Growing Up and Learning, Part 4

 About 1927, the Atwoods started buying land on the Milk River Ridge south of Raymond. By 1930 There were several Atwoods on the ridge.  There was George, Uncle Nephi, Johnny Atwood, Martin Atwood, Jim Still, and the Johnson families.  Jim Still and the Johnson guy were sons-in-law of Johnny Atwood. By 1930, the Bonnie View School was built. Ray, Lynn and Logan traveled to school by horse and buggy.  I walked as we lived within a half mile of the school.  This is where I got the balance of my schooling. I turned 16 in December of 1930.   

George bought a half section of raw land twelve miles south of Raymond.  It was the worst job of pioneering I have ever experienced.  There were roads to build, fences to build, and loads and loads of rocks to pick and haul away.  I do not know how many loads there were, but I do know when the gloves wear out and there was no money to buy more, the rough rocks made your hands pretty sore.  Those were the days before grain augers, trucks, hay elevators, and front-end loaders.  We used horses, scoop shovels, pitchforks, picks, crowbars, milk buckets, log chains, hammers, and wheelbarrows.  A saddle horse was the fastest mode of travel and if you had a girlfriend, you took an extra horse along for her to ride.  If you happened to meet some older fellow, he would ask, “Hey, what you got that extra horse along for? You can’t ride two of them.”   

We lived in a tent on the farm for a while, then we built a small house.  In 1929 the drought came.  This time in history was called “The Hungry Thirties”.  Some called it “The Dirty Thirties” because the sky would get so black from dust blown off the parched land.  We were dried out almost every year.  One year we got 500 Bushels of wheat and sold it for 30 cents a bushel.  Our crop, therefore, amounted to $150.00, not enough to cover expenses.  Hunting and trapping and taking jobs like breaking thirty broncs in the winter provided enough to buy groceries.  By this time, I figured the meaner the horse, the more fun it was.  The summers I was fifteen and sixteen, I drove ten horses on a plow.  They were half broke horses and half broncs, so you had to stay awake to stay alive.  There was no horse I was afraid of and they were my life.  

 Horses, cows, mules, and sheep kept me busy and happy.  I went to school now and then when the fall work was done, and I managed to pass grade nine.  That was one year of high school and grade eight was considered enough in those days.  At this time, we were still twelve miles south of Raymond on what is known as the Milk River Ridge.  It was grass country when it rained, and you could ride for miles without seeing a fence.   

Despite the Depression, those were happy days on the Ridge.  Sundays were get together days.   Horses were our main mode of travel and we got to know the country for twenty miles in all directions pretty well.  We used a lot of ammunition hunting and went fishing together in the Milk River, about 15miles farther south.  By this time, most of the Atwoods had moved away, except Nephi and George.  They put up a lot of prairie hay together for Meeks brothers and for Knights Sugar Company ranches.  So, we hayed together, raised sheep together, and wherever there was work or play, we did it together.   

There were dances in the winter at Bonnie View, Manoth, and OK Schools.  These were then from 10 to twenty miles apart.  This is where we learned to dance, and we would go from 8:00 or 9:00 o’clock until 4:00 a.m.  We would dance till midnight, when a lunch was served, then we continued to dance till 4:00.  Then we made the long ride on horseback home again in time to feed sheep the next day.  The dance ticket was 25 cents, and we got a new suit once a year at about fifteen to twenty dollars.  A day’s wages were $1.00 for a ten-hour day and for some farmers it could be up to 16 hours.    

I’ll never forget the flopper hunts.  There were a lot of big lakes on the Ridge and about the right time of year, when the ducks were getting quite big but could not fly yet.  We would get together and go flopper chasing.  We would get on saddle horses and line up at one end of the lake, spread out, and ride into the lake bareback.  (A horse can swim better without a saddle.) We would swim the full length of the Lake and drive the ducks all out of the lake while some of us would be waiting just over the first hill to catch them.  Sometimes we got 50 ducks, sometimes a hundred, and sometimes not very many.   

Horses were slow and we were 12 miles from town, so we went to town very seldom, sometimes once a month.  In the summer on Sundays, we would all get together and go fishing, and on the first of July, everyone would head for town for the big rodeo and celebration.  Twenty-five cents was spending money for the day, and when that ran out, you’d had it. 

In order to protect the innocent, or truthfully, the guilty, I will not tell you the name of the teacher we had the first year at the Bonnie View school.  He was a brutal man.  He loved to dish out punishment and most of the kids were scared stiff of him.  There was a boy in the class, who had lost part of one arm in an accident.  As it was almost impossible for him to sharpen his pencil with only one hand, it was usually in need of being sharpened.  One day he was ordered to sharpen his pencil, so he went to the front of the class and attempted to complete the task. As he struggled, the teacher stood there and laughed at him.  One of the bigger boys in the class left his desk to help the poor boy.  The teacher ordered him to SIT DOWN!  At that point four or five of us older boys stood up and let the teacher know, the boy who stepped up to help the one-armed boy, would sharpen the pencil and the teacher better not interfere.  The pencil was sharpened, everyone returned to their desks, and the teacher sheepishly carried on with the lesson of the day.  The next year, we had a different teacher.