold grip on my life. As I The river must have looked the same too. I ponder whether any of the very same water running down the river on this day has been here before, whether it flowed past this exact spot when my Grandfather chose this difficult life. Water evaporates into clouds, descends again as rain and snow, and the cycle repeats forever. I decide to believe he saw at least one drop of the very same water I saw on this day. Suddenly my mind flashed to my earliest childhood, to the place that sparked my very first memories in life. It was near the town of Sidney, a few hundred miles down river. Several days after my birth there, I arrived at my first home. It was a small house on the property of my father's, father's farm. Dad's was another family of true grit and clearly defined values. And to me, as I learned in later visits, their farm was a place of special mystery. The Hardy family farm and dairy at Sidney was a child's dream. It One spring during a visit there, the Yellowstone was running high and fast. Dad took me down to the quickly eroding riverbank to show me how the farm was being lost to the river. Huge chunks of fertile land, undercut by the raging water, were dropping into the river to instantly disappear. It seemed a love/hate relationship and, to me, a very philosophical concept. Here was the very river that fed and nurtured this land, now taking it ruthlessly away in great dollops. It was a lesson I came to think of often, whenever things loved and cherished suddenly turned, unprovoked, in anger. It seemed so unfair, and yet nothing could change it. The mighty Yellowstone, the friendly and yet evil giver and taker of life, was steadfastly unaffected by curses and pleadings, or even prayers. Mother Nature was having her way at Sidney that day, just as she did throughout the ages everywhere, including upriver at Greycliff. Now, writing these reflections weeks after my brief visit to Montana, I continue to ponder my life and heritage. Rich reflections and haunting echoes from my past bring a new sense of perspective and peace. I often think about that pump covered by tall weeds, now covered yet again by snow in nature's continual cycle. I wonder how long it will be until that piece of rusting steel is gone, until there are no signs whatever of the pain and triumph, the sacrifice and victory, the blood, sweat and tears of the very strong and special people who invested their lives in taming a strange and wild new land, even as it was busy taming them. My life today in Washington, D.C. is so removed, my days so totally different from that raw lifestyle. My world now is every bit as difficult, but in a more exasperating, less tangible way. I now live in a frontier of sorts, but it is a modern frontier of gamesmanship and power, the overblown, overacted, overrated, over stressed, constantly shifting and often bizarre game of politics. Surviving it can sometimes seem more challenging than those more fundamental obstacles faced by my ancestors. And yet there are times when the clouds over our nation's Capital do part. Yes, the light of reason sometimes shines through and things are done to truly improve the lives of the people we are in Washington to serve. Those are great days that encourage my continued labors here. It is surely not for glory, because there is no glory. It is not fame; many people detest us. I am here, and many others are "here," not just in Washington but in all walks of life everywhere, because if some of us were not struggling for the right reasons, there would be nobody to impede the progress of those who are here for the wrong reasons. There have been many stressful times when I wanted to give up. My stubborn personal campaign continues because it seems the right thing for me to do. It is not the challenges of today which drive me on. It is dreams born yesterday. When I have to reach deep into my reserves of willpower Those glorious days and wondrous places form many of my most vibrant and cherished memories. They are a safe haven, a private place I can always call home. The rugged people of those days, my role models, were building something important back then. It went far beyond their own intentions or awareness. They were adding mortar to the expanding foundation of our American Dream. I believe those of us who witnessed some of its difficult construction and rely so totally on it now, have a special responsibility not to let it crumble. Too many people forget that without an appreciation for our accomplishments of yesterday we have no vision to create our tomorrows. These things represent the taproot in my life. But it was a long time before I realized that it is not mine alone. It belongs equally to all those who shared my experience. It is an important part of the golden thread of continuity that binds us as Americans, and each of us as individuals to our families. The same forces that made me forged those who share my name and history. No matter how we live, whether together or apart, no matter the passage of time between reunions or letters or a familiar, warm voice on a faraway phone, we have a common bond. Those Much of the joy we cherish and protect deep in our souls today began to form right there on that ranch, perhaps even as tiny droplets joining as rivulets and cascading from an old water pump in front of a humble house, under the big sky of my glorious and very personal Montana. Don Hardy 1992 |
||
le matching the late summer colors. Even though it was a centenarian, long since overlooked, I had never forgotten it.
his favorite chair, regaling us with his stories of fights with Indians and troubles with ranch hands and encounters with bears and all the other tales of the real "old west."
her (Photo) ran across the plowed ground yelling to Papa, and reading excitedly from the telegram announcing the birth of their first grandchild, in northeast Montana. How nice that my admittance to the human tribe had caused such a stir in this place that I would come to love.
In ways both large and small it was here that, layer upon layer, I began to understand the importance of my heritage, how it would mold me and guide the course of my life. I had experiences all children should have. It was so exciting to arrive here.
t. After having loyally served three generations of my family, and others, it was finally discarded.
I decide to inspect Greycliff more closely. Its population appears to have dwindled to fifty or fewer hearty souls. An American flag flies proudly from what appears to be the only open business, the Allee Saddlery. On the building next door a faded sign reads "Groceries, Hardware, Gas, Oil, Tires." The door is boarded over. I wonder how many times my Grandparents walked through that doorway. 
long train with two huge engines at the front and two at the back, churned slowly uphill toward the west, blasting its deeply toned steam whistle and belching great puffs of black smoke offensively into the blue sky. It was a stunning show. Somehow I knew even then that I was witnessing the end of an era, a very wonderful era of raw western excitement and drama. That was the last steam locomotive I ever saw at work.
drive onto the highway, the jagged Crazy Mountains loom ahead. They must have looked exactly the same to my grandfather before the turn of this century. He was here long before the invention of the car or the First World War, before anyone knew of airplanes or dreamed of space flight. And yet, the mountains and hills he saw then are the same ones before me now.
had big fields, big cows and a big dairy plant with a huge and mysterious hissing machine that automatically washed milk bottles. Wow! A boy could spend hours investigating, or somehow causing big trouble for, something like that. Every day men in delivery trucks prowled the streets of the small town in the early morning hours, leaving quart bottles of milk on front porches. In the harsh of winter, customers would do well to fetch those bottles quickly. The milk would soon begin to freeze, pushing a shaft of icy cream, and the paper lid, up and off the bottle.
, I know what motivates me: it is not the great struggles of today's politics, it is the deep, powerful, vivid memory of a certain little boy learning important lessons in places inadvertently but perfectly designed to teach them. I think of myself as a child, being taught about life by my grandfather (photo). I think of myself as a youngster riding a tractor on his father's lap, held tightly by powerful arms or, a few years later, my hard pulls on the handle of a device that seemed to pump not just water, but life itself. That little boy wanted to make a difference. He still does.
who have shared these things are secure, and will forever be safe and nurtured by the dreams, honest values and rich emotions that flow from our common wellspring of life, just as the rich lands of Montana will always be fed by the magnificent Yellowstone, the river into which we gently poured my father’s ashes.