Memories of Marion & Toynette Tippetts by Jim Tippetts
The House
Dad bought land adjoining Grandpa Tippets' south of Highway 14. He dug a hole and poured concrete walls for a basement. Then he drug the old schoolhouse that used to sit in the southeast corner of Grandpa's farm over on top of the basement. I believe that before that time the schoolhouse had been converted into a granary, so when dad put it on top of the basement, he then built a second story, and divided the upper part into two bedrooms. The lower part was divided into 4 rooms, a kitchen-dining area, a utility room, a bedroom and the living room.
About 1950, to accommodate a growing family, and to help our uncle, Wayne Bennion move to the area from Salt Lake City, dad added to the house, building a huge living room, about 20 x 20 feet, with a large bedroom above, and an expansion of one of the existing bedrooms.
The old part of the house had a gas stove to heat it. It worked fine as long as you stayed within two feet of it and could keep your sisters from getting between you and the stove. I think we all have memories of scalding the backs of our legs there, while freezing the front part of us.
In the new addition, dad built a rock fireplace, putting his cattle brand in rock in the chimney. He also added a wall heater in the new living room. The gas heaters worked well for cool days, but in the dead of winter, we would scrounge wood from all over the farmyard and build a fire in the fireplace. That would warm up the entire house and keep it warm for several hours after the fire had gone out. In 1962 or 1963, I helped dad punch holes on the cement walls of the basement to run ductwork for a forced air furnace he installed after I left for the army or for my mission to Mexico.
The Farm
In 1939, dad bought the G.D. Clymer ranch, which had about 115 acres, around 15 of which were irrigable. With help from the ASCS office, he leveled a lot of the acreage. I remember watching the big machines dig up the grease woods and move them to a low spot, and leveling the fields behind the corrals. I believe Cal Tebbs was the man who owned the machines and did the work. Dad also had drain ditches dug to reclaim some of the marshy spots on the farm. I remember being with dad when he pulled cows out of the mud holes along the canal before the land was completely drained. He had a couple of fields between the two canals that he finally planted to alfalfa and leftthem, because they sub-irrigated from the upper canal, and when he tried to plow them, they got too boggy to work.
He expanded the farm by buying 70 acres from Harvey Looper. This was a great addition to the farm. It was all leveled and was good land except for a spot near Henry Wambeke's place that had a lot of alkali in it. He also bought some land down along the river bottom across the railroad from some land that Grandpa owned.
During the war, because he spoke German, several German prisoners of war were assigned to work on the farm. I don't remember much about that because I was born about a year before the war ended. There was one man named Paul Stoga, if I am spelling his name right, who tried to emigrate to the US after the war to come and work for dad. Unfortunately, he was from the part of Germany that fell to Russian administration, and was never able to get out of Germany. But he sent us a Christmas card every year without fail until the Berlin wall was built and he could no longer get them out to us. When he was old enough to retire, he was permitted to move to West Germany, but by then was to old to want to realize his dream of coming to the States. When Mark was in the army and stationed in Germany, he was able to look him up and have a visit with him. Apparently he was really overwhelmed to think that we still remembered him after nearly half a century.
One of the projects the Germans accomplished was to build the garage out by the corrals. Originally, it had a shop on the north end, and three grain bins on the south end. We converted it into a larger shop when we were running the Red Flat about 1969 or 70.
The Ranches: Red Lodge
Some of my earliest pleasant memories of Dad and Grandpa took place at the Red Lodge ranch. If my memory serves me, I was about 4 when the ranch was sold to Claude Lewis. My main memories were of the big old barn with hay stacked in both ends of it. There was a rail in the top of the barn that ran the length of the barn. There was a pulley that ran along the track, with a rope coming down from it to carry the hay from the wagons to the stacks, We used to climb the stack in one end and grab the rope and run with it and try to swing clear to the other stack. I was too young to make it, but I remember Tom and our cousin Jack could do it.
Another memory is of riding in the old KB6 International truck. Dad was driving and he and Grandpa had spent a good part of the morning loading it with hay to take to Lovell. As we approached the gate to go out to the highway, I remember seeing two spots of mud in the road, about the size of a silver dollar. I didn't think they were big enough to worry about, so I never said anything. When we got there, the truck loaded with hay sunk to the axles. The harder Dad tried to get it out, the more I sank. They tried to pull it out with Grandpa's pickup, but without success. Finally, they had to unload all the hay, pull the truck out with the pickup and reload all the hay in the hot sun.
The other memory is of the brook that ran along behind the house. Right behind the house, there was a pool. I seem to remember that one of the corner posts that supported the back porch was in the middle of that pool. The following story took place in that pool.
Cleaning fish in Red Lodge, Montana
This is what happened. Grandma was president of the DAR or something along that line. We were in Red Lodge working the cattle or getting a load of hay to haul back to Lovell, but Grandma had a meeting that Saturday morning in Red Lodge. Because it was a regional meeting, she really wanted to make a good impression, so she bought a new pair of shoes for the occasion. Saturday morning came, and she got up early and was all dressed to the nines for the meeting when Grandpa came in with a string of fish he had caught. He wanted them for breakfast, so under protest, Grandma went out to the back porch to clean them. She was straddled over the pool on a couple of big rocks that were there, and started to clean one of the fish. I guess it must have still been alive, because when she stuck the knife in to start the cleaning, the fish started flapping and surprised her, making her jump. She came down in the middle of the pool in her new shoes. That didn't improve her mood in the least, but to make the best of the situation, she put the shoes in the oven of the old wood stove to dry while she finished fixing breakfast. When she suddenly remembered they were there, she pulled them out, but they had shrunk considerably. So Jean got a new pair of shoes, and Grandma went to her meeting in her old paint-spattered, run-down chore shoes.
The Ranches: Johnson Ranch (Deadman)
Dad used to take us to this ranch. It wasn't nearly as nice as the one in Red Lodge, but it was closer, and we had cattle there, so we went more frequently. Mom was always cautioning us to keep our eyes peeled for rattlesnakes.
I think Dad brought the round table we had in the living room from here and cut it down and refinished it for Mom.
I remember we had to drive the pickup up close to one of the windows and run a wire from the battery to run the lights in the cabin.
There was a creek that ran along to the south of the cabin. There was a bridge across the creek, and a bunk house on the other side of the creek. I remember one day I found something in the bunkhouse I wanted to show Mom. When she finally agreed to come see it, I tore off across the bridge and ran into the building. I was running so fast I didn't see the big snake in the corner of the entrance hall until I was half way down the hallway. I skidded to a halt and immediately ran back out. I was sure it was a rattler, and that I was dead, but Mom came in and looked at it, and said it was only a bull snake. It must have been 3 or 4 feet long, and bull snake or no, I wasn't going anywhere near it.
Another memory is when Dad used to take Tom, Mark and I to fish in Dryhead creek. It was there I caught one of the two fish I was able to catch before I went fishing in Thoroughfare River. I laid the fish down while I was untangling my line from a bush, and when I finished I couldn't find that fish anywhere. I finally gave up looking for it and ran on up the creek to catch up with the others. They wouldn't believe that I had caught a fish. Finally, we got done fishing for the day and started back. When we came to the spot where I had caught the fish, I swore up and down again that I had really caught a fish. Then I said that I had laid it down right here—and as I looked down at where I was pointing, there was my fish!
Jim Tippetts
Future topics:
The Ranches: Lockhart Ranch
Haystack forts
Changing water
Overhauling broken machinery
Yellowstone Park
The Motels
The Golf Course
The Seventies Flour Mill
Scout Camp
Mom & Alzheimer's
Business man
