Charlie Russell was saddened by what he called the death of the west. I know what he is talking about. I am saddened by the death of what this part of Montana used to be like when I was a boy in the 1940’s and early 1950’s.
I live on Sixth Street and while there are plenty of children in my neighborhood, you don’t see a lot of them out. Mainly I see kids from the east end making the trek to the skate board park on ninth street.
In my day, winter and summer we kids in my neighbor spent most of our time outside. In the summer it was long hikes, long games in our back alley like “Kick the Can” which would go on until dark and in the winter we might be bundled up like Frosty the Snowman but out we would go and build Christmas tree forts and then spend months in them reading what every so often would be forbidden funny books.
You see we knew that when our parents went to PTA, sooner or later someone would get up and demand that all mothers throw out the decadent funny books. Home would come our mothers and we would have to start over in the funny book department. Soon, we learned to hide our stash and the Christmas tree forts made for the perfect place to spend hours in the winter, out of the cold winds, reading about all those Communist plots that were said to be in said funny books.
We would come in for lunch and dinner although in many houses dinner and lunch was a transition. We must have thought of ourselves as farm folk for years we ate our big meal at noon. That was because both my mother and father’s parents ate their big meal at noon. Then for some reason, we changed to eating the big meal at night. That was certainly something different in our lives. So did most of the neighborhood change. In my case my mother went to work at Clack’s office so had no time for a noon dinner.
But, when I did come in from a cold play area around Second Avenue, there would be a big cast iron frying pan on the stove just full of chili or maybe chicken and dumplings and always a beef roast or fried chicken every Sunday when we still ate our main meal right after church.
We were responsible to get ourselves to school. I went to Devlin and it was a long walk but I made it every day twice a day unless it was 20 below and then Daddy would pick me up and take me to school and pick me up afterward.
It was a good life, only like most, we just didn’t know how good it was at the time.
Now, flash forward until now.
I was sitting in church last Sunday and next to me sat a 20 year old boy who said he had already voted and was now ready to vote again. I wanted to tell him he will never have such awful choices again in his life as he has this time around for President. I didn’t get the chance to tell him but I will yet.
When I think of FDR, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, I do mourn the death of my youth and hope it will be like that for another generation of people in this part of Montana once again.
I know exactly what Charlie Russell was talking about.
