Growing up with a Chamber Pot: A Lighthearted Memoir of Coming of Age in the Mountains of Montana

Copyright © 2012 Sue Gwaltney

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Inspiring Voices books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

Inspiring Voices

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.inspiringvoices.com

1-(866) 697-5313

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover Photos

Front: First And Best Friends Forever; Sue, Norny, Toppy, And Old Shep 1948

Back: Logging Wheels At The Lakeside Merc; Our Favorite Vantage Post

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0335-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0334-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012917898

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 10/05/2012

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter One:Montana Mountain Childhood

Chapter Two:My First Friends… My Lifelong Friends

Chapter Three:Mistaken Identity and The Man with The Mumps

Chapter Four:Moving Into School Days and Mrs. Woodworth

Chapter Five:Misunderstanding Sisters and a Memorable Train Trip

Chapter Six:Meandering Through Lakeside… A History

Chapter Seven:Meowing Baptism

Chapter Eight:Making Bail and A Miracle from God

Chapter Nine:Meet Marlene

Chapter Ten:Mynah Bird Umpire

Chapter Eleven:Memories Are Made of This…. Methodists

Chapter Twelve:Marias Pass, Mail in the Air, and Mr. Clothier

Chapter Thirteen:Managing To Get Noticed

Chapter Fourteen:Math in High School……… and Making Love?

Chapter Fifteen:Mercury to Model A…. Making Our Way to Town

Chapter Sixteen:Method to His Madness; My Father’s Deal with Me

Chapter Seventeen:Money Schemes and Making Out

Chapter Eighteen:Mister Custer’s Last Stand

Chapter Nineteen:Magical 1959

Lakeside School Reunion……… 1989

Epilogue 2012

Sue with her parents at the ranch on Blacktail Road in June, 1942.

Preface

Some actresses, (Shirley MacLaine comes to mind) speak of channeling themselves into the character they’re portraying. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not into channeling, nor am I an actress. Neither have I had a book published, owing to the fact that I haven’t written one yet. Therefore, I can hardly call myself an author…at least not at this stage of the game.

Rolling around in my brain, however, along with nearly seventy years of mostly useless information, there is a story I believe is worth telling. I’m going to test my well-worn brain cells to take myself back into my childhood, and just for the fun of it, see what comes out. Going backward that many years might be quite a long trip.

I am happy to be living once more near the small town that I have always considered home, Lakeside, Montana on the west shore of beautiful Flathead Lake. Across the island-dotted, fresh water lake, the Rocky Mountains rise protectively like sentinels standing guard over this picture perfect setting.

It has also been a long trip coming forward this far. Life has taken me many places since I grew up, and I have been fortunate to have enjoyed more than my share of sight seeing and adventure along the way.

While employed with the Bureau of Land Management, I had the breath taking opportunity of seeing gigantic moose rear out of the water to paw angrily at our supply-carrying helicopter over Galena, Alaska. Acquiring my commercial driver’s license at age fifty five, I enjoyed several years hauling freight throughout the United States, teamed with my husband, as an over-the-road semi driver. Most recently there was yet another breath taking, (not to mention humiliating) experience of being plucked by a hunky life guard from a wild surf on Maui….a surf no self respecting grandmother should have plunged headlong into in the first dumb place! Sandwiched between have been many years of working in the food service industry.

Might you think being a waitress or cook would be a grueling and perhaps even dull occupation? Do think again! More excitement, laughs, and funny things take place behind the scenes in restaurants than you’d ever dream! I’ve had enough restaurant adventures to write a book, but I suppose I’d better write the first one first.

I feel like I’ve come full circle in my life, back home to the ranch where I started married life as a bride in 1960. My marriage only took me two miles north of my childhood home in Lakeside. Unlike me, two of my children and their children have never left home. They have grown up, built their own houses, and raised their families on this old home ranch. Today they know the area better than I do, but they haven’t known it as LONG as I have, and that is the purpose of this story. I have been yearning to paint a picture to show my children and grandchildren (add not an artist, either to the list!) the charming little community of my childhood.

Blessed with many dear and lifelong friends, this will be their story, too; a story of growing up in the 1950’s Happy Days era of Lakeside. We’ll go back into the days of duck tails and blue dot tail lights….Back, back into a time when life was much less complicated in our tiny village beside the lake, where we knew every dog and horse by name.

I can’t promise you a plot. I have no idea where I’m going with this narrative; you might find it interesting or it might be the dullest ink ever put to paper. But I’m going to give it my best shot.

Want to go along for the ride?

Sue Burdick Gwaltney

First Christmas at the Stensland Place with Aunty and Unc. Sue is showing off the new Christmas sled her father built.

Chapter One

Montana Mountain Childhood

A blustery, early spring afternoon in 1947 found my parents and I making our tortured way across the Rock Road, bouncing along in our ‘41 Chevy pickup. It was raining sleeted snow and the chains were clanking as the little truck pulled us through the muddy ruts and over the boulders half buried in the old logging trail. With the heater blowing full blast, the windshield wipers were clearing the way as fast as they could. Snuggled warmly on the narrow seat in the middle, soaking up the heat blowing directly on my face, I was reveling in the bumpy ride. The Rock Road, perhaps a mile or so long, was a shortcut through the woods connecting the gravel county roads of Blacktail on the south end of Lakeside, and Bierney Creek on the north.

Sandwiched between these two roads, a half mile, give or take, through the woods to the east, lies the small community of Lakeside, Montana nestled on the west shore of Flathead Lake along Highway ‘93. My father would use the Rock Road just for the fun of the challenge where we’d sometimes catch a glimpse of deer or a startled bear. Maybe, too, it was the route taken because I always hollered Let’s go over the Rock Road as soon as I spied it. Basically it was an early day Lakeside version of a Scenic Route. As we finally chugged our way through the last of the heavy timber where we could see down onto Bierney Creek Road, Daddy stopped the truck and turned off the engine.

Look down there, Susie he told me, pointing through the trees and down onto a large meadow in the distance, That’s going to be our new home! Peering through the already fogging up windshield, I saw an ancient looking two story log house, a log barn and some outbuildings. My mother wailed, But $4,500.00 Jim! How on earth would we ever pay for it? I didn’t know it at the time, but we were already parked on the property that went with the place; 140 acres of mostly tall timber with shorter spruce and fir stands. The woods were interspersed by a couple of rather large meadows some distance from each other.

We’ll figure it out, Nonie. Now let’s go down there and meet the Stenslands! By the time we crossed the wooden cattle guard that led up to the house, my mother had worked herself into something of a snit. She was staring out her side window determinedly ignoring my father’s enthusiasm for this adventure. Continuing up the driveway, I noticed to my right a tiny, one-room log cabin with a lean-to porch that matched the big house more or less. What a playhouse! I was thinking, fast becoming every bit as excited as my Mother was upset. Just beyond the cabin was a barnyard complete with a dilapidated rail corral which set my heart racing. Wow! A spot for a pony! Could life possibly get any better than this?

Some heated words were exchanged between them before Daddy coaxed a reluctant Mother out of the truck, but she followed him to the door, still in full snit. The Stenslands were an old Swedish couple who talked funny. Their adult daughter, Lena, was there with them and she talked funny too. Turned out she lived in the little cabin I’d admired on our way in. The old couple made a fuss over me and offered me a cookie which thawed my mother out to some small degree. She was rather fond of her only child.

After pleasantries were exchanged, Mrs. Stensland suggested we take a look at the house. I’d never seen such a big place in all my life. We had entered through the back door which opened into a small mudroom featuring a stainless steel cream separator on the left with a woodstove to the right. The entry room opened into a large L-shaped kitchen and dining area. Showing Mother the features of the kitchen, Mrs. Stensland opened two cupboard doors which were quite unusual. They tilted forward to reveal tin lined flour and sugar bins that held fifty pound sacks of each. I was awed by that and, grudgingly, Mother must have been too. Driving home later, that was about the only thing positive she had to say regarding the entire place. The kitchen also held a wood cook range with a warming oven and a beautiful oak ice box stood in the opposite end of the room. Off the dining room was an alcove containing a tall, polished mahogany Victrola and a case of thick black records. Mr. Stensland announced that these items all came with the house because they’d have no room for them at the apartment into which they were moving.

Oh, how I later came to love those old records. The Big Rock Candy Mountain became our family favorite, with the flip side being The Bum’s Song. Some of the words to that ditty went, Hey Lady. I’ve got a button here…could ya sew a shirt on it for me? There were lots of these old records left there from the Depression years . My mother eventually came to love that quaint old homestead too, once she’d moved in and put her personal touches on the house. This later included painting all the downstairs rooms her signature peacock blue. She would marvel at how well her cottage cheese turned out after hours of simmering on the back of the wood range that the Stenslands left with the place. Once she moved into a house with electricity though, she got some modern ideas in her head; one of which was a 40 inch electric stove with a deep well cooker to replace the wood range. After she’d talked Daddy into buying it she was dismayed to find she couldn’t lower the burner heat enough to make her beloved cottage cheese anymore. This marked the end of the burned cookies coming out of the wood fired oven however, so I thought it was a pretty fair trade myself!

I don’t know if the folks made a firm decision on buying the place that first day we visited or not. I do remember the Stenslands gave us a mighty thorough tour of both the house and the property, and we spent several hours there looking around. I was especially captivated by the house.

In the very center was an enclosed stairway dividing the dining room from the living room. The living room was small in comparison to the other rooms, more like a parlor, actually. It may have seemed larger had it not been for another large wood stove dominating the wall beside the doorway leading into a bedroom which featured a huge walk-in closet. Come to think about it, Mother did seem to show some interest in the large closets, but mainly all I heard was grousing on the way home that afternoon. Now, sixty some years later, I expect her real problem was with the money part of the deal. She was more than likely terrified of going into debt. The Great Depression was still very fresh in her mind. She and her family in Omaha had suffered some bad financial losses. On the other hand, Daddy, who lived out West, always said " Depression? What Depression? Didn’t bother us none. We never had two nickels to rub together to begin with!’’

I was fascinated with the stairs and thought the grown-ups would never get around to taking us up there. As we finally started up the steep and narrow stairs, I noticed a string running along the wall from the bottom to the top of the stairwell and couldn’t resist giving it a pull. Lo and Behold! A light bulb lit up at the top of the stairs! What have we here? Electric lights of all things? Now I’m totally in love with this place and ready to move in then and there! We had kerosene lamps hanging from the ceilings at our old house. At the landing to the left we entered a large vacant room with two doorways with no doors on either of them. There were two large south facing windows which let in a lot of light even on a dreary day such as this.

Even empty it seemed like an inviting place which it, indeed, turned out to be. It became my playroom where I played with my dolls and colored by the hour at my little desk. From there the second door opened into a bedroom (mine!) This room had a bank of windows facing east toward the county road and overlooked the roof of the veranda which ran the length of the entire house front. I looked out and saw that those windows opened almost even with the porch roof and thought how much fun it would be to crawl out there onto the shingled roof top. A couple years later my friends and I decided to do just that, and were actually hanging through the window when Mother came in and announced that the roof was pretty rickety and probably wouldn’t hold our weight. That thought scared us off…at least until we reached our teens!

To the right of the stair well landing was a room with a door. This turned out to be the attic or storeroom. It wasn’t painted or wall papered like the rest of the interior, and the floor was covered with random odds and ends of linoleum leftovers. It had one little window on the west side and a tiny bulb in the ceiling that had to be turned on even to see in the daylight. It would become an ideal spot for telling ghost stories and pawing though the trunks Mother filled with extra blankets, mementoes, and old clothes. In our rummaging one afternoon, my friends and I came across my mother’s antique wool swimming suit from her younger days. Looking at that heavy old navy blue striped suit featuring legs that reached to the knees, I thought it was no wonder my mother was terrified of drowning and never filled her bathtub with more than three inches of water!

Turning east at the landing took us into another bedroom of average size. This became my dad’s bedroom. Mother immediately chose the downstairs one for herself, saying that someone, (a little emphasis here!) would have to mind the fires at night. It turned out that those wood stoves, indeed, needed to be stoked on cold winter nights. Unfortunately Mother, with her newfound delight in all gadgets electric, soon bought an electric blanket for her bed, and therefore seldom woke up to throw on a stick or two of wood. By morning that big, old, drafty house, with no insulation between the chinked hand-hewn logs and the interior wall boards, would be downright frigid. On the floor of the doorway between my bedroom and playroom a couple dozen quarter sized holes had been drilled. This not only let the heat up from the stove directly beneath, but also became a perfect spot to crouch and eavesdrop on adult conversations in the living room below. I’d crawl out of bed on a cold school morning with my quilt wrapped around me. On my hands and knees, I’d holler down through the holes, Are the fires warm yet? I wasn’t leaving my warm blanket-piled bed until they were! Then I’d grab up my clothes and, still wrapped in my quilt, scramble down by the living room stove to get dressed in Mom’s room.

Once we’d examined the house that first April afternoon, we moved on to the outbuildings. The barn was also constructed of rough logs up as high as the haymow. The upper story was framed