Mama was a schoolteacher

She told me many times that she knew she wanted to be a teacher from the time she was a child. Once she got her teacher's certificate, which allowed her to teach after two years of college, she was hired to teach at the grade school where she had gone to school, the Squirrel Creek school in Big Horn County, Montana.

Like all of the country schools at the time, it was a one-room school where one teacher taught all eight grades, in that area usually all of the children from somewhere between 4 and 10 families. The children closest to the school usually walked, those with further to go, rode horseback.

Montana could be somewhere between unpleasant and downright dangerous during the winter. Squirrel Creek School was over 4 miles from the ranch, cross country over hills and no roads. With shorter days, she left the ranch before daylight and rode home in the dark, trusting to her horse to carry her safely through snow and over rough country.

There were no "snow days" then and as the teacher, Mother was expected to get to the school early enough to build up the fire before classes started. At night, the fire was "banked" so that it would burn slowly, maintaining a slow fire overnight, allowing for a quick start the following morning.

I remember her telling me once that she got home and at supper worried that she hadn't banked the fire and set the draft before she left. It was mid-winter and cold, starting to snow. She had school papers to correct and about halfway through, realized her father wasn't in the house. Much later, he came back in and when she asked where he'd been, he said "You banked the fire and the draft was fine." He had gone out, not saying anything to anyone, caught up a saddle horse and ridden the 4 1/2 miles to the school in the dark and back to check on the fire.

Later she transferred to Big Bend School, another small country school that was closer to the home ranch It was 3 miles rather than 4 1/2 miles, there was a road as well and almost all flat ground, much easier on both horse and rider.

She taught there for several more years and was engaged to the son of a neighboring rancher, her best friend's brother. I'm not sure what went wrong. She never mentioned what had happened and I was too involved in my own life to ask questions once I was old enough to realize there must have been a "story" but it was after that, I'm sure, that she applied for a teaching job away from her home.

She went from there to Radersburg, a small mining town in western Montana, where she taught just one grade, in a "town" school. It was there she met my father, a miner originally from a South Dakota ranch and they were eventually married there.

After they returned to the ranch, she returned to teaching school. I had to go away to high school and rather than boarding with someone in town, she taught at the school in Lodge Grass, Montana, a small town on the Crow Indian reservation. We stayed in a rented apartment during the school year, returning to the ranch as weather permitted, 40 miles over a "good weather" road over the Wolf Mountains west of the ranch but not so often in bad weather, when the trip was 90 miles around the "long way".

Once I graduated and was gone from the ranch, she returned to teaching at the Big Bend School, where she taught for many more years, finally retiring when she was in her late 50s to be a full time ranch wife.

First childhood memory

Given my lifelong obsession with horses, my first actual childhood memory understandably involved horses. As an adult, I remember asking my mother about it, thinking it might have been a dream of some kind but although she couldn't believe I remembered it, with the detail I remembered, she figured out when and where it happened.

They lived in an apartment in Billings, Montana for a short period of time. Dad had been released from the hospital after 18 months of treatment for tuberculosis and was working there as an accountant, having been told he should never do hard physical labor again. I was not quite 3 years old at the time and until then, my mother and I had been at the family ranch, where I had lots of room to play.

Mom walked with me during that summer to keep me occupied and since the apartment was close to the edge of town, we used to walk in the "country" where I could see animals, as I was used to. There was a pasture with two horses where we walked and naturally, I wanted to pet the horses.

Eventually my mother met the owner, an older man who had retired, along with his last two saddle horses. She convinced him that as a ranch girl, she knew what to do around horses, so on many afternoons that summer, I ended up sitting on the back of one of the patient horses.

I very vividly remember the two horses, one bay and one gray and remember being lifted to the back of the bay horse and sitting there in absolute delight. Mother said she remembered I would lean forward and lay my cheek against the mane, putting my hands down and patting the horse's neck, lisping "niiiiice horsie!"

Anderson Michael ... Dad

......... Dad, in his early 60s, with a young ranch horse he was training
Dad was born in 1903 in South Dakota, the youngest of three boys. His father, Daniel Anderson Michael, was a rancher near Phillip, South Dakota. His mother, Emma Reed, died when he was still very young.

From what little I can remember Dad saying about his early years, I have the impression that the three boys were more or less passed around from one or another family, uncles and aunts, for several years. He talked most about living with the uncle who had married a Sioux woman and he spent several years growing up with their boys on their ranch near the Sioux reservation.

When he graduated from high school, he started college on a baseball scholarship, but soon dropped out. He then spent a number of years trying various things, but particularly developing an interest in mining, working in the gold mines in South Dakota.

The depression found him in western Montana, where he and two other young men survived in a small cabin, panning enough gold to buy flour, sugar, coffee and beans ... and enough rifle cartridges to poach deer. Dad was the "sourdough" cook ... he kept them in sourdough pancakes and biscuits and they poached deer to eat with the beans.

He said the game warden would show up off and on and if it was mealtime, they'd offer him stew or beans, whichever they had in the pot on the wood stove. Said the warden always complimented him on his biscuit and never asked what kind of meat he was eating.

As the end of the depression came, he went to work on a road crew, probably funded by one of the government programs. They were still doing the work with teams and Dad was always impressed by the boss's teams, trained to work with voice command, jumping traces to pull at an angle to the heavy equipment they were hooked to. Years later, on a trip to Radersburg, with my Dad, I met his boss from the road crew, "Red" Bruce, and his wife, and got to see some of the photographs from the road work.

He was working in one of the gold mines at Radersburg, Montana when he met my mother and they were married there in 1940 and I was born in the fall of 1941.

The following year he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to the state hospital at Galen, Montana. Mother returned to her family ranch with me, as I'd also been diagnosed with tuberculosis, at six months of age.

He was hospitalized for 18 months and for the first year, the doctor would not even tell my mother he believed Dad would survive. Once it was obvious that he would recover, the doctor told both my parents that he could never go back to mining and also that he could never expect to be healthy enough to hold anything but an office job.

Eventually, he went to work as a book keeper at the coal mines near Sheridan, Wyoming but he was not willing to settle in to an office job. In 1946 my parents relocated back to the ranch on Rosebud Creek. In 1952, my parents bought a small farm of their own, east of Billings, Montana and my grandparents retired and leased the ranch. Neither the farm purchase nor the lease worked well and in 1956 we moved back to the ranch on a partnership arrangement.

Dad finally retired when he was in his 70s, after having run the ranch with only summer help for haying all those years. His first purchase after retirement was a travel trailer and for many years Mom and Dad traveled in the southwest desert, where Dad was able to return to his first love ... geology ... rockhounding and looking for the lost gold mines of the southwest.

Fern Young Michael ... Mama

She was born in 1913, in Nebraska, the youngest of two girls. Just 2 years old when they moved to Montana, most of her childhood was spent growing up at the homestead, moving to the home ranch at the forks of Rosebud Creek when she was 14.

As in all ranch areas at the time, school was a one-room, one teacher school, 1st through 8th grade. It was 3 miles from the homestead cabin and the girls rode horseback to get there, riding double on the old, reliable mare called Rose. Mom used to tell me how annoyed she would get at her older sister because Millie always got to ride in front, but in the winter it was better because she could duck her head down keep her face warm.

The nearest high school was 60 miles from the ranch, in Sheridan, Wyoming. With horse drawn transportation and little cash money available, most ranch kids boarded full time with families in or near town, most of them working for their board and room. Mama felt she was very fortunate to be able to board with the high school music teacher's family, with only three small children to help care for and modern conveniences like gas stoves to cook on and running water in the house.

Summers were spent back at the ranch, helping with the usual summer work, from gardening and canning food for the winter to haying, working cattle and fencing. Without hired help, both girls helped when they were home and summers were when most of the preparations for winter had to get done. Without livestock trucks, selling cattle meant driving them 40 miles, a 2 or 3 day trip by horseback, to Spear Siding, which was a set of corrals at a railroad stop where they were loaded into cattle cars and transported to sale yards.

Mama never wanted to be anything except a teacher and I remember her telling me that she used to "play school" as a little girl, lining up her dolls and teaching them from her school books. Two years of college was what was necessary then for a "teacher's certificate", which meant you could get a job teaching school. While her parents managed to pay for the school fees, again, Mama had to work for her board and room while going to school. The first year was terrible, the woman she boarded with expected her to do all the housekeeping, washing and ironing as well as much of the cooking. From the few bits I heard, growing up, I think she managed most of the time on about 4 hours sleep, often falling asleep over her homework.

She said very little about that first year and more often mentioned her second year as she became very fond of the woman she boarded with that year. One story she told repeatedly was having to make a bug collection for one of her classes and one day she and this lady were on the street when they spied a bug she didn't have. Mama would still giggle when she described this lady, in her fancy dress and shoes, scrambling down the street gutter trying to catch this big bug for her.

For several years after getting her certificate, she lived at the ranch and taught at the little one room school over on Squirrel Creek where she'd gone to grade school herself. From the home ranch, it was nearly 5 miles cross country horseback, but there were no "snow days" back then. She was expected to get to the school early enough to get the fire going so the schoolroom would be warm for the children and at night, she stoked the fire before she rode home.

A few years later, she went to a small town in western Montana, Radersburg, where she taught until she met ... and married ... my father, who was working in one of the gold mines in the area, though he was from a ranching background as well. They eventually returned to the family ranch on Rosebud Creek, where they lived until their retirement.

They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in May of 1990.

Memories and thoughts from the past

I was raised on the ranch that was, in part, the original homestead proved up by my maternal grandparents. The home ranch, in the photo above, was at the forks of Rosebud Creek, a part of the area where General Crook met the Cheyenne and Sioux in the summer of 1876 and was turned back, rather than being able to continue on to join General Custer. Ranchers along the upper Rosebud Creek found a number of cavalry artifacts over the years and growing up, I often found old rifle cartridges in the hills as well.

Our close family was small. Mother had just one older sister who moved to California and lived there most of her life. We kept in touch, of course, but as adults, the cousins have lost touch. Dad's family was bigger, two brothers, four half sisters, but his mother died when he was very young and his father died when I was still a toddler. Again, though we kept in touch with brothers and sisters, once they were gone the cousins lost touch.

My two children were not raised on the ranch and never knew their great-grandfather, who died when they were too young to remember him. They knew their great-grandmother mostly in her later years and my parents, while they still lived the ranch for a number of years, were no longer actively ranching. While we spent occasional vacations at the ranch but they never truly had the opportunity to live the life I remember and my own grandchildren do not remember the ranch at all.

As an only child myself, once I am gone, the memories will be gone as well. This blog is meant as a tribute to the land I loved, the parents and grandparents I knew and loved and the family, friends and neighbors that contributed to the memories I hold so dear.